Return to Prehistoric Forest

Back in 2010 I did a little post on Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, Michigan...

I only had one color photo to share back then, but as luck would have it I just turned up two more...

Above is the fiberglass mountain Prehistoric Forest entrance.  Back in 2010 I wrote, "...at least when I visited everything was well maintained and freshly painted," but looking at this photo now I have my doubts.  Are those yellow areas on the mountain where the grey paint has pealed away?  Although the two-tone color scheme kinda breaks up the monotony of solid grey.  That large white figure on the left is the "Giant Ground Sloth" as seem on the B&W brochure...

Here's the Prehistoric Forest Tyrannosaurus photo-op.  Midway thru your tram ride in the forest passengers were allowed to walk around a small photo-op area with about a half dozen dinos.  There's some kid in what looks like a red hoodie on the lower left.

Here's some great 60's home movie footage from Prehistoric Forest I found on YouTube...



Lastly here's nice little look at how Prehistoric Forest looks today by someone who has obviously visited my blog before...

Strange Change Machine

So that was a fun summer... let's see if I can get this blog back on track now.

In the late 60's the mighty Mattel toy company introduced the "Strange Change Machine" which was a fun little toy that was basically an electric hot plate with a plastic dome on top. You could heat up special little plastic cubes which unfolded into monsters and dinosaurs.

Check out the awesome commercial...



Man, I love that narrator and groovy science fictiony music. Indulge me while we watch the "extended dance mix" of the same commercial (but unfortunately worse video quality)...



Anyway, there are a lot of sites out on the vast interweb if you wish to know more about this toy, but what those sites don't have are big clear scans of Strange Change Machine instructions...


... and on the flip-side of the instructions, a full-color "landscape map" of The Lost World.

Prehistoric Forest

Since my last post was super boring I thought my next post should be extra exciting, and what's more exciting than dinosaurs.

This is a low budget brochure for Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, Michigan, and Prehistoric Forest was a dinosaur attraction filled with low budget fiberglass dinos.


Although it must be said that these were well done low budget fiberglass dinos, and at least when I visited everything was well maintained and freshly painted. Besides the dinos, there were other odd things to see at Prehistoric Forest like that "burning spring" thing pictured on the upper right above. I can remember asking my father how fire could be bubbling out of the water like that. Yeah kids can be so naive, but then again I was 23 when I asked this. Thank you folks, I'll be here all week!



Since the pictures in this brochure were all B&W I wanted to include some color photos my father took when this attraction was in its prime. Unfortunately I could only find one (I'll update this post if any other pix turn up).


This is the "Neanderthal Man" and if you noticed he looks like he had a makeover compared to the brochure picture.

You should have guessed by my use of past tense that Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills is now defunct. According to a report online it closed in 1999. Thanks to YouTuber mortuarygirl1 you can see how Prehistoric Forest looked in 2009.


UPDATE: There's a few more color Prehistoric Forest photos right here...