With Christmas over but winter still here, I wanted to highlight and celebrate this season, starting several reviews on a “Winter Wonderland” series! Each are animals adapted for the ice and snow of the world’s coldest environments, captured in the snow that has recently fallen for my area. We start with some large hunters of the snow, the gray wolf (Canis lupus).
The largest member of the extant canids, the result of Bergmann’s rule, which lives in packs, hunting the large animals of the Northern Hemisphere, and whose ancestors led to the domestication of dogs. They come in multiple colour pelts across their range. This makes these figures hard to discern the specific subspecies, a commonality between AAA figures. If I had to guess, based on this ones pelt, it could be either Eastern, Arabian, Steppe or, most likely, Eurasian. It’s quite a pelt colour, even though it makes it harder to place.
Let’s look at the figures themselves, starting with the adult, the large howling figure. And large it is, measuring 5.2″ high and 6.6″ long, huge compared to most wolf figures. The pose is dynamic, howling into the skies, communicating to others of it’s kind. Is it to communicate plans to hunt? To discourage rivals? It’s up to your imagination. The sculpt is well done, and some great fur details, he (yes, he, the genitals are sculpted) comes off quite well. Blue may seem an odd eye colour, but it does feature amongst wolves, so interesting to see this difference.
Next up, we have the puppy, and they get the features of a youngster spot on, from the smaller tail to the less developed muzzle. It scales fairly well with the large adult, if a little small, measuring 2.4″ high and 2.2″ long. It is well sculpted, and the pose is quite cute, resulting it fitting nicely between the legs of the adult, being quite cute, protecting it’s young.
There have been better figures made of the gray wolf, but this pair is really sweet, and a worthwhile pick. It has long since been discontinued, so eBay is your best bet, but I do recommend it, or the variants that have been made for it. You won’t be disappointed.
