The honey bee. Apis mellifera. Probably the most iconic insect in human history. Surprisingly, not commonly made in toy form, at least not at the species level by manufacturers of collectible animal models (almost every ‘bin-style’ set of toy bugs has a generic bee, however). Also, when bees are made, they are rarely super accurate models; I suppose it is because it is such a familiar animal, it is easily recognizable with minimal effort (sort of like an elephant; it doesn’t have to be a good elephant, but a smooth, gray mammal with a trunk, pair of tusks, and big floppy ears will be immediately recognizable as an elephant). Safari Ltd. made a pretty good honey bee for their Incredible Creatures line, but it’s huge. Safari also made a honey bee life cycle, but the adult is fairly stylized. Insect Lore also made a life cycle, which I think has an even better adult. The old Bullyland trio is pretty good, but hard to find these days. Even the Japanese companies have rarely made them (the life cycle set from Tarlin I previously reviewed is the only one I am immediately aware of). That brings us to today’s review, the 2020 honey bee by Papo.
I have to admit, it is much nicer in-hand than I suspected it would be. Proportions are a little off, but that’s to be expected in critters with thin, dangling, potentially fragile or pointy parts (legs, antennae). The figure has a body length (minus appendages) of 3.5 cm, for a scale of roughly 3:1-2:1 for a worker bee. Like the previously reviewed grasshopper, the wings appear to be a single-piece of translucent PVC permanently affixed to the main body. The wing venation is not completely accurate, but it was clearly influenced by the real thing and not just a haphazard arrangement of lines (the wings are not perfectly symmetrical, and the left forewing appears more accurate than the right forewing)! The hind wings are worked into the forewing and are just barely revealed from under them.
The color is also very nice, matte brown with yellow representing the vestiture. The legs are banded brown and yellow. I would have really liked it if they had put loaded pollen baskets on the hind legs, but it’s no biggie. Where the figure really shows character is in the eyes; they are painted dark brown but there is golden highlights which I presume are to represent the golden setae on actual honey bee eyes! Nice touch!
Like with the Papo grasshopper, I don’t have a ton to say about this, since it is a fairly decent likeness of a familiar species. If one wants a honey bee in their collection that 1) doesn’t require much space, 2) is fairly new and readily available, and 3) doesn’t require investment into an entire life cycle, then this Papo 2020 figure may ‘bee’ for you! Papo continues to do great work with these insect figures, a group that most Western companies generally shy away from. Let’s hope this is a sign of more good things to come!
That concludes Papo’s 2020 arthropods. I plan to wrap up their 2020 invertebrates next time with the snail.