Right about the time I decided the review the Cadbury Yowie giant clam a couple weeks ago, Toy Spirits (a subsidiary of SO-TA, or vice versa) decided to produce one in the third volume of their Shellfish with a Lid Mascot series. The figure was not marketed at the species level, but I bought it hoping I could confidentially identify it as something different than the Cadbury figure which was specifically marketed as Tridacna maxima. Alas, by using the number and shape of flutes on the shell and the shape of the byssal opening, T. maxima is the best option for this figure too. Not to worry, however, as while the non-arthropod part of my collection is largely synoptic, I have no trouble making exceptions for cool invertebrates, especially some of the mollusks!
Figures in this particular series to date all represent mollusks (and one barnacle) that are commonly eaten in Asian cuisine. Some figures come in both ‘raw’ and ‘cooked’ versions, the former of which are usually sufficient to represent a living animal. Today’s maxima clam is probably intended to represent a cooked animal, or at the least a harvested animal, as it lacks a lot of the soft tissues and the various sea creatures that normally reside on the outside of the shell. The collection is called ‘Shellfish with a Lid’ because all of the bivalves have a hinged shell that opens up, revealing the soft inner parts.
I recently covered the distribution and biology of this species when I reviewed the Cadbury figure, so I won’t go into great depth here. The figure has a width of just under 6.0 cm, for a scale of 1:3.3 (almost twice as wide as the Cadbury figure). The outer part of the shell has detailed texture and is painted an opalescent purple-grey. This figure (maybe all of them in this set, I can’t remember) was also sold as a key chain, hence the small loop at the back of the hinge.
Opening the animal reveals a smooth white surface to the inner side of the shell and the cooked (?) flesh; the flesh is a soft rubber and gives when you press on it.
With the recent release of this figure (October 2021), there are now, to the best of my knowledge, three figures of giant clams, none of which are spectacular examples of living specimens. If you want one that best exemplifies a living specimen, look for the Cadbury Yowie; if you prefer accuracy in shell morphology but don’t mind a ‘harvested’ specimen, you might prefer this one. These Toys Spirits figures don’t strike me as being the most well-made toys, so I imagine that frequent play or handling would probably irreparably damage the hinge.
