Native to the rainforests of equatorial West Africa, the emperor scorpion, Pandinus imperator, is one of the most familiar and popular scorpion species. Its large size, fearsome appearance, docile nature, and mild venom make it very popular in the pet trade. It should be no surprise than that it is the most commonly-made scorpion in the toy market. With this 2022 release by Schleich it joins other major manufacturers such as Safari Ltd., Mojo Fun, and Bullyland. Of the ‘Big Six’ only CollectA and Papo have yet to produce a P. imperator figure. It’s also been made by the vintage companies Toy Major and AAA and the Japanese companies Kaiyodo, Epoch, and Takara Tomy A.R.T.S., and Bandai will be releasing a pair in 2022 in the Diversity of Life on Earth line. Schleich has historically stayed away from standard-sized arthropod figures, and today’s emperor scorpion is their second following the 2019 Mexican red-knee tarantula. How did they do? Let’s have a look!
For starters, the body of the figure is not as thick as I feared it would be based on promotional pics. The appendages are a little thick, the chelae (claws) are an odd shape, and the vesicle and aculeus of the stinger are a bit small and thick; however these are probably done deliberately to avoid breakage during play or a kid poking him/herself or others in the eye! One should remember that Schleich makes toys, not museum-quality replicas! The claw arms and metasoma (tail) are textured with small tubercles, probably a bit exaggerated, but they do their job of giving the figure some natural texture. The median eyes are sculpted, but not the lateral eyes (the latter of which are inconspicuous on emperor scorpions anyway).
The paint is glossy but very well applied. Most of the body is a dark brown-black, with orange-red highlights at the extremities and joints of the appendages. The pleural membrane (on the side of the body, separating the dorsal tergites from the ventral sternites) is painted a lighter gray; a nice touch for a feature that doesn’t display prominently on the figure!
Total figure length is 8.0 cm. Body length (including metasoma) also comes to 8.0 cm for a scale of 1:2.5 for large specimen (could probably fit into the 1:1 scale for a younger specimen).
Overall, a pretty good offering by Schleich. If one wanted a standard-sized figure for their collection, it’s really a toss-up between this one and the figure by Mojo (I’d probably lean a little more towards the Schleich figure, but maybe I am still caught up in the newness of it). The Japanese figures are, of course, more realistic, but are either much larger and expensive or smaller and today harder to find. If you are a synoptic collector and scale isn’t an issue, this Schleich scorpion may be for you! Let’s hope Schleich attempts more arthropods in the future!
I’ll finish with a story. Back when I was in high school (or early college, can’t remember), I had a pet P. imperator. My cat toppled its cage over and it escaped in the house. My mom and I were about to go on a vacation, so we had to alert the housesitter, ‘be on the lookout for a six-inch black scorpion that might be wandering around the house’. Luckily, being a snake keeper, it didn’t phase him. He did find it when we were gone, in my mom’s bathroom. He contained it until we got home.
