Fire Salamander (Bullyland - Animal World, Snake/Amphibians)

[Rossano]

Just bought today this very nice figurine, and I like nearly everything of it, except the incisions around every yellow patch of the animal. For the rest the rubber used is of good quality and helps giving the shining aspect of the skin without using too glossy paintings, that I usually dont' like, and the details are good. The posture is appropriate and suggests properly the dynamics of the movements of the animals. My first Urodela specie, I am very satysfied.

I would like to know what other well made salamanders and other urodela are on sale nowadays from the bigger producers,and eventually if someone could identify the subspecies of this Bullyland figurine. It should be a Salamandra salamandra salamandra, but the pattern of the patches does not perfectly match the ones of most of the animals depicted on the pics I can find on the internet. Actually the most similar one looks another specie, the Salamandra infraimmaculata. Any opinion about this?

[brontodocus]

I have the Bullyland Fire Salamander, too, and it was my first figure representative of this species. It is nice, quite affordable, and easily obtained, however, there are better ones. Like most figures representing Fire Salamanders, it's the Barred Fire Salamander, S. s. terrestris - in Germany we have both the nominate subspecies and terrestris, and Bullyland is (at least originally) a German company. The best Fire Salamander models may be by SOMSO but they are quite expensive. 3b Scientific, another German company, makes a decent Barred Fire Salamander, too: http://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=1619.0 And Safari Ltd had a wonderful model representing  the same subspecies as part of its retired Tennessee Aquarium Collection line: http://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=337.0 - unfortunately it's not that easy to find anymore.