Review and photos by Suspsy; edited by bmathison1972
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the biggest whale, the biggest mammal, and the biggest animal of all time, hands down. A mature adult can measure roughly the same size and length as three school buses parked end to end. And while a few of the very largest dinosaurs such as Patagotitan may have exceeded it in length, none of them even came close to matching the blue whale’s estimated mass of 150-200 tons.
Due to the blue whale’s fame, it has appeared in toy form a great many times over the decades, notably from Invicta, Papo, Safari Ltd., and Schleich, not to mention the massive figure by Kaiyodo for the Mega Sofubi Advance line . This review will cover the 2006 blue whale by CollectA. It measures 23.5 cm long from nose to tail and 8 cm wide at the tips of its flippers (approximately 1:120 scale). That makes it a reasonably big toy though not big enough to make anybody sit up and say “Wow!”
The colours are what you’d expect on a blue whale: dark blue-grey on top and white extending on the bottom from the throat to the navel. There are also countless tiny light blue spots scattered across the body and black eyes. While blue whales do have a tendency to vary in coloration, none of the images I examined in books or online show one with a white throat. A different shade of grey or even a uniform colour scheme probably would have worked better. Oh, and please excuse the visible dings and scratches; this happens to be another one of my son’s favourite animal figures.
This figure has a smooth texture all over save for the many throat grooves. On a real blue whale, these grooves extend when the animal takes in water while feeding. Blue whales live almost entirely on the tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans known as krill. Once the whale’s throat has expanded to maximum capacity, it forces the water out with its tongue, causing the krill to become trapped between the baleen plates. It’s then a simple matter of swallowing those krill. Blue whales will occasionally gulp down fish and other small sea creatures along with krill, but it’s physically impossible for them to swallow anything as big as a human being. That’s due to the fact that, despite having a mouth that can expand wide enough to engulf a volume of water equivalent to its own body mass, a blue whale’s throat cannot accommodate anything bigger than a beach ball!
As far as proportions and overall appearance are concerned, this figure scores fairly high. The twin blowholes and single small dorsal fin are in the right locations and the tail is nice and big. The one on mine is warped slightly to the left, but it’s not a huge deal.
This blue whale is yet another one of CollectA’s earliest figures that still holds up fairly well. Nevertheless, they saw fit to produce a brand new version in 2018, one that is larger, better painted, and more detailed. As such, the original has been retired from production, but you still might be able to find it online or in stores. That said, if you have a choice between this one and the new version, I’d go with the latter.
