Review and photographs by Loon; edited by bmathison1972
Dromaius novaehollandiae, more commonly known as the emu, is the second-largest bird on earth, with the tallest being over 6½ feet or 2 meters tall. Being such an important part of Australian culture, it made sense that Southlands Replicas, a company that mostly specializes in replicas of Australian fauna, would release their emu in 2018.
The figure’s head is nicely sculpted and, despite the red eyes, he comes off as pretty friendly looking. His blue neck is shown peeking out from his feather, though I wish there was more of a gradient between the black and the blue, as it’s a bit abrupt. That’s forgivable on a smaller figure like this.
The emu himself stands around 3.75 inches or 9.5 cm tall, making it about 1:20 scale. The detail is very faithful to the real animal. The shaggy coat, while simplified, is still represented well; the fur-like feathers are drooping off the body, especially on the tail. A dark wash helps to show all the sculpt work that has gone into the feathering. His vestigial wings are also sculpted, and are visible from the underside; a feature other companies may miss.
The emu is attached to a base depicting the types of arid environments they live in. It’s well sculpted and the nicely painted, but my copy isn’t perfectly flat, causing it to wobble occasionally. The legs also feature some of the best sculpting on the figure; they have a real sense of movement. Thanks to the base, they’re appropriately sized.
Overall, this is another high-quality figure from Southlands Replicas; showing the same amount of care that goes into their other figures. The only quibble I would have is that I wish they would make a female and some chicks to go with it.
And that’s my first Animal Toy Blog review, I hope you all enjoyed it and I didn’t make a complete fool of myself trying to sound like I know things about animals.
If you want this figure, you can pick one up at MiniZoo.
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That’s a wonderful review, Loon! I recomend every single figure from Southlands, they are competently sculpted, very well finished and all at the same scale. It is also good to see reviews of a model of a small company. They deserve all support!
Thank you, I’m very happy it turned out well. And I agree, Southlands is one of the best new(ish) companies out there, and they have really earned a solid reputation; I hope to see more from them soon.
Nice choice for a first review and a good read, though I have to admit that I like Mojö`s Emu much more.
While especially the feet are much more finely sculpted in the Southlands Emu, the overall body looks much too skinny and the curve of the back just somewhat wrong to me. Seen a lot of wild Emus in green and lush environments aswell as in the saltpans of South Australia and all looked much thicker and well fed. It`s nevertheless a nice feature that they added the stumpy wings. While those are not visible in most individuals, especially those in the hotter areas show them due to a less dense and shorter coat of feathers.
Thank you for the compliment and the information. I wasn’t aware of any of that, though, I’m not so well studied on modern animals, unfortunately. Also, I’ve never seen that Mojo figure before; I’ll definitely have to get that at some point.
Good review. Hope you can contribute more.
I’ll try, though I don’t own many modern animals.