Bornean Orangutan (Wild Safari Wildlife by Safari Ltd.)

I had to take a photo of this figure for today’s daily ‘Museum’ post and decided to throw together a quick review of it for the Blog, especially since we don’t have have a this species on the Blog yet! The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is, as its common name suggests, endemic to the island of Borneo. It is a diurnal arboreal species and prefers tropical and subtropical dipterocarp forest, tropical heath forest, and peat swamps. It favors primary forest but will inhabit secondary forest as well. While primarily arboreal, apes will descend to the ground to find new trees for fruit that makes up the bulk of their diet (although if possible, they prefer to navigate through the canopy). In addition to fruit, they will also eat leaves, shoots, flowers, bark, sap, insects, and bird eggs, among other animal material. The Bornean orangutan is currently classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN; the major threat to the animal is habitat destruction by deforestation. The ape has no natural predators, although indigenous people will hunt them (unlike the related Sumatran orangutan, which has to contend with tigers).

The Bornean orangutan is a commonly-made species, although I feel like it has been a while since ‘major’ Western companies have released one, at least in a standard-sized range. Today we will be looking at the 2006 model by Safari Ltd. that was released as part of the Wild Safari Wildlife line. In the same year, Safari also produced a female carrying a baby, and then the following year (2007) a solo baby. Safari would go on to release a larger one in 2010 for their Wildlife Wonders (now Wild Wildlife) line and technically, they released on this year, albeit in a TOOB.

The figure represents a ‘flanged’ male, which are larger and heavier than non-flanged males and can be nearly twice the size of a female. The animal is sculpted in a walking gait (as if it just came down from a tree to find a new tree). The sculpting is remarkable, and doesn’t look like something that came out 16 years ago! The shaggy hair is well sculpted and there is microtexture on the face. Even the undersides of the hands and feel show detail.

The maximum length of the figure is 10.5 cm. Scale is difficult to calculate because of the posture it’s sculpted in, but the head-to-body length is approximately 7.0 cm for a scale of 1:14 for a large, flanged male.

The color is accurate for the species, and the eyes are orange with black pupils; great detail for such a small feature! The orange-brown coat is not monochromatic, and shows areas of pale and dark/dirty color (which is not really appreciable in my pics here).

This is a remarkable figure and in my opinion, still probably the best example of this species in the ‘standard’ sized range. Papo produced a flanged male in 2010 and Schleich released very nice female and baby Bornean orangutans in 2017. Despite being 16 years old, this figure is still available!