Chimpanzee with baby, 2010 (Wild Safari Wildlife by Safari Ltd.)

This toy (#295929) was released in 2010, the same year Safari Ltd retired an earlier and very similar sculpt of a chimpanzee with baby (#272229, released 1998). So, in effect, this model was a direct replacement, and a notable upgrade.

The young chimp is piggybacking on the adult and convincingly looks like it’s clinging on tightly. The two animals are sculpted together in a single piece so the baby cannot be removed. Safari Ltd.’s web page for this figure says “This mama and her baby…”, so the adult is a female. Indeed, baby chimpanzees only ride on the mother’s back, not the father’s.

In addition to the obvious size and proportional differences, the mother is differentiated from the baby by having a different coloured face. In the earlier 1998 figure the two individuals had exactly the same colour faces. In this model the baby’s face is painted light brown, the mother’s face is painted almost entirely grey, with brown around the lips. Chimpanzees do exhibit a lot of variation in the colour of their faces, which probably helps with social interaction and individual identification within groups, and their facial colour does change as they grow old.

The figure is well detailed and anatomically correct, as far as I can tell. The fur is very well done, and the mother is posed on all fours in a knuckle-walking stride. The mother appears to have a noticeably receding hairline exposing a large forehead, which strikes me as a little unusual, but by no means impossible.

The paint details around the eyes are reasonable, with pupils, brown irises, and black eye lids giving them a lot of character. Neither individual is baring any teeth so they both appear quite peaceful. The baby has a sweet almost contented expression, while the mother looks a bit more intense, almost worried.

This is an excellent chimpanzee figure that children will especially like because of the cute baby, and it is a major improvement of the predecessor figure. It is still in production today, 14 years after it was first released, which stands as a testament to the quality and popularity of the model.