Anglerfish (Sealife by CollectA)

Review and images by Suspsy; edited by bmathison1972

No other sea creatures are associated as much with the darkest depths than anglerfish. These predatory fish come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes but can all be identified by their bioluminescent appendages and enormous mouths lined with frightful fangs! I’ve been a fan of anglerfish since first reading about them as a child and thus I find it perplexing how they seldom seem to show up in toy form.

But feast your eyes now on CollectA’s 2022 anglerfish. She (you can tell right away it’s a female, but more on that in a bit) measures a good 12 cm long from the front of her lower jaw to the end of her caudal fin, 13 cm including the tip of her illicium, that marvelous appendage jutting from her forehead that acts as a fishing lure. Quite a big fish indeed! As you can see from the image below, she dwarfs both the anglerfish and the gulper eel that come in Safari Ltd.’s Deep Sea Creatures TOOB.

The anglerfish is painted a very dark brown all over. The fins and the tip of the illicium are painted with white and there are also rows of tiny white dots crisscrossing the body. The inside of the mouth is painted a dull pink, the teeth are pale grey, and the large eyes are dark brown with black pupils. And what’s really fun about this toy is that it is made entirely of translucent plastic, so you get a very cool glowing effect when you hold it up in front of a strong light!

The angerlfish’s skin has a very fine pitted texture all over as well as large, bulbous plates growing underneath, which give the toy a rough and uneven feel. There are also four short spikes jutting out from the top. The fin rays are all well defined and the many pointed teeth lining the mouth give their owner quite a fearsome appearance, although they’re not nearly as big as the ones on certain deep-sea anglerfish. The illicium terminates in a bristly appendage known as an esca. As many of you readers undoubtedly know already, this bioluminescent bulb is used to lure prey in toward the enormous mouth in the pitch-dark depths.

CollectA does not specify which species of anglerfish this toy represents, but my own research has led me to conclude that this is one of the 22 species of footballfish, all of the genus Himantolophus. And I could be wrong, but judging from the comparison images below, I think it is H. groenlandicus, the Atlantic footballfish. Despite its name, this species occurs in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as the Atlantic, and can be found at 914 metres/3000 feet. Females can reach a length of 60 cm/24” while the much smaller males only reach 4 cm/1.6.”

And check it out! Sculpted onto the right side of this toy is a teeny tiny male anglerfish only 2 cm long! Like his mate, he is painted dark brown with white fins and black eyes and is quite detailed in spite of his size, complete with pitted skin and a fin ray on his tail. Many anglerfish species are well known for sexual parasitism, in which the males attached themselves to the larger females with their mouths and eventually become permanently fused together. The female provides all the nourishment and circulation while the male is essentially a package of sperm to fertilize the eggs.

Unfortunately . . . it turns out that Himantolophus is among the few anglerfish that do not practice sexual parasitism. I’m not going to fault CollectA much for this oversight, as it’s not a well-known fact outside of ichthyology circles. I was totally unaware of it myself until I started doing research for this review. And besides, you can always just pretend that the male is simply swimming up close to the female as opposed to attaching himself to her. Problem solved as far as I’m concerned!

The CollectA anglerfish is/are a superbly sculpted and very scary and cool-looking toy indeed. I initially bought it for my boys’ marine collection, but I’ve become so fond of it that I think I’m going to keep it for myself and let them have the aforementioned Safari TOOB. I’d also love for CollectA to tackle more deep sea terrors such as the gulper eel, the fangtooth, the black swallower, or the viperfish. In the meantime, this toy is highly recommended!