Review and photos by stargatedalek; edited by bmathison1972
Editor’s note: It gives me pleasure to post the first Blog review by longstanding forum member, stargatedalek. I have a confession to make; I had a sneaky suspicion this would be her first… :-). I actually intentionally have not reviewed it myself because I thought she’d be submitting it!
Once more, we tread into the “Winter Wonderland” With a magnificent creature. The frozen north is full of cervids, better known as deer, from moose to fallow deer. One famous member, found in North America and Europe, is the elk (Cervus canadensis), one of the largest mammals in North America and one of the largest deer in the world (although not as big as the moose).
So for my next foray into Animal Toy Blog I am going to discuss a full set of ten figures from a relatively new set from Safari Ltd, released in 2017 (but I only just discovered it…go figure). I’m going to come out and say, there will be brief parts (in point format) and longer parts (paragraphs) as I will discuss the toob figures individually (save two).
Review and images by Suspsy; edited by bmathison1972
The Eurasian eagle owl (Bubo bubo), or simply eagle owl, is one of the two biggest owl species (the other being Blakiston’s fish owl, B. blakistoni). A female, which like all owls, grows larger than the male, can achieve a wingspan of more than six feet and weigh 4.6 kg(10 lbs), close to the size of a golden eagle.
Europe is a continent consisting of the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia. It is said to be separated from Asia by a variety of natural features including the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, Ural River, and the Caspian and Black seas, among others. Truthfully though, the boarders between Europe and Asia, geological or manmade, are arbitrary.
The Everglades is a subtropical and tropical wetland spanning 7,800 square miles (20,000 km2) in central and south Florida in the United States. Water from the Kissimmee River south of Orlando feeds into Lake Okeechobee and then continues south into Florida Bay. Although mostly marsh and flooded grassland the Everglades also run through cypress swamps, hardwood hammocks, pinelands, coastal prairies, and mangrove forests.
After so many fish, it was time to take on a group of animals that I’m less familiar with…from a set that is either a holy grail for collectors (if they missed it), or a treasured part of the collection (if they didn’t miss it!) It’s a series of salamanders and newts produced by Safari Ltd in association with the Tennessee Aquarium.
Fleas are one of the most medically important groups of arthropods, probably only second to ticks and mosquitoes. They are vectors for many disease-causing agents, including those that cause plague, feline rickettsiae, and endemic typhus, and can serve as intermediate hosts for a few tapeworms. The Oriental rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis, was a driving force in the spread of the Black Death pandemic in the 1300s.
With its stout body, limb-like fins, large head, and perpetual frown, it is easy to see how the frogfish got its name. Frogfishes are members of the anglerfish family, Antennariidae. There are about 50 species of them, and they can be found in almost all tropical and subtropical waters around the world where they inhabit coral reefs and rocky habitats.
Originally I was going to cover another bird in my next review but then it hit me, I haven’t reviewed a mammal since April with the Safari Great Lakes Toob, and I haven’t reviewed a standalone mammal figure since November 2019! So, to remedy that fact I decided it’s mammal time and that I would have to cover at least one before moving on to my more traditional subjects.
I must have been about 7-9 years old when I was first introduced to the giant squid (Architeuthis dux) via an episode of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, which aired on the Discovery Channel during the 80’s and 90’s. The show was about unexplained phenomena and the episode in question was titled “Monsters of the Deep”.
