Review and images by Lanthanotus; edited by bmathison1972
Despite its long and interesting history, the tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) keeps a surprisingly low profile among modern fauna. That may be because of its unexciting lifestyle, which renders the reptile a less sought-after star for modern media. Right in line with that is its rarity in the toy or model world.
Images by postsaurischian; edited by bmathison1972
The figure presented today was produced by For Corporation for their Another Aquarium line in 2018. This figure was originally sculpted for the Season 2 line by Aquameridian and intended to be released in 2013. When sales for the first series were not as good as expected, Aquameridian canceled Season 2.
Review and images by Lanthanotus; edited by bmathison1972
A few weeks ago, forum member Sirenia introduced Papo’s gharial to this blog, a magnificent model of an unusual and fairly unpopular crocodile. The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) enjoys a much greater popularity, though if the species really “enjoys” its popularity may be a point to discuss, as with other crocodilians it suffers from hunting and habitat loss.
Review and images by Suspsy; edited by bmathison1972
Way back in the early 1980s, when I was just a wee little boy, my father very kindly recorded a National Geographic TV special on our Betamax VCR for me. It was titled “Reptiles and Amphibians” (original air date: 1968) and contained just about everything that I loved: stop-motion dinosaurs, crocodiles catching fish, a rattlesnake killing and swallowing a gopher, chameleons and frogs catching insects with their tongues, giant tortoises battling for dominance, marine iguanas grazing on seaweed, sea snakes menacing divers, and newts engaged in a mating dance to the tune of ballroom music.
When many animal toys are made, they are often made in a smaller scale, allowing for greater detail yet not fill up toy boxes, also meaning people will buy more of the smaller figures. Not all companies follow this, however, such as AAA, who produced some whopping great reptile models. In this review, we shall inspect the large model of the largest lizard in the world, the Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis).
The GrabNGo Rebor Komodo dragon is available from Everything Dinosaur here .
Rebor are best known for their prehistoric animal models. Their gung-ho attitude in that arena has sometimes been controversial and even abrasive in the past: controversial because of the glee with which they have embraced certain anatomically inaccurate movie-inspired dinosaurs of the ‘awesomebro’ kind; abrasive because of their willingness to rub it in the faces of more palaeontologically-minded potential customers.
Review and images by Lanthanotus; edited by bmathison1972
“Ugly” and of a “singularly stupid appearance“ were two of the things Charles Darwin had to say about the Galapagos Land Iguana, Conolophus subcristatus. His judgement about their more popular aquatic relatives, the Marine Iguana, Amblyrhynchus cristatus was not much better, those he describes as the “most disgusting”.
Today’s review concerns a toy that is very near and dear to me because it has been with me for nearly 30 years, and it is one of only a few childhood toys that I kept into adulthood. As such, the specimen in these accompanying pictures has a few city miles on it but that just shows the years of joy it has provided me.
Where plastic toys often fail in species diversity plush toys seem to shockingly excel. The Wild Republic line of plush animals is a major player in the plush animal game and responsible for much of this diversity. Although I don’t collect plush animals I do have a young daughter, as well as an eye for quality toys, so our house has a lot of these plush animals sitting around, including the 54” (137 cm) blue rock rattlesnake (Crotalus lepidus) we’ll be looking at today.
Dragons! Huge, powerful reptiles, with mighty claws and a flaming breath! They are known throughout the world….. as fictional creatures. Nonetheless, the repute of these mythical monsters have been passed to a few giant reptiles of the real world, those whose power, size and ferocity earn it the reputation. The most famous, of course, is the Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis), a relictual species of monitor from a time when the world had many bigger monitors prowling around.
Review and images by Lanthanotus; edited by bmathison1972
Despite that the class of reptiles holds a much greater number of species than mammals (even if you do not count in the birds), the number of species represented in toy form is quite low comparatively, especially within the major toy brands. Lizards especially are not well represented, maybe due to their usually small size which makes figures vastly out of scale with other toy figures.
Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Those are the names of the Great Lakes of North America that boarder the central/east United States and Canada. In total area they represent the largest freshwater lakes on Earth, holding roughly 20% of the world’s surface freshwater and 9/10ths of the water supply for the United States.
Review and images by jumboplayset; edited by bmathison1972
For me, my all time favorite animal is without question the common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina). I remember when I first saw the species in the wild, in a tiny creek down the way from my grandparents’ house. The creek ran between two streets but was unbelievably idyllic, glowing grass-green in the sun, the bubbling and smoothly flowing sounds of the little creek.
I have a keen love of crocodilians. They are fascinating, from their looks to their anatomy, and look very prehistoric. While many seem fairly similar, their are some interesting variants with this, such as this one: the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), a fish eating crocodilian from India and China.
