Fish Assortment 2 (Wonder World by Kenner)

Today I am reviewing a set of four animals I originally bought for just one of the figures. The set, which was being sold on eBay, was alerted to me on the ATF by forum member NSD Bashe. The set is called Fish Assortment 2 and it is one of four components of a larger collection that’s part of the Wonder World line by Kenner, a subsidiary of Hasbro at the time it was released (1995). The four sets are as follows:

• Fish Assortment 1: mako shark, manta ray, two piranhas (interesting, the presence of two freshwater fish in an otherwise marine set)
• Fish Assortment 2: puffer fish, angelfish, dolphin, crab
• Plants and Gravel: six aquatic plants representing two styles and purple aquarium gravel
• Magic Gel Powder: powder that, I assume, when mixed with water creates a clear thick substrate in which to suspend the aquatic animals

From what I gather, the four sets are designed to create a diorama in an aquarium (not provided), having the animals suspended in the clear gel as if they were swimming in the water. It is not permanent, so the animals can be removed, more added, and rearranged as desired by the collector. Looking at the back of the packaging, it looks like there may be more than one aquatic set (either that or the components of the set vary), as the small pic in the upper right shows a hammerhead shark and another shark that is not the same as the mako in Assortment 1. As previously mentioned, today we are looking at Fish Assortment 2, which I only bought for the crab (but got a bonus new species in the angelfish as well).

The animals will be shown in order from least to most interesting for me:

First up is the ‘dolphin’. I am not going to try and get to pedantic in over-analyzing this small and stylized figure in an attempt to come up with a potential identification. I am assuming it’s just the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Yes, there are spots on the dorsal side, but I don’t see those representing the spots of the Atlantic or Indo-Pacific spotted dolphins, but rather flashes of light coming through the water from above. It has a body length of approximately 5.5 cm which would put in the scale range of 1:44-1:47 or a maximum of 1:69 for T. truncatus, based on SeaBase.

Next up is the ‘puffer fish’ which appears to be the long-spined porcupinefish (Diodon holocanthus). The species has a circumtropical distribution in estuaries, lagoons, and coral reefs. It has a body length of approximately 5.0 cm for a scale of 1:10 based on FishBase.

Next up was the unexpected surprise, the ‘angelfish’. Based on color, it most certainly represents the majestic, or bluegirdled, angelfish, Pomacanthus navarchus. To the best of my knowledge, this is a unique figure for this species in toy form! This beautiful species occurs among coral reefs in the Indo-West Pacific. The body length is approximately 6.0 cm for a scale of 1:4.7 based on FishBase. It’s also a comparable size to other angelfish in my collection by Kaiyodo, Colorata, and Play Visions.

Last up is figure I was most excited for, the ‘crab’ (which is why there are more pics of it), which I am pretty sure represents the purple shore crab, Hemigrapsus nudus!! I was really excited to see this. Prior to this discovery, the only figure of this species I was aware of was the Wild Wraps version by Safari Ltd. Wild Wraps (WW) figures have exaggerated features (legs, tails, etc.) so they can ‘wrap’ around objects, such as bicycle handlebars or a child’s wrist. As such, the WW purple shore crab has grossly exaggerated long legs. I had it in my collection for a while, but recently removed it when I cleaned up the arthropod part of my collection. So, you can imagine how relieved I was to have another, and better, opportunity to add this species to the Mathison Museum of Natural History :-). The Kenner toy is still simple and somewhat stylized, but it’s still a marked improvement over the WW version. The purple shore crab occurs coastally in the East Pacific along the Pacific Coast of North America, from Canada south to northern Mexico. The carapace width of the figure is approximately 2.5 cm for a scale of 1:1.4-1:2.3 depending on the sex (H. nudus is a rather small species, and females are larger than males).

Overall this is a fun, yet not very impressive, set and I can’t necessarily recommend it, unless you are a specialist in marine species or a general taxon completist and either need or want the angelfish or the crab. The set was produced in 1995 but I got mine on eBay so it shows up there at least sometimes. I also want extend my thanks to NSD Bashe again for alerting me to it!!!