Giant Clam (Yowies Series 4 by Cadbury)

The genus Tridacna consists of large marine bivalves commonly known as giant clams. The largest, T. gigas, can be 120 cm across, weigh over 200 kg, and live for over 100 years. Today we will be looking at T. maxima, which is known as the maxima clam (although it also goes by the oxymoron ‘small giant clam’). The figure was produced by Cadbury for fourth series of the Australian Yowies in 1999. The maxima clam occurs throughout much of the Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea and East Africa to China, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. It is one of the ‘smaller’ giant clams and is very popular in the aquarium hobby. Like other giant clams, T. maxima is sessile. It can feed by filtering planktonic organisms, however it gets much of its nutrition from symbiotic zooxanthellae algae. The IUCN classifies the maxima clam as Conservation Dependent and low risk, which means they do not have enough data to classify it on a global level.

Like all of the original Yowies, assembly is required. However, unlike many, this figure is not articulated. Mine came complete but looks like it is made up of four pieces, including the base, both valves, and the center fleshy parts. The incurrent siphon is sculpted, but not the the smaller excurrent siphon. The outside of the valves are adorned with corals, sponges, algae, and starfish; giant clams are essentially miniature coral reefs. The inside is painted blue with pale blue streaks. Given how Yowies are often quite stylized, the sculpt and paint on this figure is actually quite good!

The clam measures 3.5 cm across for a scale of roughly 1:5.7 for a large specimen (assuming a maximum width of 20 cm). The figure can probably pass as another species of Tridacna, in which case it might scale closer to some standard-sized figures!

Overall, this is not a bad figure for a collector of interesting taxa. I am not sure how many other Tridacna figures are available in the toy market. According to TAI, Panini also made a giant clam. Toy Spirits just released the third set of their Shellfish with a Lid Mascot series, and it includes a giant clam. The figure is currently en route to me, but I won’t be able to identify it until I have it hand, as Toy Spirits didn’t market it at the species level. Today’s Yowie is long retired, but they show up on eBay periodically.