Giant Panda, cub (Baby Wildlife by Toymany)

It’s about time that I get the other half of this baby set from Toymany up on the blog! My portion of this set covers the animals from Asia and North America and will reflect the other half of the figures from Africa that have been covered by my fellow reviewer, bmathison1972. Our friend from Toymany, Kenc, was so kind as to provide this set to me and as nearly all of their products have been right on the mark, this set of babies has been a welcome addition to my collection!

As a new set released in 2024 it includes infant versions of the following animals; African elephant, hippopotamus, common zebra, reticulated giraffe, white rhinoceros, and a lowland gorilla (all reviewed and posted here by bmathison), in addition to a cougar, moose, sika deer, snow leopard, dromedary camel, and giant panda. I tried to cover information for both the juveniles for each species as well as the adult version of them- anyhow, let’s just get into the review!

And here we have the giant panda cub. When a panda cub is born, it is about the size of a stick of butter and only weighs around 3-5 oz; this makes them the smallest mammal newborns relative to their mother’s size (with the exception of marsupial mammals). Born hairless and blind, these babies also can’t stand until about 3 months of age- they really rely on mom for survival. Wild baby pandas have a 60% survival rate, this is part of the reason they are such a rare species. Sometimes pandas will birth twins, however its incredibly rare for both offspring to survive as the mother will nearly always choose to care for only one cub (in captivity, handlers often will take the other cub to hand raise). These animals have been incredibly difficult to bring back from their endangered status due to a number of factors: Females are only fertile for 3 days of the year, often will present with “pseudopregnancies”, gestation can be anywhere from 90-180 days while the pregnancy itself is 135 days, a cub may stay with mom until it is 3 years old which means that a female may only mate every 2-3 years, and developing breeding programs has been tricky in captive settings as pandas often show little interest in the act or perhaps inexperienced males don’t understand how to read the signs of a receptive female. All of this in conjunction with their habitat/food loss has been the leading causes to their low population and rebound status.

There are less than 2,000 pandas living in the wild today, while another 600 or so live in zoos and breeding centers around the world. Despite the reputation of being a “harmless vegetarian”, these bears pack a punch- they have a jaw strength similar to that of a lion and still retain their bear ancestry style of aggression and require little provocation to use it. No one really knows why they have the coloration or pattern that they do, but it is also very clear that it is an attractive one for human panda enthusiasts. They have some very unique features as well; vertical pupils similar to cats rather than the rounded ones of other bears, a pseudo-thumb in the form of an extended wrist bone which helps them handle bamboo stalks, and even though they are often largely vegetarian they have a digestive tract designed for carnivory and will indulge in protein food sources when available.

Toymany has already released an entire set of pandas that has been reviewed on the blog here. But this little one offers something a little different I think. This one, at least to me, seems to represent a rather young version of this species. Something about the roundness of its body, and the shape of its face indicates that this is a newly minted giant panda. The model is happily napping, with his left paw supporting his head. Once again, the brand has taken the time to sculpt its underside and include individual toe pads into the sculpt. The face itself has a very sweet expression, one that endears the figure to even me despite my reticence to the panda popularity. Directly around its eyes is painted gray so that you can see some semblance of its closed eyelids, and its small gray nose and tinted chin region give the small figure just a little more depth than the flat black and white of many models. Once again, Toymany has done an outstanding job of presenting one its most famous animals from their home country.

Each of Toymany’s models are offered both in sets or as individual models for purchase through their website- feel free to use this code TMAFPM10 or this link https://toymany.com?sca_ref=6246126.dDyVkfTite for 10% off!