Green Iguana (Wild Safari Wildlife by Safari Ltd.)

I got this figure in the mail just today, and I was so excited I decided to throw up a quick Blog post! Today we are looking at the green iguana, Iguana iguana, that was released by Safari Ltd. in 2004 as part of their Wild Safari Wildlife line. Safari has made several green iguanas, from a tiny one in the Rain Forest TOOB to their original life-sized Incredible Creatures figure. The WS figure is essentially a smaller version of the latter. When I first started building my Synoptic Collection, I was dismayed that a lot of the ‘standard-sized’ figures by major manufacturers (Bullyland, Schleich, Safari Ltd.) were already retired. Luckily, I scored this one on eBay!

The green iguana is a large, common, and familiar species native to Latin America, from Mexico to South America with introduced populations in Florida, Hawaii, Texas, and the Virgin Islands. This large species is arboreal and is vegetarian as an adult (young will eat insects). They are common in the pet trade as they are relatively easy to keep and, if you handle them a lot when young, can become quite tame. I had one when I was in high school, although I did not give mine enough physical contact early on and she grew up with a temper!

This Safari figure was sculpted to be an adult male, complete with a large dewlap. The figure is made of a similar material as the IC figure; the body is a hard rubber rather than a stiff, hard PVC. The legs and tail are slightly softer. As such, I can stretch out the tail to measure the figure and calculate the scale. With the tail stretched out, the figure is 24.0 cm long, making it 1:5-1:7 in scale (it doesn’t seem that big, however).

Most of the texture of the body is made up of cross-hatching, but the large scales around the mouth are sculpted well. The large subtympanic shield is obvious and the subtuberculate scales are painted blue. The mouth is open; the teeth are not sculpted, which is not surprising for a figure of this side, but the large fleshy tongue is and painted pink. Detailed spines run down the dorsum. The color is a nice olive green base, and not a bright or Kelly green. Dark bands are painted on the sides of the body, legs, and down the tail. The underside is a brighter green, which may have been the original color of the rubber.

This figure comes highly recommended, but finding one can be challenging. As mentioned earlier, this figure, along with those by Bullyland and Schleich are retired. They do pop up on eBay rarely. Chap Mei has one, but in my opinion it is not as good. Kaiyodo made a small bottlecap figure for one of their Aquatales lines, but it can be VERY expensive.

A little more on my figure. I had originally bought the Schleich figure, since there were a couple on US eBay. I searched for the Safari figure periodically, but could not find one. Then, I noticed something peculiar about a pair of IC figures on eBay. A seller was advertising an adult and baby IC pair. While there is a baby iguana in the IC line, the figure the seller illustrated was actually this WS figure! Luckily, the seller was nice enough to sell me the WS figure individually. So, in the course of a week I got both the Schleich and Safari figures, but it is the Safari figure I’ll retain longterm.