Japanese Black Ant (The Arinko, Volumes 1 & 2 by J. Dream Co. Ltd.)

Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we’ve just lost the picture, but what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The Animal Toy Blog has apparently been taken over, ‘conquered’ if you will, by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the blog reviewers or merely enslave us. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them as a trusted blog reviewer, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves…

Today we’ll be looking at a couple of novelty sets by J. Dream Co. Ltd. The sets are called The Arinko, Volumes 1 and 2 (arinko is a Japanese word for ‘ant’). The sets feature spilled or discarded sweet food items along with ants that are attracted to them. I had ordered the second set first, not knowing initially it had a predecessor. I then searched for, and found and ordered, the first set. I like the food choices in the first set better (more variety) and finally decided to get it as well to have more options for dioramas (and more ants, too!). The first set came out in 2020 and has five food items and 24 ants; the second came out in 2021 and has four food items and 32 ants. The ants themselves are fairly generic, not surprising given their size and the nature of the collection (more on their possibly identity in just a moment). The detail seems to be in the food items, with the ants serving as accessories.

Before we get a closer look at the components of these sets, let’s discuss the possible identity of the ants. Given the theme, these appear to be any common ant likely to be found in fields, parks, and gardens. The obvious assumption is the black garden ant Lasius niger, which occurs over much of the Palearctic. However, in 1992 it was determined that the Japanese populations of L. niger represent a separate species, L. japonicus, which also occurs in China, the Korean Peninsula, and Russia. And since this set was produced in Japan, I am going to assume it represents a Japanese species. Another possibility is Ochetellus glaber, but I am sticking with a L. japonicus. The ants themselves are too simple in design to try to make any reliable assumption of their identity based on morphology. An individual ant is 1.4 cm for a scale of 4.5:1-2.8:1.

Volume 1 includes:

A spilled jar of honey with four ants:

A partially-eaten frosted donut with four ants:

Two pieces of chocolate with eight ants:

A partially-eaten fruit-jam cookie with four ants:

A spilled vanilla ice cream cone with four ants:

Volume 2 includes:

A vanilla ice cream come with four ants (same sculpt as from Volume 1):

A strawberry ice cream cone with four ants:

Chocolate bars with four ants (same as Volume 1 but lighter; maybe more of a milk chocolate):

White chocolate bars with four ants:

And…16 extra ants:

A more realistic display is one food item with all 56 ants from both sets:

Well, this blog reviewer was … possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to … reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. It may not be perfect, but it’s still the best government we have. For now…