In following the trends of Safari Ltd.’s Tennessee Aquarium Salamander, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Marsh Education Fish collections, I am going to attempt to finish, or assist in finishing, Safari’s Hidden Kingdom Smithsonian Insects collection (the lubber grasshopper, black widow, and flea have already been reviewed). If I remember correctly, the figures were originally produced by Safari in the late 1990s alongside a traveling museum exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution that featured large animatronic insects. I remember seeing the exhibit at a museum in Phoenix when I was in college, although I wasn’t collecting figures yet. The Smithsonian Insects were the foundation of the Hidden Kingdom line, even though Safari would continue to release insect figures in that line without involvement with the Smithsonian until 2019, when the remaining figures were merged into the Incredible Creatures line. There were 19 figures representing 16 species (the monarch was represented by an adult and caterpillar and the bumble bees where sold as a set of three). The Safari figures were released between 1995 and 1998; however, the original molds and sculpts where owned by the Smithsonian, and were produced by at least one other company into the early 2000s (some of these later figures came on bases). The Smithsonian Insects, at least the original Safari releases, are long retired, but do show up on eBay periodically.
I will be starting this new venture with the monarch butterfly caterpillar. The monarch (Danaus plexippus) is one of the most naturally widely-occurring insect species. It occurs throughout North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, the Azores, Canary Islands, North Africa, Australia, the Philippines, and several South Pacific islands, with rare strays in the United Kingdom and continental Europe (hence another common name, the wanderer). Larvae feed on Asclepias and other plants in the milkweed family, rending larvae and adults distasteful to would-be predators. Although we are looking at a caterpillar today, I refer readers to my earlier post on Safari’s Life Cycle of Monarch Butterfly for a detailed life history of the species.
Measured along the midline, the body is approximately 9.0 cm long for a scale of 2:1 for a large, mature larva. There is not a lot to say about the sculpt, since caterpillars generally have a very simple body plan. The numbers of legs are correct (6 true, 8 abdominal prolegs, 2 anal prolegs. The tentacles (filaments) are present and in the right place, with the front filaments coming off of the second thoracic segment and the rear filaments coming off of the eighth abdominal segment. The one potential minor error is that abdominal segments IX-XI should be fused but it looks like there is a demarcation between segments IX and X. The filaments also could have been longer and thinner, but they were probably made this way to avoid breakage during play, a common trend for a toy from that era.
The color is also accurate, with each body segment with three black bands, one thicker medial band and two thinner outer bands, with the outer bands bordered with yellow.
This figure holds up well for its age of 28 years (get used to me saying that). The monarch is probably the most commonly made species of butterfly, and has been a mainstay for Safari Ltd. over the years; the earliest that I am aware of was in the 1995 Authentics line. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, there was also an adult in the Smithsonian series (foreshadowing!), and an adult was made for the Hidden Kingdom Insects collection, which was the successor to the Smithsonian collection. The adult from the aforementioned life cycle was also sold for a brief time in the Hidden Kingdom line.
This pic was taken over four years ago, in the very earliest days of my Museum posts on the Animal Toy Forum:
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