If you wanted to see mammals as they were when they started to differentiate from reptiles, the best place would be to look at the monotremes. These mammals lay eggs, sweat milk, and the one we will look at here, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) even still has venom. They are a remarkable group of mammals, though only now found in Australia and New Guinea, with the platypus only found in Australia. Here, we see the efforts of Noah’s Pals to replicate them in plastic.
We start with Pedro, the male of the pair. He is 1.5″ long and 0.4″ high, so very small to fit in the 1:24 scale. He is very alert, scanning around for potential threats. While the colours are correct, they are very simplified, going for an all over colour rather than a mix of browns that it should have. A lot of this figure feels simpler and rounded, likely owing to the smaller size.
Next is Pamela, the female. She is even tinier, at 1.2″ long and 0.2″ high. She’s a little more calm and placid than Pedro, but it works. She seems to suffer from the roundness more than Pedro, looking more like a puggle than a full grown platypus. Cute, but a very simplified design, something that can be forgiven given the small size for scale.
This is a cute set, but it is tiny and incredibly simplified. There are definitely better examples of platypus, such as one by Southlands Replicas. If you want figures in this scale, it will do well, but if that is not a concern, look elsewhere.
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Nice pair. If I collected NPs generally, these would be a given, but you are right, there are several much better examples available (CollectA, Safari Ltd, Southlands Replicas…even the Safari TOOB figure might be better).
Had I reviewed this pair, I would have done it to prose, using the lyrics from the Platypus Song from the film Dot and the Kangaroo! hahahaha 😀
Does the male have a spur on its hind leg? At this size, probably not, but curious.
EDIT: apparently both sexes have spurs, but only males are venomous. Either way are they present?
Sadly, no. Is so small it would be hard to put it.