For author’s summary of species look here
This will be the last review of a cetacean species from the Monterey Bay Aquarium collection, the sperm whale adult and calf pair.
The adult female measures 29 cm, which corresponds to an 11.6 m whale at the marketed 1:40 scale. Above, you can see it scales well with the Safari Sea Life giant squid (24.5 cm/9.8 m) and the CollectA basking shark (22 cm/ 8.8 m).
The MBA adult sperm whale’s sculpt is easily one of the best I’ve seen in a commercial figure. The head is correctly proportioned, there’s a decent curvature to the mouth, the head protrudes above the snout (this can vary with head shape between individuals), and the skin texture transitions from smooth to wrinkled when moving down to the posterior.
The mouth, while less-tacky looking when compared to the rest of the MBA-line, lacks the tooth sockets that were present in the 2018 CollectA figure. There’s simply a questionable zig-zag pattern. Below contains the genital and mammary slits present on the other adult female cetaceans. The sculpt was a great effort, which I think was only recently-surpassed by the 2019 Safari Sea Life figure in anatomical accuracy.
The paintjob is very acceptable, the whale is primary a brownish-gray with a white patch around the umbilical region and white accents around the mouth. Above represents one of the later versions released.
Here is one of the older versions, in which the sculpt is effectively identical. It also possesses a very similar color scheme to the newer version, however the base color is a few shades darker and the application of the white coloring around the mouth is more finely done. I generally prefer this version, but both are rather nice.
The calf measures 16.5 cm, corresponding to 6.6 m at the 1:40 scale. This is about the size of a weaned calf during its second year of life.
The overall detail regarding the anatomy and and paint scheme is very comparable to the mother. I would say it’s probably the best-looking of the calves. The color scheme for this one more-closely aligns with the older version of the adult.
The MBA sperm whale adult and calf easily represent the apex of quality in the collection. Unfortunately, this is the only species of large whale in the MBA line where both adult and calf remain retired. Luckily the adult shows up frequently in the second hand market, and often does the calf. Compared to other sperm whale figures released in this size range, I still prefer the MBA version. I would strongly recommend any collector to grab this one when the opportunity arises.
One of my first sea life figurines. I still have it somewhere. I remember I saw it on the display and wanted it so bad, but the store was sold out, so they sold my mom the display one. It still has the glue spots from where it was attached to the vacuum-formed display, but I loved the heck out of that whale.
So, we now have all MBA cetaceans on the Blog? Good job!!!
Not quite yet. JimoAi still has the Manta on reserve and no one’s taken up the sawfish. It was sort of my intention to have the sperm whale covered last, but it didn’t pan out that way.