Turkey (Mojö Woodland by Mojö Fun)

Thanks to the American holiday of Thanksgiving*, the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the most reviewed bird on the ATB** with (counting this one) five reviews in total. This one is my 3rd contribution, but I fear it is my last. My previous reviews covered turkeys produced in plush and ceramic, but I’ve finally acquired a plastic representative for my own collection and have no aspirations to acquire any more. Next Thanksgiving it will be up to somebody else to carry on this tradition but most of the recent, and better turkey figures have been covered at this point.

*Thanksgiving is celebrated elsewhere too, but so far no one has reviewed a turkey in honor of its celebration outside of the United States.

** The dodo has 6 reviews but those were imported from the Dinosaur Toy Blog.

For my own collection it was important that I had the wild turkey represented, and not a domestic breed. If you’ve only ever encountered turkeys in their domestic form, then what you’ve more accurately seen is just a shadow of the animal that it originally was. Turkeys are stereotyped as dimwitted balls of walking meat, and due to selective breeding, that is essentially what they’ve become at the hand of man. But the wild turkey as a species has been around for 5-6 million years, and evidence of their turkey-like ancestors has been found in Florida, dating back 23 million years.

Shaped by natural selection, instead of artificial, the wild turkey is a cautious, shrewd, and perceptive animal. Turkeys are intimately aware of their surroundings, and those humans that pursue them on their own turf can attest to the fact that the wild turkey is a far cry from the Butterballs stacked on the grocery store shelves. Indeed, when wild turkeys were nearly wiped out in the early 20^th century humans tried releasing domestic turkeys to replace them, but those birds could not survive. It took transplanting actual wild turkeys to successfully increase their population.

Unfortunately, virtually all the turkeys produced by the major toy companies represent domestic breeds. Those by Safari and CollectA are excellent figures but their inclusion in those company’s farm animal lines tells you what they are. So, for my own collection I went with the Mojo turkey, which looks the most like a wild turkey when compared to its contemporaries and is part of Mojo’s woodland collection, indicating that a wild turkey is what they were aiming for.

The Mojo wild turkey represents a male (tom) as virtually all toy turkeys do. It is standing in the classic tom turkey display pose, feathers and chest puffed out, tail fan spread, wings drooped, and face fired up in vibrant blue and red colors. A tuft of stiff feathers, called a beard, is protruding from the chest. There’s no mistaking the sex of this bird or his intentions. Although the Mojo toy executes the tom’s display well, I do wish someone would produce a turkey hen, or a tom that is not displaying. Or maybe the other wild turkey species, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata).

The Mojo turkey stands about 2” (5.08 cm) tall and measures about 1.5” (3.81 cm) wide when measured along the tail fan. The actual wild turkey is the largest member of the order Galliformes. Hens weigh between 5-12 lbs. (2.2-5.4 kg) while toms typically weigh between 11-24 lbs. (4.9-10.8 kg) but with weights of over 30 lbs. (13 kg) recorded. Despite its size, the wild turkey can run up to 18 mph and fly up to 50 mph.  I’m never confident scaling bird figures but scaling down the Mojo turkey from the wild turkey’s height of 2.5’ (76.2 cm) I get a scale of 1/17 and that seems about right.

Both the Safari and CollectA turkeys have exquisite, layered feather detail that really makes them stand out but the detail on Mojo’s turkey is a bit more subdued and needs to be inspected more closely to be properly appreciated. It is also smaller than those other two, so that should be accounted for. The Mojo turkey has a complete covering of feathers etched into its sculpt as well as individually sculpted tail and wing feathers. Additional feathers are sculpted on the backside, underneath the tail fan.

The face is appropriately sculpted with carunculate skin, a snood hanging over the beak, and caruncles around the neck. Even ear holes are present. The four toed feet have a bit of scale detail but are missing the prominent and intimidating spurs that turkey toms have. The overall display appears fuller bodied than that of the Safari figure and not as exaggerated as that of CollectA’s, which I consider a good thing.

The figure is largely painted in a dark shade of brown and is missing the colorful metallic sheen of the actual wild turkey. On that front, CollectA and Safari are superior but what I wanted was a wild turkey and this is the only one that replicates its look, largely due to the paintjob on the tail and wings. The tail feathers are brown like the body but edged in white with black bars running down them. The primary and secondary feathers on the wings are black with white bars. The Safari turkey has the wing bars, but the CollectA figure does not, and neither figure has the banding on the tail feathers that set wild turkeys apart visually from domestic turkeys. And that’s what made all the difference for me.

I feel like this figure, like Mojo in general, is overlooked in favor of the figures by CollectA and Safari. But it shouldn’t be. Of all the turkeys currently in production the Mojo turkey is the only one that sets out to replicate the look of the wild turkey instead of its domesticated counterparts. If that’s important to you, then this is the turkey to get, but you can’t go wrong with any of the three I mentioned and now they all have reviews here. There is also a turkey by Schleich in production, but don’t expect a review of that one from me. It will be up to someone else to carry on the turkey tradition from here. The Mojo turkey is currently in production and retails for $7-8.