So we’re back with another Run the Set again, heading for a second hundred posts! After writing up the last one I really like the way that format worked especially for these kinds of picture-heavy posts. So I am going to go with this kind of format. The thumbnail galleries and small pictures look better to me, I hope it looks good to you too.
This time it’s a set released by Safari in 2011, the Mammal Skulls toob. It was part of a run of of toobs produced by Safari that included several skulls and fossils. It was a whole thing. Three toobs of skulls in total–the one we’re looking at here is Modern Mammal skulls, item number 683504. It was the only one representing modern organisms. The others were the dinosaur skull toob and a prehistoric mammal skull toob. Currently, both mammal ones have been discontinued. But I feel like you could still get it.
I got the toob when they first came out, back when I don’t think I missed anything that Safari produced. Probably helped that I still worked at the dino museum. Which meant we got lots of things in that I normally didn’t see. Which in turn means I ended up with an extensive collection of Safari–including every toob. Even though, honestly, I didn’t really know what to do with them! I used to display them on a shelf, along with the other skulls and fossils, but they were awkward to set up without bases (the photos are makeshift ones), plus skulls/body parts are not really my kind of collecting. Maybe if they were plaque mounted or something for a wall? But again, not something I would do.
The figures are nice enough, if not at the level of a Dinotales skull. The vast majority are African mammals (or assumed so), although I’m not sure if there is a reason for this. Really, given the oceanic range of bottlenose dolphins, they could all be considered ‘African’. Assuming the species of the elephant skull. As with many Safari toob figures (and normal-run figures) they are not marked as specific species (except the bottlenose dolphin); for most this doesn’t have any effect. For the rhino, it’s clearly an African species judging by the massive horn. The elephant is probably an African elephant but I’m no expert on this. The tusks are pretty small so it could be a female.
Overall, it’s a decent enough set of figures, although I can kind of get why it didn’t last all that long. There’s not a lot of play value in them, so kids may not pick them first. Or second. Or tenth. Diorama and display might have more appeal, for a limited audience, but the lack of scale means that they don’t necessarily mesh well with existing figures. One thing that kind of worked was setting them up against the Fossil Mammal skulls set, and while the correlation in species wasn’t great it could make them educational-ish. For those looking for them, I believe that they are still probably easy enough to find, as a set or individually, but I don’t think they’d be worth an intense hunt.
