Time for another set! And another Japanese set no less! But a bit of a shift–a series of plants which is…less my normal thing. But they’re the Takara TOMY Carnivorous Plants figures. Which, given how weird that is, I had to take the opportunity when I saw them!
The set first released as a capsule series in 2010, and there’s a good chance that I was not actually looking for them. More likely I stumbled upon them while searching through Japanese auction sites. Even more likely again, it probably wasn’t too expensive…I mean, it is still plants, so I wasn’t going to go nuts! But the chance to get a few weird plants was worth it.
As far as models go these are of course very impressive and detailed. Not too dynamic but then…they’re plants. I am grateful that the bases are marked with Latin names–and that they were bagged together; I really do not know plants very well. As it is, each is moulded with a small peg that fits only the associated base, but the material is soft so I guess it could be squished in. There are five species total, with 4 pitcher plants and of course a Venus Flytrap. And while I have five figures, there are actually six–there is a secret Flytrap figure that has a fly on it, ready to be eaten. I don’t have it, as that one figure increased the cost quite a bit.
One thing about that secret figure though–it would at least give a sense of scale. All of these figures are roughly the same size, but they very much do not scale together. Assuming I measured them correctly…and got the actual sizes correct…the Venus Flytrap and Albany pitcher plant are roughly 1:1 scale, while the Winged pitcher plant and Fanged pitcher plant are in the 1:4 range. The King pitcher plant, being fairly large in real life (hence the name) could be 1:10. In every case, a small insect or some other prey would have been appreciated, to give a better sense of the real sizes of the living plants. But I guess that’s what research is for.
Overall, kind of a neat set, definitely one that really broadens the diversity of life on the shelf. I might be most surprised that Takara stopped at just the one; there are of course many other varieties of carnivorous plants that could easily suit the same capsule presentation display, but then, I have no idea how or why they would do the first one! I can’t say I’ve looked all that often, but I don’t recall having seen them very often. Neat figures though…and as a side note, for those who do RPG/Tabletop games with figures…a (giant) carnivorous plant seems like kind of an obvious one to include. I know that some stylized ones exist…but these could be fun to use. If you can find them…
