Vault Tales 236 Run the Set Kaiyodo Series 10 Sunshine Aquarium

Buy on eBay

Another short look at what I have from a Japanese set. This time revisiting a Kaiyodo Capsule Aquarium one, the Sunshine Aquarium set. I only have a few but of course they’re fantastic models.

A couple of different versions of some cool moray eels. They are labelled to species although the designations are possibly not accurate anymore. On the left is labelled **Gymnothorax melanospilus** which is now synonymized with Gymnothorax isingteena, the **Spotted Moray***. On the right is **Gymnothorax javanicus**, the* **Giant Moray***. Both come with the same diver; they’re kind of to scale, although the two eels are the same size.*

This is of course a series of capsule figures released as a promotion for aquaria–as the name states, the Sunshine Aquarium. It was first released in 2011 and of course is out of production. I think. It is possible that the aquarium still sells them, or they were re-released by Kaiyodo for other places. This is definitely something that has happened with other capsule figures (I can tell from the bottlecaps’ labels). The series is of course a variety of 10 aquatic organisms from a range of taxa and environments–you can see them all here https://toyanimal.info/wiki/Kaiyodo_Sunshine_Aquarium but I only have 3. There are of course a couple figures that repaints.

*And the third figure from the set that I have–a **Golden Dorado**. I wasn’t even aware of the species until an episode of* River Monsters and realized that I’d seen pictures of the figure before.

So I have the Golden Dorado figure (number 3 in the series) which is a cool South American salmonid; and the two moray eels, the Indo-Pacific Spotted Moray (number 2) and the Giant Moray (number 1). The eels were a given for me to get–I like the morays after all! Although it honestly took a long time for me to track down the spotted. As it is, this set was never particularly easy to find parts of–and they seemed to be pretty popular. The dorado was a later hunt–after seeing it on an episode of “River Monsters” I decided to see if I could track one down. I kind of lucked out, finding one for a decent price fairly quickly. The rest of the series…when I see them, they are really expensive.

*The trio together. Clearly not to scale with each other.*

Overall, a few very cool figures, quite dynamic and well made. The quality is of course high, and lots of great details on them. The use of divers with the eels is a nice touch, letting them be stretched out and a little more active than their usual (either coiled up or in a cave). The Dorado is especially nice, with super painting and shiny, translucent fins. I really enjoy these models, very different from many fish figures–and I wish I could claim that they’re easy to find but most likely not. But definitely ones that are worth trying to get. But there’s no way I’ll be able to get the rest of the set. It’s nice but there’s limits!

Buy on eBay