Controversial opinions on animal figures?

[JimoAi]

Saw this on the dinotoyforum, why not post it here

.I do not like ABS or rigid plastic figures. I'ld rather take a warped figure over a figure with a part snapped off. Exceptions are things like crustaceans, however

Figure companies should focus on making a difinitive figure of a species rather than cutting corners

[NSD Bashe]

For me, I don't mind figures with some inaccuracies and stylization.  In fact I can find it charming.  Much as highly detailed and accurate figures are superb to find, I love that there are numerous variations and styles to them, and that not everything looks completely perfect.  It's even a weird comfort in a way.  More than simply a hyper-realistic imitations of nature, I see animal models as art, kind of like 3 dimensional paintings.  To me they represent human's experience with and limited awareness of creatures in nature, many of which we never get a full proper grasp of in real life.  Also there's the kid in me that just remembers a lot of very stylized animal and dinosaur models, that could be a big part of it.

Similarly I love older paintings of animals, especially those deep see illustrations with very stylized anglers and viperfish.

[SerAndrew]

In my case, it depends on my knowledge of the species.

My collection is not only a bunch of animal figures but, as NSD Bashed said, some artistic representations of them.
So, I can accept an eagle with no sharp enough claws because I know how sharp the claws should be; or I can accept a comic-ish Safari figure (I've always thought this brand has this effect) because I know colours are not so contrasted in real animals; or I can accept an "steroidized" Papo lion because I know the real animals are more harmonious.

But, not being an expert in dinosaurs/prehistorics and being our knowledge more limited, I only accept those that are up-to-date in scientific accuracy and only after checking what decisions the sculptor/brand made and why. Normally I check YouTube reviews before getting any prehistoric figure, and read the Dino Toy Blog entry.

The same happens in terms of scale: I can accept my big tibetan fox because I KNOW it's oversized, but when it comes to prehistorics, I want them to fit in the correct scale range so that I don't get a wrong idea on the creature.
It's like collecting prehistorics is learning for me.

[MudpupWaterdog]

1. I'm not sure how controversial this is, but I will buy knock off figures if the original is out of production, if the knock off is an interesting take on the originals, or if I want to work on a custom painting project. For examples, I got a Chinese knock off of the Schleich bowmouth guitarfish because I couldn't find an original anywhere, I got that horseshoe crab life cycle set that I mentioned elsewhere on the forum because I love horseshoe crabs and nobody else makes a life cycle set, and I got a knock off of the Safari life cycle frog so I could custom it into a northern green frog.

2. Perhaps less a controversial opinion and more just a personal choice, but I like my prehistorics to be generally pretty drab and dull. I know there were likely many very colorful dinosaurs just like there are many colorful large mammals and birds today, but I think some of the newer Safari releases are just a little too psychedelic for me. There are a few notable exceptions but for the most part my dinosaurs are shades of earth tone. This doesn't apply to many of my prehistoric inverts though, I'm fine with wacky ammonites.

3. I don't care about scale in my collection unless I'm setting up a diorama. Though some of the Incredible Creatures figures can be comically large, I like that the line makes so many 1:1 figures because there's something attractive to me about a detailed, life-size figure.