Moveable Animal Sets

[JVM]

I bought the original ten piece set at the Milwaukee County Zoo as a child and it was one of my favorite animal toys I'd ever bought. Never had much with articulation then. If the photo stops working it includes an African elephant, a lion, a lioness, a giraffe, a hippopotamus, a leopard, a zebra, a gorilla, a tiger, and a rhinoceros, which resembles an Indian rhino more than any African species. The gorilla did double time in my small monster collection as King Kong and I'm disappointed it hasn't seen print in so long. I lost the zebra and tiger at some point.

Most of those toys later resurfaced as the first Safari-themed in a series of playsets with 'moveable animals' - notably, the Hippopotamus became brown and the lioness became a Cheetah. I knew as a child this was wrong but I still found it sort of fascinating, as someone who finds toy repaints a curiosity in themselves sometimes. The gorilla and tiger fell out of print.

I don't know the exact order of release of the following sets. The next I saw was this Aquatic animals set, featuring an orca, a bottlenose dolphin, a beluga, a great white shark, a sea otter, a sea turtle, an emperor penguin, and a seal. The shark and dolphin were originally blue for this release and the penguin and diver look nothing like in that photo, as seen in the next few photos. A more recent variation seen here discards the plastic tray to have the toys clipped in,
and was later updated with a similar but new molds for the great white shark, beluga and bottlenose dolphin, and a different color turtle. This one is sold at the aquarium here as well, sometimes alongside a Mermaid set with repainted versions of the animals, or simply mermaids.

There was also a Dinosaur set, which I've seen at the museum as well. The promo photo offers some very imaginative paint stylings, but the more common paint applications shown in the final release are more conventional. The included species are Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Parasaurlophus, Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, and a Dilophosaurus that lacks its trademark crest. Despite some issues, I've had a lot of fun with these guys. Like the other sets, later releases save plastic by tying them to a box without plastic, though the Allosaurus was lost at some point, a shame as it was my favorie.

I believe those three sets came out first, and the next two together, since they both feature a similar safari guide character. The Rainforest Exploration set came with a new guide, new Mountain gorilla, an orangutan, a chimpanzee, a new Bengal tiger, a new jaguar, a toucan, a green snake, a red-eyed tree frog, and a new Javan rhinoceros. I have seen it available at both zoos and aquariums, and it survived to re-release with less plastic.

The same guide also appears in the Asian Mountain Climb set, which features Siberian tigers, Snow leopards, and Giant pandas, each with an adorable cub, plus an Asiatic black bear, an ibex, and a red panda. The snow leopard cub's tail and the ibex's horns are very often prone to damage in secondhand copies.

Sometime later came Australian Walkabout, an excellent set containing a new guide plus a red kangaroo, an emu, a dingo, a saltwater crocodile, a tasmanian devil, a wombat, a platypus, a koala, and a black snake. This set and some of the previous were re-released with a Steve Irwin figure instead of the guide and additional branding. Similar molds appear to have been used for Wild Republic's Australia tube despite it's smaller size.

I had never seen the Polar Adventure set in person until I purchased it a few months ago, and it appears to have been manufactured 2009 - 2012 though it seems/seemed rarely available online. It includes a polar bear, an arctic wolf, a walrus, a caribou, a leopard seal, a puffin, a sliding penguin and a adelie penguin. The guide has a nice jacket now.

I own all of the above, but some additional sets exist which I have not purchased.

The North American Trek contains an upright grizzly bear, an american black bear, a moose, a gray wolf, a cougar, a bison, a snake, a deer, and a new guide. I don't know much more than in this photo as I've only seen it once in person, but it shows up online occasionally as have a number of the animals individually on ebay so it doesn't seem so uncommon. The wolf looks different in the final product than promo shots. The cougar's tail seems to break off often.

Until compiling this info a few months ago, I had no clue there was a Madagascar set as well! A ring-tailed lemur, a hissing cockroach, a fossa, a giant tortoise, a new guide, a reptile, a frog, another lemur[?] and another reptile or amphibiain seem to fill out the photo. It is a different packaging style than most of the above and only one photo seems to exist.

There is also a shark playset I only discovered tonight

There is also a Western Trail set featuring horses and Best in Show featuring six dogs, in a different packaging style.

Has anyone else ever purchased these?

I'm still hoping to complete the collection someday with North American Trek and Madagascar if it exists, but some of these are actually quite hard to find online, and some of the animals from when I was a kid did not withstand the test of time - the ibex, exploration gorilla, and kangaroo especially, though I have since replaced the latter.

[bmathison1972]

Nice; JVM - you should consider reviewing some of these sets (and TOOBs) for our Blog