Recent acquisitions

[Isidro]

3. Mountain nyala (Tragelaphus buxtoni) from CollectA. As with most CollectA figures, i'ts a masterpiece, and an obscure antelope species (that is the best speciality of this brand).





Tragelaphines to the power! Mountain nyala with the giant eland (Taurotragus derbianus) of the same brand


With other horned pal also endemic of the Horn of Africa, the hirola:

[Isidro]

4. Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis papua) by Safari LTD. This is the second bird in my collection. Texture is a bit awful, I've tried to correct it a bit with a cutter, but the result is unnoticeable. However, I improved considerably the paintjob and also sharpened the bill and the claws.





With my only other bird, the Takara Tomy's japanese crested ibis (Nipponia nippon):


Antarctic pals:


After and before retouching and repainting:

[Isidro]

5. Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), of the "woodland caribou" subspecies (Rangifer tarandus caribou), by CollectA. This figure danced a lot in and out of my wishlist. First, I considere reindeer as a too banal and well known species for me, as I prefair more obscure species. But then I saw the development of the stags of this figure and I fell in love. But after that I knew the measurements and it looked too big for me. But after that I calculated that a portion of these measurements belongs to the horns and my rigidity for scale acceptance also softened slightly, so I finally included in my wishlist. But after that I noticed the figure only have 1 frontal fan of the stags, the other stag don't have a fan, just a sharp simple point. Still despite that I was in love with this reindeer over any other reindeer figure, and finally I've got it. And after getting it, I discovered how often, real alive woodland caribous have assymetrical development of stags and very often they miss one of the frontal fans. So then the CollectA figure is absolutely accurate.
I also added a more diffuse shade of whitish in the flanks instead a straight line, but I did that after taking the pics.




Hello my deer friend! These two are my only cervids for now:


Hungry polar bear, worried by the ice smelting, forgot the seals and tried to prey on more agile land preys. Will he succeed in this distracted male caribou while he munch some arctic willows (ehem, yes, Polycarpon)?


And by last, 6. Strap-toothed whale (Mesoplodon layardi). Probably originally from Nayab, and later adopted by Happy Kin Toys. From what I learned here in the animal replica collector forums, Nayab figures tend to be always "adopted" by other brands. Anyway, the figure is perfect, or nearly so. I love the rugged texture of the skin, giving it a more realistic effect. I didn't took pics of the "before" but I also retouched this one, cutting the inner side of the teeth (originally attached to the muzzle as simple prominences) for make them clearly separated from the muzzle. I also added some diffuse white in the zone where white meets black in the back, around the dorsal fin. The original one had a too sharp delimitation between both colours.




With CollectA's killer whale and pygmy sperm whale:

[Beetle guy]

Never heard of the Strap toothed Whale...now I do! Thanks! Nice repaint on the pinquin, the eyes are so much more alive!

[bmathison1972]

@Isidro what chinstrap penguin is that? The Safari figure I'm familiar with has the wings held outward. Is that the TOOB figure? Or is there a variant I am unfamiliar with?

[Isidro]

No idea, widukind give it to me. In the back of the figure it says "Chinstrap Penguin, Safari LTD, Dongguan, China" The figure is 5 centimeters tall, a bit too big for a TOOB I think.

Edit: I went to TAI for checking, and it's, indeed, a TOOB figure: http://toyanimal.info//index.php?title=Safari_Toob_683404_Chinstrap_Penguin belonging to the Penguins TOOB.

[Isidro]

My collecting fever go a step further! I passed many days looking at the animals of a stationery nearby my home, and finally I decided to buy something. They're all common ABC species! I'm an obscure-species lover and in my starting of the collection I never would imagined that I would fell in love with figures of banal species. However, they're so perfectly well done that I fell in love!

1. Red deer (Cervus elaphus), by CollectA. My idea of perfect common deer figure is a stag with thick furry neck, looking upwards, bellowing and with blank eyes. This one is looking aside and have a thin neck, but is very similar to what I wanted, with mouth fully open, and I like a lot the fur scultpture (not simplistic as in Papo red deer), the coat colour, and the antler shape.





In southern Andalusia, a hungry Iberian lynx try to find something. By surprise he finds this big stag. A too powerful, big and dangerous prey. The deer know it and try to threat the predator by a menacing posture and bellowing. Shortly after, the lynx retreat silently in look for a less tricky prey...


My deer collection now. All CollectA's!


2. Mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx). There are various mandrill models in different brands, but I think that this Schleich one is unbeatable in perfect quality of shape and painting.



In the Congo rainforest, a mandrill have an encounter with one of the most mysterious inhabitants of this region...


After a while, the okapi decided that the mandrill is harmless, and each animal continue his way.


All my primates now, just two species (not a group that I'm a fan of). The enormous overgrown Sulawesi black-crested macaque, as big as a chimpanzee, with the decent-sized mandrill.

[Isidro]

3. And by last, the most magnific of these ABC species: the Tiger (Panthera tigris). The perfection of this figure is atonishing, especially the stripes. Other brands have very good tigers but with too thin or too regular or too unrealistic stripes. This one have perfect coat, perfect shape, and perfect pose, walking slowly with the jaw partially open for getting fresh air in the torrid Indian monsoonic forest.





The tiger is hungry, but a gaur is a magnific oponent. The fearless gaur look at the tiger with contempt. This bull is strong and healthy and can deal with the predator. So the tiger must look for something easier...


A striped hyena follows the tiger at a prudent distance, maybe he kills something and leave some remains for the hyena....


The tiger spots a perfect prey! A male blackbuck, ideal for a meal!


But the blackbuck perceive the predator before he can approach enough, and flee quickly. Next time, Mr Tiger....!


And here the Tiger with my other Panthera cats (jaguar by Schleich and snow leopard by Papo)

[Isidro]

A new local shop addition: the Schleich's sloth bear. Schleich is the only brand present in most toy shops or toy sections of commercial shops here. So it's the easier to get sometimes. Schleich is the only brand that made a decent sloth bear. This figure is easily available in many shops and I already saw it when started my collection, and more times since then. Why, then, I didn't got it before? Well, maybe because the model didn't convinced me very much: it's very small, and it have too blunt claws. But my collection grown and grown with the pass of time, and I still didn't had a sloth bear, so I decided finally to buy it. I can't make it bigger, but the different scale to my other bears is not dramatic and I can accept it. I also corrected the claws, sharpening them with a cutter and repainting them after. I also painted black inside nostrils for make them appear deep holes (in the original figure they look just superficial pits of the same colour than the rest of the muzzle), and painted black around eyes because the chestnut of the eyes extends a bit in the fur around. The result is here:




Here my complete collection of bears. In the future probably will be enriched with the Safari LTD American black bear and maybe some still undecided figure of a brown bear. Sadly, there are no good spectacled bears available from major brands only very expensive homemade models or unrealistic old toys from lesser-known brands...


Somewhere in the Whestern Ghats, a sloth bear and a striped hyena examine each other with a mix of fear and curiosity. I think that finally they decided to be friends. Striped hyenas, unlike their spotted cousins, are shy and not aggresive. And sloth bears are very able to defende themselves, but they are pacific animals that don't attack if unprovoked. So I decided that the hyena and sloth are talking about the location of an axis deer carcass not far from here, that both can share with joy...


The male blackbuck, knowing the peaceful nature of sloth bear, is not afraid from him. If the bear decides to attack for a quick meat meal, the healthy blackbuck knows that his speed is enough for escape from the slow sloth bear.


Finally, the tiger is really something to be taken into consideration. The sloth bear, don't finding enough nearby trees for climb and escape, tries to hide inside a bush and hopes that the wind don't carry it's smell to the tiger. Fortunately, he succeed. The tiger pass away unnoticing the bear.


With a black panther figure, a Burmese python figure and a medium-aged child figure I could make a nice scene for the Jungle Book, but probably I will never get any of these figures (for leopard I want the normal-coloured version, humans don't interest me in figure form, and I doubt that I ever find any python figure enough detailed and in the correct scale). So, Baloo and Shere Khan must deal with themselves alone

[sbell]

I haven't really posted much lately...hasn't been a huge lot of adding on.

But today. Oh, today. That changed.



I've been waiting for a while to place my MiniZoo order and I think I was patient long enough (and right after...Safari went on 10% off...but there was just one thing anyway)

This is a super international bunch--Safari, CollectA, Papo, PNSO and DTF member Bokisaurus (yeah, that wasn't MiniZoo)!



A total surprise was 2 Bahariya fish from his thread, the Neoceratodus (or Retodus? The snout is pretty tapered)

All in all a good day! Just waiting on one more from England...

[bmathison1972]

wonderful fish!!!!

[Isidro]

Excellent! I see the Pelagic TOOB from Safari, composed by very nice species - unfortunately all too small for me

[sbell]

Excellent! I see the Pelagic TOOB from Safari, composed by very nice species - unfortunately all too small for me

I was surprised by the number of new species in there, and new sculpts on existing ones. The great white is especially impressive.
Also, I want a whole toob of schooling fish like the sardines. It's a well executed concept and should be done with any animal that moves in shoals, schools, flocks or swarms

[Beetle guy]

Nice catch sbell! Is the Bahariya fish (left) a My Favorite Animal one?

[sbell]

Nice catch sbell! Is the Bahariya fish (left) a My Favorite Animal one?

It is not. Forum member @bokisaurus on the dino toy forum sculpted them as part of a Bahariya group. Then sent them to me as a surprise!

[Beetle guy]

Looks really good!

[Beetle guy]

These came in today!

A Ishikawa's frog (Odorrana ishikawae) Japanese name: Ishiwaka gaeru, by Colorata. Not from the box of frogs but from a four-piece set sold in a blister pack. The other species in there were; The Kajika frog or Buerger's frog (Buergeria buergeri), the forest green tree frog Rhacophorus arboreus, and the apanese brown frog (Rana japonica). I was happily surprised by the size and the quality. I will redo the paint partly, but the sculpt is really good! I often looked at the Colorata box (post by Stemturtle can be seen here)  http://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=585.msg10698#msg10698 of frogs but they seem so comic-like and a bit unrealistic. Not with this one though.


   

 



And another Ishikawa's frog (Odorrana ishikawae) also by Colorata from their box of Okinawa animal figurines. I Liked this one for the base and for the fact that it is the only frog model I know with it's mouth open  It is not as detailed as the other Colorata one, but still really nice.

 

[bmathison1972]

very nice Marcel; I have the Yujin version of this species.

[Beetle guy]

very nice Marcel; I have the Yujin version of this species.

From left to right: 1. Colorata, 2. Colorata. 3. Yujin, 4. Kitan Club (Ikimon).

[bmathison1972]

I like the one on the base the best (but I am a sucker for bases, esp. for smaller species)