Papo - New for 2022

[Arctinus]

After seeing the images...spoonbill, hummingbird, Sea Eagle, and even the wolf (I'll maybe pretend it's a Red Wolf) are all of interest.

But WTF is up with that beaver? 😂

Exactly, been wondering that myself.  xD

Also, thanks for all the possible IDs, Blaine!

[Gwangi]

The beaver reminds me of this albino muskrat at my local wildlife refuge. Speaking of which, it would be great is someone made a muskrat.

[EpicRaptorMan]

yeeeeeah that beaver is a bit disturbing.

Anyway, is this all we can expect from Papo in 2022?

[stargatedalek]

Mosa is very inaccurate but i really like it

The mosasaur seems to be extremely accurate. Unless it's missing the second row of teeth in the upper jaw or they did something else weird inside the mouth, this is possibly the most accurate mosasaur figure yet, perhaps tied with the Wild Safari Tylosaurus.


Papo is absolutely hitting it out of the park with birds lately. I'm gonna need a frankly inordinate amount of these magpies.

The body shape and dorsal / tail fins aren't accurate. No evidence for a dorsal and the tail fin is too thin

Also isnt all that streamlined like real mosa
Head seems too small and short

We don't exactly have fossil evidence they had scales either, some assumptions are just reasonable to make. These were very large animals that moved through horizontal undulation, while dorsal fins are not a necessity in reconstructing them by any means, it's definitely not an inaccuracy and fits with what we would expect of such large animals biomechanically.

Reasonable speculative features are not inaccuracies, they are reasonably speculative features. An inaccuracy is something we can say conclusively does not represent the real animal, not something that differs from common reconstructions. Such as shrinkrapping mosasaur skulls, given that terrestrial monitor lizards don't have their skull openings visible through the skin their aquatic descendants absolutely would not.

As for the tail fluke being thin, it's definitely thinner than I would go with, and the texture is weird, but we know relatively little about the tail flukes in most mosasaur species aside from them being present (except perhaps in some early members). So unless it's being held up by fin rays or something silly like that (looking at you Papo Spinosaurus) it's still a plausible shape.

I don't at all understand the claim it's not hydrodynamic or that the skull is too large. By streamlined do you mean "snake-like"? Because I think this bulky but hydrodynamic shark like body shape looks spectacular and far more realistic for a large marine animal. And the skull is in keeping with the current thinking of roughly 1:7 skull to body ratios (the old PNSO uses 1:10, for reference).

There are things I could change for sure, the enlarged ridges along the skull would go, and I'd make the tail fluke more uniform and smooth, but the way Papo did it is not from this photo visibly inaccurate.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]


Could the hermit be a white spotted hermit crab (Dardanus megistos)? It's not European sure, but the colours are a very good match and this species is very common in aquaculture for home aquaria.

[JimoAi]

The common dolphin is a repaint of a retired sculpt and the leatherback turtle looks to be a reissue

[GojiraGuy1954]

Mosa is very inaccurate but i really like it

The mosasaur seems to be extremely accurate. Unless it's missing the second row of teeth in the upper jaw or they did something else weird inside the mouth, this is possibly the most accurate mosasaur figure yet, perhaps tied with the Wild Safari Tylosaurus.


Papo is absolutely hitting it out of the park with birds lately. I'm gonna need a frankly inordinate amount of these magpies.

The body shape and dorsal / tail fins aren't accurate. No evidence for a dorsal and the tail fin is too thin

Also isnt all that streamlined like real mosa
Head seems too small and short

We don't exactly have fossil evidence they had scales either, some assumptions are just reasonable to make. These were very large animals that moved through horizontal undulation, while dorsal fins are not a necessity in reconstructing them by any means, it's definitely not an inaccuracy and fits with what we would expect of such large animals biomechanically.

Reasonable speculative features are not inaccuracies, they are reasonably speculative features. An inaccuracy is something we can say conclusively does not represent the real animal, not something that differs from common reconstructions. Such as shrinkrapping mosasaur skulls, given that terrestrial monitor lizards don't have their skull openings visible through the skin their aquatic descendants absolutely would not.

As for the tail fluke being thin, it's definitely thinner than I would go with, and the texture is weird, but we know relatively little about the tail flukes in most mosasaur species aside from them being present (except perhaps in some early members). So unless it's being held up by fin rays or something silly like that (looking at you Papo Spinosaurus) it's still a plausible shape.

I don't at all understand the claim it's not hydrodynamic or that the skull is too large. By streamlined do you mean "snake-like"? Because I think this bulky but hydrodynamic shark like body shape looks spectacular and far more realistic for a large marine animal. And the skull is in keeping with the current thinking of roughly 1:7 skull to body ratios (the old PNSO uses 1:10, for reference).

There are things I could change for sure, the enlarged ridges along the skull would go, and I'd make the tail fluke more uniform and smooth, but the way Papo did it is not from this photo visibly inaccurate.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]


Could the hermit be a white spotted hermit crab (Dardanus megistos)? It's not European sure, but the colours are a very good match and this species is very common in aquaculture for home aquaria.

Except we DO have Mosasaur skin impressions
This was the wrong animal to use this strawman on

[GojiraGuy1954]

Mosa is very inaccurate but i really like it

The mosasaur seems to be extremely accurate. Unless it's missing the second row of teeth in the upper jaw or they did something else weird inside the mouth, this is possibly the most accurate mosasaur figure yet, perhaps tied with the Wild Safari Tylosaurus.


Papo is absolutely hitting it out of the park with birds lately. I'm gonna need a frankly inordinate amount of these magpies.

The body shape and dorsal / tail fins aren't accurate. No evidence for a dorsal and the tail fin is too thin

Also isnt all that streamlined like real mosa
Head seems too small and short

We don't exactly have fossil evidence they had scales either, some assumptions are just reasonable to make. These were very large animals that moved through horizontal undulation, while dorsal fins are not a necessity in reconstructing them by any means, it's definitely not an inaccuracy and fits with what we would expect of such large animals biomechanically.

Reasonable speculative features are not inaccuracies, they are reasonably speculative features. An inaccuracy is something we can say conclusively does not represent the real animal, not something that differs from common reconstructions. Such as shrinkrapping mosasaur skulls, given that terrestrial monitor lizards don't have their skull openings visible through the skin their aquatic descendants absolutely would not.

As for the tail fluke being thin, it's definitely thinner than I would go with, and the texture is weird, but we know relatively little about the tail flukes in most mosasaur species aside from them being present (except perhaps in some early members). So unless it's being held up by fin rays or something silly like that (looking at you Papo Spinosaurus) it's still a plausible shape.

I don't at all understand the claim it's not hydrodynamic or that the skull is too large. By streamlined do you mean "snake-like"? Because I think this bulky but hydrodynamic shark like body shape looks spectacular and far more realistic for a large marine animal. And the skull is in keeping with the current thinking of roughly 1:7 skull to body ratios (the old PNSO uses 1:10, for reference).

There are things I could change for sure, the enlarged ridges along the skull would go, and I'd make the tail fluke more uniform and smooth, but the way Papo did it is not from this photo visibly inaccurate.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]


Could the hermit be a white spotted hermit crab (Dardanus megistos)? It's not European sure, but the colours are a very good match and this species is very common in aquaculture for home aquaria.

The skull isnt big enough compared to the body

[Arctinus]

The beaver reminds me of this albino muskrat at my local wildlife refuge. Speaking of which, it would be great is someone made a muskrat.

The pose is the same. Looks like a zombie muskrat. And the whole being albino/red eyes doesn't help. xD

[Birdsage]

All these birds are interesting. I would get all of them, plus 2 extra Eurasian Magpies (to repaint to Black-billed and Yellow-billed Magpies), and up to 4 extra Great Tits (to repaint to Carolina Chickadee, Eastern Bluebird, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, and Mountain Bluebird). The hummingbird's colors cannot be matched to any species. I may get 2 and repaint both as North American species.

[stargatedalek]

Except we DO have Mosasaur skin impressions
This was the wrong animal to use this strawman on

I was only familiar with the body impressions, the ones showing the tail fins, which do not show individual scales. But yes there are older impressions showing small patches of scales, you are correct I used a bad example and should have looked into it more first.

However, I don't think you know what a strawman is.

Think of it like this; we have tail fin impressions from Prognathodon and Platecarpus, and the size and shape of their tail fins are extremely different despite both being heavily derived and relatively closely related. So clearly there was potential for a lot of variation between even closely related mosasaurs in terms of the size and shape of their fins, perhaps related to size or to niche partitioning as different species grew larger alongside each other and likely hunting different prey in different ways.

In light of that presence of variation, the idea that some species could have developed dorsal fins is perfectly reasonable.

The skull isnt big enough compared to the body

Again, it looks fine to me? The pose and angle makes it unclear the exact size, but it looks to be about the same as the CollectA for example.

[JimoAi]

Does the mosasaurus work as a smaller species of mosasaur like prognathodon?

[stargatedalek]

Does the mosasaurus work as a smaller species of mosasaur like prognathodon?

It's pretty generic, so barring anything unusual about its proportions that the pose is hiding from this angle it could pass as most species. Prognathodon and Platecarpus being the exceptions, as the shape of the tail fin matches neither.

[GojiraGuy1954]

Except we DO have Mosasaur skin impressions
This was the wrong animal to use this strawman on

I was only familiar with the body impressions, the ones showing the tail fins, which do not show individual scales. But yes there are older impressions showing small patches of scales, you are correct I used a bad example and should have looked into it more first.

However, I don't think you know what a strawman is.

Think of it like this; we have tail fin impressions from Prognathodon and Platecarpus, and the size and shape of their tail fins are extremely different despite both being heavily derived and relatively closely related. So clearly there was potential for a lot of variation between even closely related mosasaurs in terms of the size and shape of their fins, perhaps related to size or to niche partitioning as different species grew larger alongside each other and likely hunting different prey in different ways.

In light of that presence of variation, the idea that some species could have developed dorsal fins is perfectly reasonable.

The skull isnt big enough compared to the body

Again, it looks fine to me? The pose and angle makes it unclear the exact size, but it looks to be about the same as the CollectA for example.

He got a pin head compared to collecta
ones too big and ones too small

[Arctinus]

Ok, not a fan of that weird neck. 

[Badger]

Spoonbill is definitely a Eurasian spoonbill in non-breeding plumage (no other species has the yellow tip on the beak, and breeding birds have a yellow patch on the breast and a more prominent crest). It and most* of the other birds, especially the magpie, look really nice!

*I won't comment on the titmouse and hummingbird until I'm fully convinced by an ID for them.

Also nice to finally see a company other than Safari Ltd make a leopard shark; while I do have opinions on how the two figures compare, I'll wait for in-hand pictures of this one before I make any final judgements regarding that.

[bmathison1972]

I am OK with the titmouse being a great tit (Parus major) but am happy that it doesn't have to replace my Furuta figure, as the Furuta figure represents the Japanese population that is now P. minor (Japanese tit)

[EpicRaptorMan]

What species was/is the spoonbill?

[Isidro]

Eurasian spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia). That's the only spoonbill species to have a black bill with a yellow tip.

[sirenia]

Nice little selection here. Very tempted to grab the titmouse (though I agree it looks more like a great tit).

[Isidro]

That's because it's a great tit an not in any way a titmouse.