Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus) figures and PlayVisions bootlegs?

[Gyrinophil]

I was reading through the Lovely Salamanders topic on this form, and noticed two things that really caught my eye.


First, I found two instances of somewhat non-descript "brown salamanders" which, despite their somewhat lack of detail absolutely evoke members of the genus desmognathus. Desmognathus is an incredibly specialized genus of fully terrestrial to fully aquatic salamanders, residing in primarily the southeastern united states, whose varied morphologies are just demanding representation in the medium of toy animals.

I can't post the photos here, but if you scroll through the topic (which I highly recommend for enthusiasts of caudata figures), the first figure is on page 7, shown alongside a handful of other amphibians, and the second is on page 9 where a large brown salamander can be seen to the left of an impressive collection of salamander figures, grouped together with some pseudotritons.

The first salamander interestingly has red eyes, which immediately made me think of the play visions salamander set, but aside from that I haven't been able to track down any info about it. For those that care about species, my first guess would be conanti because of the spotting, but the posture makes me think of D. wrighti for some reason. I have absolutely no knowledge about the second figure either.
If anyone knows anything about these figures, or about other figures representing the genus desmognathus, I'd love to hear it.


Secondly, while reading through the same topic, I saw a PlayVisions long-toed salamander with a larger, more ovoid head than normal and a slightly different tail. This figure, which came from the PV salamander set was again included in the salamander collection photo on page 9, where it can be seen towards the bottom of the page, next to a more normal looking PV long toed.

While the red, long tailed and spotted salamanders from this series are often made into knockoffs (you can easily find these by looking for toy lizards on amazon), I have yet to see a long-toed receive this same treatment and have looked through countless listings that include the other three to confirm this.

If anyone knows about this possibly knockoff figure, such as who it was produced by, where it is for sale, or if there are any other photos of it out there, I'd really love to know. I'm also interested if either of the other two salamanders from the set (mudpuppy and marbled) were ever bootlegged, so if anyone has information on that, it would be good too.


Thanks for indulging my caudate questions . Hope this finds everyone well.