Land Snails and Slugs - The Terrestrial Gastropods

[bmathison1972]

WOW where can I get a K&M Partula???

[snailtime]

Last post for today. In Europe there's a "Crawly Insect" blister pack being sold that includes a small snail. Packaging and item name can very, but all variations seem to have these same figures. These toys have a sticky wheel on the underside and are meant to be stuck to a wall. After being stuck to the wall, they will very slowly "crawl" down the wall on their sticky wheels. The company is Banaghan & Co. Ltd. out of Ireland.




These are some wind-up snails available in the UK under various names/branding/packaging. They're intended to be "racing snail" toys and sometimes come with a laminated paper race track. The ones currently available have white skin. I have an older one that has a more yellowy/creamier skin color. I don't think it's discoloration from aging though it could be. The sculpt of the older one's body is actually a bit different and it's made of a bendier material. They come with wind-up keys.






This one isn't really a toy or a figure but it's close enough to go into the collection. It's sold on Amazon as an aquarium decoration. It's made of silicone and has a suction cup on the underside. It looks like a land snail wearing the shell of a sea snail.



This is the Wild Beyond the Witchlight #33 Giant Snail. It's a fantasy creature from Dungeons and Dragons I believe. I like the shell colors.



Here's an unusual part of the collection. Some plastic rings. Why do I have plastic rings in a figure/toy collection? Well, first I've never seen snail rings. But really I have these because they aren't actually snails. These are semislug rings! Semislugs are the evolutionary in-between stage between a snail and a slug. These are slugs with shells. Or snails with shells that are way to small to retract into. Semislugs. I've never seen any kind of semislug representation anywhere in the toy and figure world so I had to get these. Semislugs are common in some parts of China and these are made in China, so I wonder if the designer was inspired by local wildlife. These are available in a set of insect/creepy crawly rings on Aliexpress.



These are assorted vintage "garden miniature" snails. They are unbranded other than "HONG KONG" on the undersides of a few. I debated about adding these to my collection since they aren't toys and they aren't very detailed, but I already had them so I figured I would keep them. They come in other paint jobs but these models aren't really something I actively hunt for. I know of at least two other paint jobs that I don't have. The purple one with the orange shell was sold to me as a vintage Kinder toy from the 70s. I don't know if I believe that. It came with a Kinder-like yellow capsule egg but upon closer inspection, the egg says Ferraro. It was sold with a deer model that was also supposed to be from the same series. Who knows if these figures actually came with the yellow capsules originally.
[EDIT: I've confirmed that the purple snail with the orange shell really was an early Kinder toy from 1977.]





More "garden miniatures." I'm not crazy about these either. They're made of resin and overall not that great.



Lastly, I thought I'd mention this mold from the 1992 version of the Thingmaker by Toymax. It makes a lovely pair of slug models.




I have a few other unbranded snails I haven't posted yet but I will save those for a later post. I am also waiting to receive the Cuban land snails (Polymita picta) gashapon manufactured by Chinese company 涅槃STUDIO, though I've been told those probably won't be ready to ship for another month. Stay tuned for more snail figures in a couple of weeks!

[snailtime]

WOW where can I get a K&M Partula???

Sadly I'm not sure! I stumbled across mine on eBay maybe 5 years ago or so. It was sold in a lot of animal/insect toys. The seller didn't know what they had and I didn't know either until I got it and saw the stamp on the underside. I was pretty surprised, especially about it being a Partula! If I find another I'll reach out to you    It reminds me of the toys sold in museum and zoo gift shops.

[BlueKrono]

The forum has become a land of snails and slugs, and I am LOVING it.

[Roger]

Thanks for offering your permission to use your photos.
I mispelled the name of the Spanish brand, it is Pech Hermanos instead.
Those snail figures are usually only sold in Spanish sites for very high prices. 40 Euros or so. I have a link of a sale with a pair being sold for 16, postage not included, I can send the link if you wish. It is not cheap but that's the kind of thing you won't find cheap anyway.
I didn't know the K&M one and I can't even locate to which series it belonged. Though, those rubber figures were often sold with a few color variations representing different species.
Your vintage snail is the jewel of this batch. It is made of a material we call composition. With age, this material becomes easily breakable and it is not easy to find figures like the snail in great condition as yours.
If the egg has Ferrero marked, the figure is a Kinder, unless it does not belong to the egg. Many Kinder figures have little codes marked on them.

[NSD Bashe]

While my gastropod collection consists mostly of sea slugs, I have to say this is an amazing thread that makes me almost consider wanting to branch my nudibranchs to include terrestrials...

Also there is one thing in particular I noticed in your second post, at the end you show a Toys to Grow On brand box for bugs...  I can tell you that might be connected to Play Visions, as I at one point stumbled across an old defunct listing for the illusive set of Play Visions sea slugs which also came in a Toys to Grow On box.

[bmathison1972]

While my gastropod collection consists mostly of sea slugs, I have to say this is an amazing thread that makes me almost consider wanting to branch my nudibranchs to include terrestrials...

Also there is one thing in particular I noticed in your second post, at the end you show a Toys to Grow On brand box for bugs...  I can tell you that might be connected to Play Visions, as I at one point stumbled across an old defunct listing for the illusive set of Play Visions sea slugs which also came in a Toys to Grow On box.

so you want to nudi-branch out your collection?

[Gwangi]

This was an exceptionally fun thread to browse through. Your collection is fantastic, certainly one-of-a-kind. Thank you for sharing it, it will be a great resource for the forum!

I have an affinity for mollusks but my collection of terrestrial snails and slugs is limited to the Banana Slugfest slugs by  Play Visions. I was happy to see them featured here. The packaging for the Box of Slugs and Bug Box are beautiful!

Curious to know if you plan on tracking down any of Kenneth Bakeman's "My Pet Slugs". They're wooden, so they aren't toys in a strict sense, but they might be of interest to you.

[bmathison1972]

@snailtime - here is some earlier discussion on the IDs of the Takara snail and slug; it was suggested the snail is E. peliomphala as well (and they agree the slug is Ambigolimax valentianus). The IDs are by former member brontodocus, a professional zoologist.

https://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=205.msg15379#msg15379

And I love this thread too; I like niche collections, especially of invertebrates. Reminds me of my early days of being an arthropod specialist LOL

[snailtime]

Thanks for offering your permission to use your photos.
I mispelled the name of the Spanish brand, it is Pech Hermanos instead.
Those snail figures are usually only sold in Spanish sites for very high prices. 40 Euros or so. I have a link of a sale with a pair being sold for 16, postage not included, I can send the link if you wish. It is not cheap but that's the kind of thing you won't find cheap anyway.
I didn't know the K&M one and I can't even locate to which series it belonged. Though, those rubber figures were often sold with a few color variations representing different species.
Your vintage snail is the jewel of this batch. It is made of a material we call composition. With age, this material becomes easily breakable and it is not easy to find figures like the snail in great condition as yours.
If the egg has Ferrero marked, the figure is a Kinder, unless it does not belong to the egg. Many Kinder figures have little codes marked on them.

I actually did some digging and found those Pech Hermanos snails you were referring to! That's a great website by the way. If they're still there in a couple of weeks I'll probably buy. Any new snail/slug additions will get added to this thread    The elastolin snails are actually not rare believe it or not. They're just only really available on German sites. It seems that there's a lot of them floating around in perfect condition which is great for collectors. The "Kinder" snail has no markings on it at all, but perhaps it's just a really old Kinder toy? Hard to say. Thanks for sharing all that info with me! Now I'm imagining even more K&M snails in a variety of colors 

While my gastropod collection consists mostly of sea slugs, I have to say this is an amazing thread that makes me almost consider wanting to branch my nudibranchs to include terrestrials...

Also there is one thing in particular I noticed in your second post, at the end you show a Toys to Grow On brand box for bugs...  I can tell you that might be connected to Play Visions, as I at one point stumbled across an old defunct listing for the illusive set of Play Visions sea slugs which also came in a Toys to Grow On box.

Do it! The more gastropods the better! Also, that's super interesting about the potential Toys to Grow On/Play Vision Connection. I wonder if the companies ended up merging at some point?

[snailtime]

@snailtime - here is some earlier discussion on the IDs of the Takara snail and slug; it was suggested the snail is E. peliomphala as well (and they agree the slug is Ambigolimax valentianus). The IDs are by former member brontodocus, a professional zoologist.

https://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=205.msg15379#msg15379

And I love this thread too; I like niche collections, especially of invertebrates. Reminds me of my early days of being an arthropod specialist LOL

@bmathison1972 This is coming from someone who has professional malacological experience (specifically in terrestrial gastropods). I saw that thread and I'm not fully convinced, though it's quite possible. Brace yourself for the following scientific analysis of the Takara Tomy snails. Yes I feel incredibly silly right examining these figures to this level of detail surrounded by open books of land snail primary literature.

First as an aside, I just want to say that focusing purely on external morphological characteristics when it comes to land snails and slugs causes things to get really messy really fast. One of the most common way land snails are accurately ID'd is through dissection and examination of the internal reproductive structures. That's why putting IDs on most of these snail figures is basically pointless unless the manufacturer has given us a specific ID. Yes, shells are also very important for IDs, but these figures generally don't have the level of detail needed for that either. Now... are these figures B. similaris or E. peliomphala? Or something else?

B. similaris, E. peliomphala, and the Takara Tomy figures all have the following characteristics: an open umbilicus, striae on the shell, the same basic shell shape, and approximately the same number of whorls (the figures actually have one less whorl than the two mentioned species but they may be juveniles... the flared lip makes me think otherwise though - perhaps these figures are not accurate to that level? Yes, at this point I will say that these may be neither species). So anyways... examination of the shell doesn't help us much which isn't great because the shell is almost all we have here.

What about the body? Well, body characteristics aren't really used for IDs. I will say that generally speaking, E. peliomphala can sometimes appear to have a "bumpier" skin texture (the tubercles can be more prominent). Interestingly this species is famous for having a "head-wart" between the optic tentacles. The head-wart only everts during what is believed to be some kind of pre-reproductive behavior, but sometimes that patch of skin between the eyes can visibly look rougher even when not everted. E. peliomphala also often has a dark dorsal stripe (another reason why I love the model by Kitan Club; that model has the stripe). Additionally, often the flesh is darker than the average snail.

Now having said all of that... there's a reason why color and patterns aren't really used when ID'ing land snails. There's often dozens upon dozens of variations between individuals. Polymorphism is all the rage in the land snail/slug scene. So while those characteristics may be "average" they aren't always present. Sometimes these animals have no dorsal stripe and light flesh. Sometimes they can have light-colored, unremarkable shells, sometimes with many stripes, sometimes with one stripe, sometimes with none.

B. similaris is typically light-fleshed and also looks just like the figures. This snail can also have a stripe on the shell or have no stripe. I used to live in an area with a high population of B. similaris and just from previous experience these figures look a lot like them.

But clearly we so far haven't found our smoking gun to identify which species these figures are actually supposed to be even after all of this discussion. Argh!

In real life if I was distinguishing between the two species I would probably use size to ID them. B. similaris is smaller than E. peliomphala. This difference would be so great you would instantly be able to tell the difference. The two live animals would probably also have subtle differences in the shape of the shell that would help (the figures appear to lack this extreme level of detail).

Overall when looking at averages among populations of snails, B. similaris more often looks like the figures on a superficial level since E. peliomphala is often more stripey, bumpy, and darker. I was leaning towards B. similaris a bit more because B. similaris is such a classic urban snail. This makes it match really nicely with Ambigolimax valentianus, a classic urban slug. These two gastropods are notorious "hothouse aliens."

I admit though, after going through all of this talk we are still nowhere closer to knowing the true identity of these figures! I would say at this point let's make some assumptions about the set to make our final ID. I used Google translate on the paper insert that came with the figures to look for clues. The insert simply calls these plain old slugs and snails (but apparently the little snail is supposed to be the child of one of the big snails and the slugs are brothers lol). The insert has a bunch of cutesy sayings on it. It seems like the makers probably were just wanting to make some cute, fun gashapon toys rather than scientifically accurate figures. This makes me think that the maker was probably inspired by whatever urban slugs and snails they commonly saw slithering on the sidewalk after a rain. So, I think the final ID is whichever snail species would have been more commonly seen by the creator.

Looking at iNaturalist for some precise location detail, B. similaris has been seen throughout mainland Japan including Tokyo while E. peliomphala is mostly seen only around Tokyo. Takara Tomy's headquarters are located in Tokyo, so this doesn't help us at all. At this point I confess, I don't know much about the habitat that E. peliomphala inhabits off the top of my head. However, to my knowledge, E. peliomphala is an arboreal species so I would think it would more often be seen on or around trees than on sidewalks. But, if E. peliomphala is as common of an urban species as B. similaris we are still no closer to knowing the ID of the figures. If E. peliomphala is seen less often in urban environments and more so in natural, tree-covered areas it is less likely that the creator would have been inspired by this snail when making some plain cutesy snail toys.

At this point the only person who can help is a snail-lover who lives in Tokyo who can tell us which species is more commonly seen.

In conclusion, I lean more B. similaris but it's virtually impossible to know. Wish I could give a definite ID! Someone should reach out to Takara Tomy and just ask them which species these are supposed to be

[snailtime]

This was an exceptionally fun thread to browse through. Your collection is fantastic, certainly one-of-a-kind. Thank you for sharing it, it will be a great resource for the forum!

I have an affinity for mollusks but my collection of terrestrial snails and slugs is limited to the Banana Slugfest slugs by  Play Visions. I was happy to see them featured here. The packaging for the Box of Slugs and Bug Box are beautiful!

Curious to know if you plan on tracking down any of Kenneth Bakeman's "My Pet Slugs". They're wooden, so they aren't toys in a strict sense, but they might be of interest to you.

Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm so glad to share and love helping document cool figures    I collected snails passively for many years but it wasn't until I stumbled across the Banana Slugfest in a World Market back in 2014 that my passion for collecting was reignited. That's such a great set. Glad you have one too

I'm glad you mention Kenneth Bakeman's "My Pet Slugs" series. I've seen those floating around here and there and I think they're really cute. I had to make rules when deciding I was going to have a collection though and one of my rules is that I don't typically collect sculptures that wouldn't be seen as toys. So no ceramic, stone, wood, or resin and no garden statues. I'm sure toys could be made of these materials but I haven't really seen any. There's tons of snail/slug sculptures and decorations out there and if I expanded my collection to include those my collection would quickly stop being a toy collection  I do have two snail sculptures that I don't consider part of my toy/figure collection. These guys are just decor to me that remind me of my travels.

I have a colorful wooden painted snail I picked up in Belize in 2017(?) and a yellow PVC snail sculpture I got in a visitor center in either Switzerland or Luxembourg in 2018(?). The snail says Margarita Mendez on the bottom and the snail is made by the artist Ottmar Hörl. He released a line of these snail sculptures in many different colors a few years ago.

[bmathison1972]

@snailtime - thanks for the detailed explanation. Takara often doesn't give specific IDs, even in their more detailed figures. I knew the IDs by brontodocus were not definitive, just wanted to share them with you as possible differentials. It's a shame Takara didn't fully ID them, as they are such nice figures.

One comment about iNaturalist - some of those IDs may be based on AI-generated suggestions and could likely be incorrect. I used to do Nearctic elaterid IDs on iNaturalist but had to give it up due to the overwhelming amount of incorrect IDs 1) generated by software and 2) blindly accepted by the submitter without doing due diligence (but that's a soapbox for another time LOL

It's cool you have professional experience; it's nice to have another academic on this forum. My expertise in gastropods is largely limited to those that serve as intermediate hosts for human parasitic infections. haha

[bmathison1972]

@snailtime - when I was a collector of arthropods, I got a set of insects at the Rainforest Cafe restaurant. The set had a land snail in it. I have in the last year or two come to learn it was made by COG Ltd.

I have tried to search for the set to no avail. Here is a link to the pics of the arthropods. If you don't have the snail, perhaps pics of the insects could help you find it. If I remember correctly it had a yellow shell and black fleshy parts. The shell was elongated, like a GALS

https://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=2411.msg20141#msg20141

[snailtime]

@snailtime - thanks for the detailed explanation. Takara often doesn't give specific IDs, even in their more detailed figures. I knew the IDs by brontodocus were not definitive, just wanted to share them with you as possible differentials. It's a shame Takara didn't fully ID them, as they are such nice figures.

One comment about iNaturalist - some of those IDs may be based on AI-generated suggestions and could likely be incorrect. I used to do Nearctic elaterid IDs on iNaturalist but had to give it up due to the overwhelming amount of incorrect IDs 1) generated by software and 2) blindly accepted by the submitter without doing due diligence (but that's a soapbox for another time LOL

It's cool you have professional experience; it's nice to have another academic on this forum. My expertise in gastropods is largely limited to those that serve as intermediate hosts for human parasitic infections. haha

I was a "Curator" on iNat for land snails for a while. I think I still am but haven't used the site in a while. I did taxonomy revisions and a lot of land snail IDs back in the day and yeah... two species-level IDs automatically becomes research-grade even though it could just be two inexperienced people clicking the automatically suggested results, yikes Despite the issues the site has I think it's still a useful place to obtain general data, as long as the datapoints are scrutinized a bit. When I searched for E. peliomphala for example I saw that there weren't an excessive number of observations and looking over the individual observations everything seemed more or less correct.

But yeah, there were soooo many bad IDs on there. That's part of the reason why I eventually stopped using the site. It was like wading through an endless sea of incorrect IDs and every time I fixed one, 10 more would pop up. A lot of the submitters and casual/inexperienced users of the site wanted species-level IDs but for land snails and slugs this often isn't possible. Lots of species-level IDs were getting slapped on when many things should have been left at the  genus level. Working on the site became a bit exhausting for me. I think we probably share the same soapbox haha

That's cool you're knowledgable about snails as intermediate-hosts for human parasitic infections! The one only of those I know much about is snails and rat lungworm, but there's a lot more snail/human parasites out there. That's not really one of my areas of expertise.

@snailtime - when I was a collector of arthropods, I got a set of insects at the Rainforest Cafe restaurant. The set had a land snail in it. I have in the last year or two come to learn it was made by COG Ltd.

I have tried to search for the set to no avail. Here is a link to the pics of the arthropods. If you don't have the snail, perhaps pics of the insects could help you find it. If I remember correctly it had a yellow shell and black fleshy parts. The shell was elongated, like a GALS

https://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=2411.msg20141#msg20141

Oh wow, thanks for sharing this with me! I don't have that snail. There aren't a lot of snail figures out there with a conical shell shape like that. I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled for that one Those are some nice figures!

[bmathison1972]

Sounds like you and I left iNat for the same reason LOL.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when someone photographed a piece of lizard guano on a rock in Arizona and called it a European click beetle at the species level! Done!

[bmathison1972]

Here are a couple terrestrial gastropods that had rather unpleasant encounters with carabid beetles 

[snailtime]

Here are a couple terrestrial gastropods that had rather unpleasant encounters with carabid beetles 

Looks like it was a very pleasant encounter for the once-hungry beetles though    Those are very nice figures, thank you for posting them here! The shells (and the beetles) are incredibly detailed.

[BlueKrono]

Not sure if you've explored Archie McPhee before. I've gotten loads of axolotls, tardigrades and blobfish from them. They have a set of rather simple snails:
https://mcphee.com/products/itty-bitty-snails

And this snail wearing a crown:
https://mcphee.com/products/crowned-critters?variant=40794291077193

[snailtime]

Not sure if you've explored Archie McPhee before. I've gotten loads of axolotls, tardigrades and blobfish from them. They have a set of rather simple snails:
https://mcphee.com/products/itty-bitty-snails

And this snail wearing a crown:
https://mcphee.com/products/crowned-critters?variant=40794291077193

Yes I love Archie McPhee! I went through their snail/slug items in one of my first posts. I have the Itty Bitty Snails and I love them.

However, that snail wearing a crown figure is brand new    I just bought the snail with a crown, thanks so much for the tip! I gotta say though, the snake with a crown is awfully cute too...