If Play Visions animals (Habitat: Earth) was still in production.

I need to hear your opinions as to what collecting would be like if Play Visions was a little smarter with its business decisions and anti-counterfeiting measures, and was still making animals under its Habitat: Earth line. Personally, I think that a thriving Play Visions animal line might’ve become the king of TOOB-sized animal figures and ensure that Safari TOOBs would not become a thing in the first place. After all, the TOOBs only started being made since no earlier than 2002. With Play Visions dominating this market, Safari would become a much less powerful company, as the unmatchable species diversity of PV would be too much. I could see K&M going downhill too, because despite its high species diversity, the cheaper quality of many figurines, with seams and a minimalistic style, would not match the better look of PV figures. I could see PV introducing sets like:
Backyard Birds
Herons and Waders
Ducks
Geese
Shorebirds
Owls
Pigs and Peccaries
Deer
Tortoises
Game Birds
Goats and Sheep
Salmon and Trout
Kangaroos and Wallabies
Philippine Wildlife (featuring Philippine Eagle, Philippine Crocodile, Tamaraw, and others)
Zion National Park (featuring California Condor, Ring-tailed Cat, Desert Tortoise, and others)
New Zealand Birds (featuring Kakapo, Kaka, a species of kiwi, and others)

Safari would never do TOOBs like these!

Additionally, they could expand their large figure range and compete with Safari there too.

PV definitely do make beautiful, highly collectible figures!
I'm not much of an expert on the, so I'm not sure what they would be like if they still made animals, and what the market would look like- but there are many experts on here who I'm sure would have an answer!
I remember @bmathison1972 saying somewhere on here that Eikoh will become the new PV which is very interesting, and I completely agree! I'm sure some of the figures will become very rare and collectable in the future, and they're exquisitely made!

I believe that Wild Republic was the real competitor of Play Visions and Wild Republic tubes were not as diversified as Play visions blisters. However, Wild Republic had a much wider range with animal themed toys of all kinds, notice that plushes are their strenght. So, there are many factors that contribute to the success of a company. Besides of that, there was a boom of new toy companies during the end of the last century in USA. Club Earth, Funrise, Blip Toys, etc. Wild Republic was even copied by other North American brands at this time and they survived. Obviously Safari turned into a serious competitor but only for plastic figures, Wild Republic range is much more diversified. Notice that as long as Safari expanded, plastic animal figures started to loose importance in Wild Republic range. Play Visions clearly lost protagonism in the middle of this fight, you can only consolidate a range of unusual and less commercial models if you have a core of popular produts to compensate it and Play Visions failed in this regard. I think their series of large hollow animal figures was a failure, I think they contributed to a negative quality reputation of their models. Hollow feels cheap and Safari and Wild Republic had large solide and heavy models at that time. I have no idea which other sets Play Visions could produce, I only know that in 2002 Yujin offered a good number of the models we could find in Play Visions sets, remember these are actually Wing Mau products and the Chinese manufacturer have not expanded too much its portfolium since then.
I confess my interest for Play Visions is more related with the fact that their small mammal figures can play nicely with the standard sized models of major brands. It explains why the civets or mustelids sets are so popular among us. Thus, I'd really love they could have released a set with shrews, moles, small rodents and creatures of this kind.

Bonnie wrote:

PV definitely do make beautiful, highly collectible figures!
I'm not much of an expert on the, so I'm not sure what they would be like if they still made animals, and what the market would look like- but there are many experts on here who I'm sure would have an answer!
I remember  @bmathison1972  saying somewhere on here that Eikoh will become the new PV which is very interesting, and I completely agree! I'm sure some of the figures will become very rare and collectable in the future, and they're exquisitely made!

I’ve heard also that Yowie could become the new PV, but either range is still pretty limited to a series per year or a few per year, instead of a bunch of series released at once. Also, PV had great diversity among species groups (most sets were organized by species) Unlike either Eikoh or Yowie, which would make about 1-2 types of each general variety of animal, PV would make about 6-10 species of monkeys, lizards, antelopes, frogs/toads across the board. Also, I think that the Eikoh figures are mostly relatively famous species or at least those famous in Japan. That is not like the international biodiversity covered by PV.

Roger wrote:

I believe that Wild Republic was the real competitor of Play Visions and Wild Republic tubes were not as diversified as Play visions blisters. However, Wild Republic had a much wider range with animal themed toys of all kinds, notice that plushes are their strenght. So, there are many factors that contribute to the success of a company. Besides of that, there was a boom of new toy companies during the end of the last century in USA. Club Earth, Funrise, Blip Toys, etc. Wild Republic was even copied by other North American brands at this time and they survived. Obviously Safari turned into a serious competitor but only for plastic figures, Wild Republic range is much more diversified. Notice that as long as Safari expanded, plastic animal figures started to loose importance in Wild Republic range. Play Visions clearly lost protagonism in the middle of this fight, you can only consolidate a range of unusual and less commercial models if you have a core of popular produts to compensate it and Play Visions failed in this regard. I think their series of large hollow animal figures was a failure, I think they contributed to a negative quality reputation of their models. Hollow feels cheap and Safari and Wild Republic had large solide and heavy models at that time. I have no idea which other sets Play Visions could produce, I only know that in 2002 Yujin offered a good number of the models we could find in Play Visions sets, remember these are actually Wing Mau products and the Chinese manufacturer have not expanded too much its portfolium since then.
I confess my interest for Play Visions is more related with the fact that their small mammal figures can play nicely with the standard sized models of major brands. It explains why the civets or mustelids sets are so popular among us. Thus, I'd really love they could have released a set with shrews, moles, small rodents and creatures of this kind.

This is so interesting! Especially as lots of this happened before I as born, I love reading about what the dynamics were between the brands in the past!

And yes @Birdsage , I definitely agree with what you said! Each brand has their own strengths!

In fact, I also thought that Wild Republic could’ve been a competitor. The species variety in K&M tubes was actually pretty high too (contrary to what @Roger said), and the species variety in plush is definitely nothing to sneeze at. After all, the old Audubon Birds series featured diverse American species from the Smith’s Longspur to the Snowy Plover, and from the Canyon Wren to the Willow Ptarmigan. There were probably about 200 or so species featured in that series. Too bad; these were discontinued too! But, most larger Wild Republic figures (particularly the ones from polybags) were actually also hollow and, with their seams, looked even cheaper. The AZA Collection figures were an exception; I personally can tell you that the monk seal from this series is heavy, solid, and does not feel cheap at all. I can’t tell you how the large PV figures actually feel because I do not have any.

My main case against K&M being a strong competitor in the small figure market in particular is the fact that many smaller figures are simplistic and a little less realistic than PV figures.

Birdsage wrote:

In fact, I also thought that Wild Republic could’ve been a competitor. The species variety in K&M tubes was actually pretty high too (contrary to what @Roger said), and the species variety in plush is definitely nothing to sneeze at. After all, the old Audubon Birds series featured diverse American species from the Smith’s Longspur to the Snowy Plover, and from the Canyon Wren to the Willow Ptarmigan. There were probably about 200 or so species featured in that series. Too bad; these were discontinued too! But, most larger Wild Republic figures (particularly the ones from polybags) were actually also hollow and, with their seams, looked even cheaper. The AZA Collection figures were an exception; I personally can tell you that the monk seal from this series is heavy, solid, and does not feel cheap at all. I can’t tell you how the large PV figures actually feel because I do not have any.

No, you're completely lost chronologically. When Play Visions released their sets, the Wild Republic Nature tubes were not comparable in terms of diversity. Most of Play Visions sets were released between 1996 and 1999. I never mentioned the diversity in plushes but their commercial importance to the brand instead. Polybags appeared after the Play Visions collapse. So, what I said, is that during these years, while Play Visions presented large hollow figures, Wild Republic presented their AZA series of solide figures and Safari was already operating. About the quality of the Wild Republic tubes, it was very variable during these years. Those marked K&M Int. or made by Wing Mau, had a similar quality to Play Visions. However, their very early tubes and those after the Wildepedia sets, show a much lower quality.

p.s. sorry for posting it after your previous post, I edited accidentally on your post.

Oops. I forgot to check the years. Anyway, you were right about plushes, though. I know that they featured unmatchable diversity on the plush side of things. The Audubon Birds series in particular featured an extravagant amount of North American bird species, and something like half of them were species that most Americans are not familiar with. They started at around the same time as the PV figures. I still think somehow that even many of “those (figures) marked K&M Int. or made by Wing Mau” are not really quite up to speed with PV figures. It might just be the blocky and slightly crude way the scales and feathers were done on many fish and birds, or the simplistic way some are painted. You are right that some are at least more detailed than others, though.

I just LOVED Playvisions. And yes, there are series I wish they made if they still existed:

1- Jellyfishes and other Cnidaria (Mauve Stinger, Big Red, etc)
2- Prehistoric Armoured Fishes (Anglaspis, Cyathaspis, etc)
3- Prehistoric Plants (Why not? Duisbergia, Sigillaria, etc)
4- Species of Trilobites
5- Dragons of the World (Tarasque, Velue, Long, Lambton Worm, etc)

I would say that a “dragon” set would be rather unrealistic for PV. They pretty much stuck to wildlife and prehistorics as far as figures were concerned, and made very few domestic animals, much less any products with mythical creatures.

A little opinion about K&M. In the last years they produced a few interesting tubes between 2006 and now. But the most was not easy available and often unknown, for example the Canadian wildlife , penguins, whales and dolphins....
And also the "quality" of these figures is not the best.

You know i really like Playvisions, but i think there are reasons for many brands tht they only produce a few things. The biggest reason is the money.