Collection Review: Safari Ltd & Papo Cetaceans

Figure Brand: Papo & Safari Ltd

Figure Name(s): Common Dolphin (56055)
Pilot Whale (205629)

Sex: Female (Common Dolphin)
Male (Pilot Whale)

Name: Common Dolphin- Dusty
Pilot Whale- Donovan(Irish- ‘Dark Brown/Black’)

Year Made: Common Dolphin- 2022
Pilot Whale-2014

Observations/Thoughts:

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I named my common dolphin Dusty because of the singer Dusty Springfield who was cremated with her ashes spread over the Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland.
Soon after this event, a female Common Dolphin appeared on her own and settled in the area. Some believe this was Dusty’s spirit, others believed it was her reincarnated as a dolphin, but whatever the case, the lone dolphin was named Dusty as a fitting tribute to her.
In a sort of tribute to this story, I named this dolphin Dusty as a tribute to both Dusty Springfield and the lone dolphin that separated herself, unwillingly or otherwise, from her pod and came to live underneath the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland.
As for my pilot whale I named him Donovan, it’s an Irish name meaning ‘dark brown’ ‘dark’ or even just ‘black’ and as he’s dark all over, it’s very appropriate for him.
Dusty seems to match a realistic common dolphin enough as these animals have a distinct yellow cloudy stripe on them, with overlaying white grey stripe running alongside and through to a grey patch at their lower ‘hip’ flank area and a small grey/yellow stripe around the beak.
The Papo model follows this natural pattern of the animal well, though it seems to lack the grey patch at the hip/flank area and the yellow/grey stripe around their beak. Papo have the yellow clouds at their sides alright, and the stripes and the grey underside but no little beak stripes or grey patches.
The Common Dolphin has a wide range of colours for a cetacean species, as they are usually only one or two uniform colours. This common dolphin instead is black, yellow, grey and white.

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With Donovan the pilot whale, they are mostly an overall charcoal grey through to black, though the Safari Ltd version has a white patch on his underbelly, I’m not sure if real Pilot whales have these as according to Google images, they only seem to have a lighter charcoal grey on their underside, so I’m not sure how realistic this is?
Dusty has a very small look, and a slightly curved arching look that makes her seem like she has a diving pose, and stands with a lot of her middle arched upwards, balancing in the tips of her flippers and tail.
Donovan is in a straighter, less arched pose with only his tail stock arching, giving the impression that he isn’t diving but twisting through waters of open sea. I love how thick and muscular his tail stock is, complete with the muscle visible showing that Safari Ltd seemed to have paid close attention to detail with sculpting this animal as they are a powerfully built marine creature. He also seems to have long sickle shaped pectoral fins that the long-finned variant of the species have? Though I’m not sure as he isn’t marked as either long finned or short-finned, but his model does seem to have long fins, hooked upwards slightly at their tips which seems to be striving for realism too.
Dusty is a small compact little dolphin with unusual colouration owing to the species she depicts. She’s a a common enough model, and depicted well, other than that, not much else to say about her.
Donovan too is a very sleekly designed and made whale, he’s straighter in pose than Dusty, but I realise he might well have been posed to look as though he’s deep sea diving but as he doesn’t rest on his upper body or pectoral fins in any way, it doesn’t resemble that, maybe just makes him appear as though he’s barrelling through the open sea? Also, he has a white patch on his underbelly, which I’m not sure if that’s the case for the real animals. Overall, though, a nice looking whale and a bit different from the usual orca, humpback and blue whales etc.

Rating: Common Dolphin- 4/5
Pilot Whale- 4/5

Papo basically repainted the 2008 common bottlenose dolphin turning it into a common dolphin. I'm not a big enthusiast of reused figures but the idea is not bad at all. At least Papo is not doing it with most of the similar animals as I feared, tehir songbirds, despite the similarities of the species, are all using different molds and the most surprising to me is the African fish eagle which is not using the same mold as the bald eagle, actually, the models are completely different inspite of the bird similarities.
More interesting to me is the pilot whale even if it arrived just one year after the CollectA model. First because it is a new mould, as a species, it is not commonly much more replicated than a pilot whale, but as a dolphin, it is more distinct than a common dolphin which looks basically like any other bottlenose dolphin just with a distinct color layout.
I'm not into Sealife, it is one of the sacrified groups in my collection now, but those are two figures I would consider to get or alternatively the Maia & Borges model and CollectA's.
Interesting story about your choices to name them.

Hi Roger, thanks! And as you can probably tell I put a lot into the names I give these figures because it helps with my envisioned personality for them!
I would recommend both these figures as a starter model in a sea life collection though you saying that, I'll have to look at the Maia & Borges set.