Toy Animal Wiki

Dear Sts Friends:

Today, I took a look at the AAA section of Taw, and I started wondering, has anyone done anything with that section llately? I mean, added new info, and all that. Anyway, if there's no new info, then how are collectors of AAA like myself supposed to gather information about the AAA figures they want? You see my dilemma right? As for my side of the world, no new additions yet, but that could change, so we'll see. Anyway, I'm really sorry I can't provide more information about AAA, including pics, but you know how it is, you got to do what you got to do, right? Anyway, if anyone else feels that the AAA section needs work, then let me know, okay? Also, is it just me, or are there other collectors of AAA figures too? Also, where can we get more pics for Taw? Well, if anyone has any thoughts on this matter, then let me know.

Aschuck

Dear Sts Friends:

Well, I can't do it right. I mean, I want to create a page on Tai, but I don't know how. What should I do? If anyone has any advice, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Aschuck

I collect AAA (Their dogs!), and I think that what we already have on TAW is amazing with lots of information! But it can oly really be expanded if more collectors buy figures not on it, take photos, and then editors can add them (Although I'm not an expert- someone else will be able to give you a better answer! )

Aschuck, if you'd like to edit TAW and add pages, it's best to read the helpful Guidelines:
https://toyanimal.info/wiki/Guidelines_and_Templates

Regarding the new "upload multiple files": It doesn't warn you when you upload a file with a name that already exists, so you could potentially overwrite an already existing file.

Just got an editor's account and decided to put my collection to good use and update some pre-existing pages and some of the Stub/incomplete pages.

Monterey Bay Gray whale and Schleich 16084 Sperm whale:
Updated pages with photos of other color variants.

Papo 56021 sperm whale, Mojo Fun 387210 Sperm whale, Mojo Fun 387277 Humpback whale, Mojo Fun Octopus, Papo Blue whale adult, and Kaiyodo MSA Blue whale:

Provided full pages and added them to their species gallery.

With the exception of the Kaiyodo Blue whale, most of the photos I used lack batteries or lego blocks for scale reference. However, I didn't fret over this because most of these figures are the same sculpts as those released under different brands, for which the site already had pages and scale-indicating photos. I was sure to make note of this on the Mojo/Papo figures' pages with links to the Schleich or Maia and Borges versions of the figures.

The only one that's actually affected is the Papo Blue whale. I've given the figure an extensive paint job, so I was limited to the photos I took of it pre-emptively. To compensate, I provided the length of the figure in the table.

In addition, I saw that for a few figure pages, scales are provided. I decided to fill in the official scales for all of the Monterey Bay Aquarium figures. I used tags, official booklets, and catalogs for their reference scales. Modern Safari Ltd catalogs advertise the sawfish and manta ray as 1:30, and the orca and gray whale as 1:50. This led to some inaccurate sizes for the sawfish and gray whale, so I opted to prioritize their originally marketed scales of 1:20 and 1:40.

That's great, very few of the TAW entries have the scale in the model page, and it's a vert useful thing for collectors. Thanks for your work! :)

Great job and welcome to the club, or into the galley

It's great when someone new decide to be a part of it

Don't worry about the Papo blue whale, i will buy it this year and will make pics.

Please be careful with scales, most of the scales provided by companies are wrong. To be useful, it's better to calculate yourself min and max scales or average one. It's a huge task, thats' why most of the entries are without scale. Only following advertising scales would mislead collectors.

Kikimalou wrote:

Great job and welcome to the club, or into the galley

It's great when someone new decide to be a part of it  

Don't worry about the Papo blue whale, i will buy it this year and will make pics.

Please be careful with scales, most of the scales provided by companies are wrong. To be useful, it's better to calculate yourself min and max scales or average one. It's a huge task, thats' why most of the entries are without scale. Only following advertising scales would mislead collectors.

Oh, I've already done that, got an excel sheet and everything. The only one that's inaccurate for the typical size range for the species is the giant squid, which was likely due to the state of scientific literature on the animal in 1999. I took note of that in the table for its page. Every other animal fell in line.

Lucky guy, you felt on the good batch then

Kikimalou wrote:

Lucky guy, you felt on the good batch then

Yeah, I only bothered doing it because I knew atleast for the MBA collection, the scales matched up, sans the squid.

Kikimalou wrote:

Please be careful with scales, most of the scales provided by companies are wrong. To be useful, it's better to calculate yourself min and max scales or average one. It's a huge task, thats' why most of the entries are without scale. Only following advertising scales would mislead collectors.

Another thing is that the size information you find on the web and even scientific articles is often inconsistent or inaccurate. And sometimes there can be large differences between subspecies or populations. Perhaps a useful thing would be to put the size of the figure itself in TAW (e.g., total length, head+body length or shoulder height). So far, no TAW listings have this, but do we think this would be a good idea?

I would be a good idea but it would need a lot of time and a lot of editors.

rogerpgvg wrote:

Another thing is that the size information you find on the web and even scientific articles is often inconsistent or inaccurate. And sometimes there can be large differences between subspecies or populations. Perhaps a useful thing would be to put the size of the figure itself in TAW (e.g., total length, head+body length or shoulder height). So far, no TAW listings have this, but do we think this would be a good idea?

These are all good points, but in the case of the MBA collection, in particular, the advertised scales are accurate to pretty much every source at my disposal be it journal articles or published handbooks. The only outlier being the Giant Squid because, in 1999, it was still thought they could achieve 16+ meters in length. Otherwise, most of these figures correspond to the average length of the species and sex being depicted.

The MBA collection, relative to other lines, was more scrutinous about scale than others. So I feel within the context of this specific line, scale would be useful to include in the figure pages.

I suppose you could make clear that the scale is the manufacturer's information. I think it is valuable to know how they marketed the figures.

Yes, it would take a lot of time to add size information and I don't think we'll ever get it done for all figures. I am more wondering whether I should add it for new figures that I put onto TAW. It would be useful information, but it might be a bit odd to add it for just a few figures. I don't know.

rogerpgvg wrote:

I suppose you could make clear that the scale is the manufacturer's information. I think it is valuable to know how they marketed the figures.

Yes, it would take a lot of time to add size information and I don't think we'll ever get it done for all figures. I am more wondering whether I should add it for new figures that I put onto TAW. It would be useful information, but it might be a bit odd to add it for just a few figures. I don't know.

I wouldn't mind doing my part to add that information. The excel sheet I mentioned earlier contains the measurements for most of my marine-fauna figures. I think another issue is that certain measurements would be more valuable than others to document. For example, most figures for octopuses have the arms contracted, so arm-span may not too useful to record. Rather, mantle length should be prioritized if a viewer wants something they can use to determine the scale.

So I'm back. Made some additions

Basilosaurus

I've realised that when I was making my whale-sweep a while ago, I missed the Archaeoceti section. I've created pages for the PNSO 1:35 scale Basilosaurus and the CollectA Basilosaurus

Livyatan

This was the one I did the most work for. There seemed to have already been a page in-progress for the PNSO Livyatan, so all I needed to do was add the photo. However, I did need to create the actual page for the Livyatan and add it to the toothed whale gallery.

PNSO Blue whale

Created the page and added my photo of the PNSO Blue whale that just arrived for me.

cmj3 wrote:

So I'm back. Made some additions

Basilosaurus

I've realised that when I was making my whale-sweep a while ago, I missed the Archaeoceti section. I've created pages for the PNSO 1:35 scale Basilosaurus and the CollectA Basilosaurus

Livyatan

This was the one I did the most work for. There seemed to have already been a page in-progress for the PNSO Livyatan, so all I needed to do was add the photo. However, I did need to create the actual page for the Livyatan and add it to the toothed whale gallery.

PNSO Blue whale

Created the page and added my photo of the PNSO Blue whale that just arrived for me.

Great that you are back to give voice to these whales.
Yes, Kikimalou opened a page for Archaeoceti. Considering the way Cetaceans were grouped, it was not very attractive to open a page just for a single creature but it was needed.
Also, I saw Terribledactyl was working on that PNSO Livyatan page but for any reason it was not completed. It happens sometimes. It is also normal that we need to open species pages. We are doing it as long as a new species is added on TAW to avoid multiple empty species pages. I see you edited everything confortably but, if there is any help needed, you can always use this topic.

Realized some other stuff I missed.

Sperm whale was missing the 2018 CollectA and 2019 Safari figures

The Safari Sealife line was also missing the 2020 Sand tiger shark and 2019 killer whale. Just took care of all 4.

Currently the "Wild horse" page directs to the "Przewalski's Horse" page. However, not all wild horses are Przewalski's horses. Should we make a separate wild horse or feral horse page?

rogerpgvg wrote:

Currently the "Wild horse" page directs to the "Przewalski's Horse" page. However, not all wild horses are Przewalski's horses. Should we make a separate wild horse or feral horse page?

This is a good question. A feral horse page seems a big problem since some listed horse breeds are feral. Do you mean a page for horses identified as feral with unknown breed? Is there any?
About the wild horse redirect, maybe we can remove it once it is only being used to two figures: A New-Ray and a Britains.
https://toyanimal.info/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Wild_horse
They're both listed as Przewalski's Horse. If we assume this identification for both models, the wild horse redirect is useless and should be deleted.
We don't know a Tarpan figure yet, at least I can't remember one and TAW adjusts to our needings. If one is introduced, maybe we can open a page for wild horses with both pages of Przewalski's Horse and tarpan embbed.

The Britains and Newray are both known to be wild horses, but it is unclear what breed they are. (The Newray may be a mustang because Newray is American.) The best solution may be if they go under "Feral horse from unknown breed".

rogerpgvg wrote:

The Britains and Newray are both known to be wild horses, but it is unclear what breed they are. (The Newray may be a mustang because Newray is American.) The best solution may be if they go under "Feral horse from unknown breed".

Do you mean a subsection of Mixed and Non-breed Horses with unidentified feral horses or a specific page to these? About the New-Ray, I am also convinced it is a Mustang even if I am not sure New-Ray was based in the USA at the time of its release. The Britains I have no idea but it is not for sure a Pwrzwalski.

I think the Britains is likely to be a Mustang as it was included in the rodeo set as well.

thebritfarmer wrote:

I think the Britains is likely to be a Mustang as it was included in the rodeo set as well.

I can see Wild Horse Races used Mustangs until 1971 when it was forbidden. These horses were not known as Mustangs but as wild horses so I think we can conclude it is a Mustang. TAW also works with a certain level of conjecture. For example, the only kit fox listed on TAW was never marketed as a kit fox. It is just a fox of a desert tube with African and American animals. It could be a fennec or a kit fox but the color, position of the ears and collecting tradition aknowledged it as a kit fox even if we can't be 100% sure it was not supposed to be a fennec. I have also listed a few non identified horses as Arabian on TAW since they're relatively easy to identify.

I read a lot of horse books, anything vintage from the 19th century through til about the 1950's/60s, and any newer than that which are just the general second hand horse books I grew up with. Not only for the equine interest, but the gradual changing social history, and learning about people's knowledge and attitudes in the past. This reading comes in handy when analysing why vintage models were called certain things on release, and why we might've changed terms now!
From what I remember without actually getting out every book and making notes, up to around WW2-era publishing, the term 'wild horse' was commonly used to mean the feral North American populations. What we'd call mustangs today - other countries' feral horses which were sometimes rounded up and used, like Criollo and Brumby, were called by name, but 'wild horses' when written about by British authors were specifically an American West thing, talked about with cowboys, bronco-riding, colonial history, and existing as free-ranging herds on the plains.

Then from the 1960s as knowledge and publishing became more international, the term mustang got a mention, and took over. By the 1980s, it was the usual term, and 'wild horse' had been phased out. And it's not a breed name anyone horsey would use today. We might conversationally say 'wild' or more accurately 'feral', as descriptive terms when talking about individuals or populations, but generally will use the actual breed/type when discussing them as breeds.

The same goes for the model horse hobby, which loves classifying - with any kind of showing, a model requires allocation of a correct breed and strictly enforces the use of official terms : if anyone these days entered a model as 'wild horse' they'd probably get a little judge's comment saying 'disqualified, please assign a breed'

So yes, from the point of view from someone who's been through a lot of research and reading over the years, both from interest in real horses and enthusiam for model ones, my opinion would be that these 'wild horse' models are mustangs, from before the word mustang was universal, and if there's any decision to be made about where to file them on TAW, mustang would be the right page.