1/32 scale animals

Really lovely calves! That Takara one really does have an interesting pose! It's lovely that there can be so much variety in style of one animal!

thebritfarmer wrote:

I like the Schleich and the CollectA elephants! The Britains copy is wonderful!  If you ever come across another one please let me know. (or if anyone else has one they wish to part with let me know)

I have to admit that I have two, but they have different colours, so I am not quite ready to part with one yet. Hopefully, I'll find another one and hopefully not another one with a different colour .

Roger wrote:

It is incredible how distracted I am about babies. I hhave the CollectA Asian elephant adult but I was not sure a baby existed. Actually, it has better proprotions than its relative. Schleich babies always look very cute like recently born individuals.

Animal babies don't seem to be so popular among collectors. Perhaps that's because many collectors are mainly species collectors.

bmathison1972 wrote:

Not sure if this has been shown yet or not, but my daily Museum post today, the CollectA largetooth sawfish, scales 1:9.5-1:35

Thanks, this may be another sawfish I could get. I have the Papo. I don't remember why I went for that one, perhaps because it is a it smaller or because I was surer that it is a largetooth sawfish. Good to know that the CollectA is also a largetooth.

Bonnie wrote:

Really lovely calves! That Takara one really does have an interesting pose! It's lovely that there can be so much variety in style of one animal!

Yes, I find it interesting that there are a lot of different styles, but most of the modern elephant calves by the main brands have a similar style. Often, their elephant calves look better than their adults because the calves aren't so bulky, so exaggerated.


Now let’s look at my African elephant calves. I have many! We'll start with my vintage models:
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We have already seen the Britains calf (1964), but here it is again:
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Over the years, I have become so used to the way the Britains looks that any other elephant calves seem a bit odd. Considered more objectively, it may be the Britains that is the odd one: Perhaps it looks too old for its small size (3.7/118 cm at the shoulder).

My oldest elephant is the Reisler calf, which was first made in 1955. It has a shoulder height of 4.0/128 cm.
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Well, shoulder, it doesn’t really have a shoulder. It looks as if it has been scooped out, quite strange:
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The Hausser Elastolin from the late ‘60s or early ‘70s is very nice:
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It is quite large at 5.1/163 cm, but it is easy to imagine that it is an older calf.

The Marolin, which was first produced around the same time as the Hausser Elastolin, is the most evil-looking elephant I have:
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I suppose it is an African elephant because the Marolin adult elephant looks like an African, though the calf has some Asian characteristics. It is 4.4/141 cm at the shoulder.

Three Japanese-designed African elephants:
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Two by Bandai from their 2002 African set:
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The one with the trunk up is my smallest African elephant at 2.8/90 cm. The other one is 3.1/99 cm. They are not the most realistic looking elephants.

One by Eikoh (2014, 3.2/102 cm):
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Most of my African elephant calves are by the main brands:
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You may have started to wonder why I have so many elephants. Well, I often did not “deliberately” buy them, but got them together with sealife to “reduce” postage cost. In this way, I could save money by spending more .

Let’s look at them one-by-one. I don’t have any adult AAA elephants, which is surprising, because they are quite common in the UK, but I haven’t been able to find any for a reasonable price. However, I have three calves:
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They are very rounded. Not the best elephants, but the lying calf has a very unique pose and is the reason that I bought these three:
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The calf with the trunk sideways is 4.9/157 cm at the shoulder and the other standing elephant is 1 mm taller.

The Schleich 2012 elephant calf, which I got from Christophe a few years ago:
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It is 4.4/141 cm at the shoulder and looks nice enough.

Three Papo calves:
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Probably my favourite elephant calf is the Papo trumpeting calf from 2008. It is also the largest with a 5.8/186 cm shoulder height, but because it has relatively small ears, I find that it works OK as an older calf. Its trunk is rather short, but this somehow doesn’t bother me.
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I probably like the Papo trumpeting calf because it is quite similar to the Britains:
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On the other hand, I am not very keen on the Papo elephant calf from 2015:
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I find that its pose is rather awkward. It would probably be OK if it was a very young calf, but it is too large for that (4.9/157 cm). For an older calf, the very flexible way it moves its body seems unnatural.

I prefer the earlier 2004 model, which has about the same height (5.0/160 cm) but doesn’t have such an awkward pose and looks leaner.
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The Safari from 2005 is very cute. Not so realistic, but I like it. It has a shoulder height of 4.0/128 cm.
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And finally, I have one Mojö elephant calf, from 2011. Perhaps not as good as the Mojö adult elephants, but not bad either. It has very large ears, but that’s typical for very young elephants and they often flap them when they play. For 1/32 scale, the problem is that this calf is quite large (4.5/144 cm) and so it cannot be very young.
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they all look great lined up! I really like the unusual pose of the lying down one. I had no idea there were so many calves out there that would fit as 1/32nd scale.

Interestingly the curled ears of the Marolin one indicates a poorly elephant.
When babies suffer in the wild it is easy to see these curled ears and recognize that they are not well.
See here
and here
The Sheldrick Trust has many photos of these babies as they take in the orphaned babies and look after them before reintegrating them back into the wild.

Great collection, baby elephants sure are cute. :)

On the topic of baby elephants I though I would show these. They can be ordered indifferent scales, but think they look very good, a little expensive and you have to paint them though. I think they would compliment my Britains collection?

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sunny wrote:

they all look great lined up! I really like the unusual pose of the lying down one. I had no idea there were so many calves out there that would fit as 1/32nd scale.

Interestingly the curled ears of the Marolin one indicates a poorly elephant.
When babies suffer in the wild it is easy to see these curled ears and recognize that they are not well.
See here
and here
The Sheldrick Trust has many photos of these babies as they take in the orphaned babies and look after them before reintegrating them back into the wild.

Yes, that may be the reason why it doesn't look too happy.

Probably hard to imagine, but I've been quite selective in buying elephants. There are lots more, adults as well as young ones.

thebritfarmer wrote:

On the topic of baby elephants I though I would show these. They can be ordered indifferent scales, but think they look very good, a little expensive and you have to paint them though. I think they would compliment my Britains collection?

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I really like the Mininature animals, not just the elephants but other species too: They usually look more realistic than toy animals and even figures by Japanese companies. Many have interesting poses too. The problem for me is that I don't enjoy painting and I am terrible at it too. I bought three Mininature figures a few years ago and I still haven't painted them. The painted models in these topics look absolutely fantastic:
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Wow some beautifully painted figures. I think I will buy some of the animals that Britains never made and give them a Britains paint job staying away from animals that may have a complicated paint scheme. I will stay away from dramatic action poses and just choose a male and female from the species and perhaps a baby if available.

I thought I had all the elephants I ever wanted, but when I presented my ranking, I realised this wasn’t true! So I got a few more. First, Rogério sent me three elephants:
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Two are 2nd generation Schleich African elephants, produced from 2004 until 2012. This is the adult female:
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The obvious interesting feature of this elephant is the “lazy” trunk resting on one of her tusks, which makes her stand out among my elephants. She has a shoulder height of 8.4/269 cm.
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Here she is with the Mojö elephant bull:
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The other one is the 2nd generation elephant calf:
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I generally prefer the Schleich elephant calves to the adults. The adults are usually bulky with large heads, ears and tusks, presumably to make them look impressive, whereas with the calves, Schleich seems to accentuate the cuteness aspect. I think that works better and this baby elephant is a good example of it. I know that Schleich has probably done this because it is easier to produce and less fragile, but I like the way his ears are wrapped around his head and body; you often see this with baby elephants. It is 4.5/144 cm at the shoulder. Here it is with the 3rd generation calf:
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And a comparison with some other African elephant calves:
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I now have the complete 2nd generation family :
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Schleich’s 2nd generation elephants aren’t the most realistic, but because they look similar in colour and style, they are great as a family.

Rogério also gave me a Papo African elephant. It was released in the same year as the 2nd generation Schleichs (retired in 2016), but it couldn’t be more different in style:
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The smaller head, ears and tusks, as well as the thinner legs make it much more elegant. The tail and trunk have somewhat square bents in them, but they aren’t impossible and aren’t distracting from the overall sculpting quality. She (I think it’s a female) has a nice pose, looking sidewards in a playful way. She is 8.9/285 cm at the shoulder.
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For anyone looking for a companion for their Britains elephants, this Papo is an excellent choice. It is not only very similar in colour, but also in style. Especially when you compare it to the Britains elephant cow, you see that the thickness of the legs and the trunk, and the size of the head are very similar. Actually the style of the Papo and the Britains female is more similar than that of the Britains male and female. It’s easy to imagine that if Britains had made another African elephant, they would have made the Papo. I don’t know whether the Papo’s colour is always so similar to the Britains: Rogério said that this is an early version of the Papo; later versions may have a different plastic and colour.
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Here is a comparison with the Eikoh, which is also quite similar in style to the Papo:
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And here with my other Papo adults:
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It looks much better than the somewhat awkward looking trumpeting elephant. Perhaps better than the charging elephant too, though that may depend on whether you want a friendly or an angry elephant. A good feature of the friendly elephant is the nicely modelled head; it looks more accurate than that of the angry elephant. I also prefer the lighter colour of the friendly elephant.

Next time, I’ll present a few more recent acquisitions. You may be pleased to know that they will be the last elephants I am going to show you for a while!

More great additions !

When Rogério said he was going to send me his Schleich elephants, I realised that I was mainly interested in them for historical reasons. I then started looking for the 1st generation Schleich elephants and found these two:
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They look funny! However, from a historical perspective, they are very interesting, because they were some of the first models in the Schleich Wildlife range, which became an extremely popular series of animal models and influenced subsequent models by all the major (and many minor) brands. They were also produced in a period that very few other 1:32 scale wildlife figures were released.

The oldest elephant is the female, which is from 1989 (retired in 2004 when it was replaced by the 2nd generation). She is 7.9/253 cm at the shoulder, so a bit smaller than most standard-sized African elephants.
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She looks very toyish and I am sure that Schleich didn’t have the intention to make a very realistic looking elephant. Her ears look particularly odd, but they have a very interesting detail that none of my other elephant figures has: You can see the veins on the back of her ears:
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The male, which has exactly the same shoulder height, was released three years later:
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It is surprising that the male has smaller tusks and ears than the female. I find that he looks less odd, more attractive than the female, even though it is clearly still a toy rather than an accurate model. He doesn’t have veins in his ears.

A comparison with the 2nd generation:
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The 2nd generation is clearly more realistic, but I think some of the 1st generation features (bulky, large head and ears, thick tusks) are still present even in the current 4th generation of Schleich African elephants.

Thinking about animal figures in the late 1980s and 1990s always makes me sad because major companies such as Britains, Starlux, VEB Plaho and Hausser Elastolin went bankrupt or stopped producing wildlife models. Very few 1:32 scale animals were produced and those that were produced were often very toyish. Imagine you were a child during this period and you discovered that the Britains elephants were taken out of production and instead you had to make do with the Schleichs:
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What a disappointment that would have been! Of course, Schleich would go on to produce good animal figures in later years, but it would take a while before they got there. These 1st generation elephants are a good example of that. At the same time, that makes them historically very interesting.

Because I now had the 1st generation African elephants, I also wanted a 1st generation Asian elephant. They were introduced quite a bit later, the first being the Asian bull elephant from 1998 (retired in 2012):
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It is obvious that by this time, the Schleich style had more matured. Although it is a typical bulky Schleich elephant, it has a very friendly appearance and it looks much less awkward than the 1st generation African elephants.

Two lads having a good time:
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A comparison with the Papo from 2011, which is about equally bulky but more realistic:
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And a comparison with the early Britains, which is much more delicate:
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In 2005, Schleich added a female Asian elephant and a calf (both retired in 2012). I don’t care too much about getting the female, but I got the calf:
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Here compared with the 2nd generation Asian elephant calf:
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Together with the elephant bull:
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An overview of all my recent additions:
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And to finish my elephant extravaganza, a few more overviews/comparisons:
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Thank you all for your interest and your comments!

Those are awesome! Love the shelf display, like a scene from the Jungle Book :)

Your posts about these elephants are really interesting. They're somewhat lost on the 29th page of this topic but I'm glad I never miss them. Crossing generations of animal figures is one of my most interesting subjects. You can't see it in my collection, I tend to replace my models by more realistic renditions regarding major brands but it can be seen in my collection of foxes. Though, as elephants are even more popular, they document more precisely the way this industry has been developed.
It is a fact, kids used with the Britains elephants, are usually not very excited about the Schleich elephants, especially the earlier generations even if I agree the design hasn't changed that much. We witnessed it with collectors like Christophe, Willy and a few others. Though, during the first years of STS, 90% of our community was composed of devoted Schleich collectors and they loved the Schleich elephants. Especially the 2nd generation was quite popular despite some criticism about their color. Schleich popularized this kind of design with relatively chubby figures with very realistic details and good quality in terms of manufacturing. Often the proportions are half way between a plush and a real animal. It is the toyish touch we used to describe these models.
Though, the generation used with these Schleich designsis also usually not big fan of the older Britains models. Schleich educated their collectors to appreciate a good painting quality, a good pvc matterial and friendly looking faces. Thus, Britains models seemed very outdated to these younger collectors.
Britains and Schleich share an important point, they are the most popular and influencial brands of their respective generations. I am so glad you enjoyed these elephants, they were litterally abandoned here. though, after all those excuses to get more elephants, even the first Schleich generation, I don't understand how can't you find an excuse to get the CollectA Asian elephant. It is weird but the most detailed you can find.

the Papo elephant is a beauty! What a perfect size for 1/32nd :) how kind of Rogerio :)
it is on my wish list now.
the photos of all your herd look so impressive Roger !
I had no idea there were so many eles out there at this size

These historical Schleich elephants are wonderful, I'm glad you decided to show them here! Equally wonderful are the group photos of your elephants, they look really impressive as a herd!

It's indeed quite surprising how well my elephants go together as a herd given that I have so many different styles and colours. When I put them together, their sizes matter more than the style and colour details. My elephant herds are a bit different from real herds though. Real herds mostly consist of females and young elephants, but most of my elephants are male. There also seems to be a generation missing from my herds: I have adults and young calves but no adolescents in between. My female elephants must get a lot of twins and triplets, otherwise I can't explain how so few females can have so many babies.

Roger wrote:

It is a fact, kids used with the Britains elephants, are usually not very excited about the Schleich elephants, especially the earlier generations even if I agree the design hasn't changed that much. We witnessed it with collectors like Christophe, Willy and a few others. Though, during the first years of STS, 90% of our community was composed of devoted Schleich collectors and they loved the Schleich elephants. Especially the 2nd generation was quite popular despite some criticism about their color. Schleich popularized this kind of design with relatively chubby figures with very realistic details and good quality in terms of manufacturing. Often the proportions are half way between a plush and a real animal. It is the toyish touch we used to describe these models.

Yes, the early Schleichs aren't all bad, they do have better quality paint and plastic than the vintage companies. I can get over the fact that they look a bit awkward, it's just that they didn't make their animals to scale, I can't get over that .

Roger wrote:

I am so glad you enjoyed these elephants, they were litterally abandoned here. though, after all those excuses to get more elephants, even the first Schleich generation, I don't understand how can't you find an excuse to get the CollectA Asian elephant. It is weird but the most detailed you can find.

Probably very hard to believe after I have bombarded you with elephants for weeks, but I am very selective in the elephants I collect . I am much less picky with other species.

I think adolescent animals are a missed opportunity, across the species and brands, really - I can't think of many releases for partly-grown individuals? They'd be such a good way to extend family groups, whether for collectors or for kids to play with. In the model horse world we do get a few yearling sculpts (very few, compared to young foals) so that counts, but for wildlife figures I can't recall having seen any?

Very true. Interestingly, Britains made some young animals in lead, like a young Asian elephant, young rhino, young giraffe and young crocodile. They were smaller than the adults but larger than the babies.

George wrote:

I think adolescent animals are a missed opportunity, across the species and brands, really - I can't think of many releases for partly-grown individuals? They'd be such a good way to extend family groups, whether for collectors or for kids to play with. In the model horse world we do get a few yearling sculpts (very few, compared to young foals) so that counts, but for wildlife figures I can't recall having seen any?

I believe I can recall a few ones, a indisputable adolescent is Mojö Fun mountain lion female it already doe not have the spots we find on babies up to 6 months but it still has the blue eyes typical for youngsters up to 16 months when the color changes to yellow. A more famous adolescent is the Papo young lion which we thought it was a young lioness. Though, it is an adolescent lion, older than a baby but he still does not show a mane. Schleich also released a young lion but with a blond mane, maybe a young adult, not an adolescent.

Edit: This Schleich elephant young Should be mentioned since it is slightly larger than the babies, it shows tiny tusks and it was sold as a young elephant and not as a baby.

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There are a number of traits in this model which suggest it to be based on Tylosaurus nepaeolicus, but if you want to consider it T.proriger (it's still possible, they're chronospecies), then it's 1:32 for KUVP 5033 ("Bunker", largest specimen).

That’s an interesting sea animal, I think the first prehistoric sea life in this topic. 1:32 scale seems well suited for prehistoric life because there were many large animals. Small animals too, but the larger animals are often best-known.

Let’s have a look at some current sea life that is much smaller: Two animals from the Qualia Caprium series. This series was started in 2020 and consists of sea life in a transparent ball. I have found two that are 1:32 scale. First up, a green sea turtle with hatchling from their first Caprium series:
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You can open the ball:
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And take the scenery out of the ball:
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The turtles can be taken out, but there is a problem: The adult has a peg on its belly.
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I don’t like using a knife on animals, but this had to be done. It’s OK to display the turtles in the ball as a single figure, but it just doesn’t work if I want to use them in a larger display. The adult needed a little surgery, quite painless:
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Now I can display them with my other animals. Here with my other green sea turtles:
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We’ll come back to the other turtles, but let’s first measure the Qualia. The adult has a straight carapace length of 3.4/109 cm. That’s a large green sea turtle, but not impossible. The largest straight carapace length of a green sea turtle I could find in the literature was 121 cm for a turtle in Florida, reported by Bjorndal et al. (1983). They may even get larger: Almeida et al. (2011) reported turtles with curved carapace lengths of up to 143 cm in Trindade island, 1100 km off the coast of Brazil. Using a formula to convert this to straight carapace length, this would be 135 cm. Goshe (2009) estimated that green sea turtles matured at 44 years in Florida and 42.5 years in Costa Rica, by which time they were at least 83 cm in straight carapace length.

It's very cute that the Qualia Caprium has a hatchling on its back, but it isn’t very realistic because sea turtles don’t raise their young. Still, I suppose that it isn’t completely impossible that the hatchling accidentally ended up on the back of the adult. It would normally quickly slide off, but perhaps a mollusc got stuck to both, so the hatchling ended up getting a lift. Anything is possible in the 1:32 wildlife reserve, what a magical place!

Let’s now have a look at my other green sea turtles. Qualia made another one as part of their “Join Collection“ in 2019. I showed it previously in this topic together with the other turtle species in this series. It is 2.7/86 cm in straight carapace length, so a fairly small, young turtle of around 45 years old or so.
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I also have two from Kaiyodo. This is the one from their Sumida Aquarium series (2012):
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Like the Qualia Caprium, it is 3.4/109 cm.

Finally, a Kaiyodo from their Japanese Aquarium series (2015). I am very fond of my sea turtles because they look very different from my other sea life and they are more colourful than the usually grey dolphins, whales and sharks that are so common in my 1:32 marine park. This sea turtle is one of the very best:
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The swimming action makes it very lively. It is 3.3/106 cm.

It’s interesting that my green sea turtles all have very different colours. I don’t know which colour is most accurate. Looking at photos, it appears that they can have a variety of colours, probably depending on the type of vegetation that grows on their carapace and perhaps the colour of the water. The reason why they are called green sea turtles is not because their carapace is green but because their fat has that colour.
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Next time, a Qualia spotted seal and his friends.

Those turtles are magnificent models.
I never expected to see a human made lander module to land in a comet so I don't think it is completely impossible for a hatchling to take a ride.
About colors, Wikipedia explains it:

"The carapace of the turtle has various color patterns that change over time. Hatchlings of Chelonia mydas, like those of other marine turtles, have mostly black carapaces and light-colored plastrons. Carapaces of juveniles turn dark brown to olive, while those of mature adults are either entirely brown, spotted or marbled with variegated rays. Underneath, the turtle's plastron is hued yellow. C. mydas limbs are dark-colored and lined with yellow, and are usually marked with a large dark brown spot in the center of each appendage."

what absolute beauties they all are! just stunning, such magnificent colours and full of life, definitely a highlight of any sea collection!

Thank you both. Yes, there are some parallels to landing on a comet.

In their second Caprium series from 2021, Qualia made a spotted seal. Again, it comes in a ball:
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Let’s open it:
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The scenery can be taken out. I thought the seal would have a peg like the green sea turtle that I could remove with a little surgery, but there is a different problem here: The seal is glued to the scenery.
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So I started pulling it carefully. No movement. I pulled harder and it started to move. Pulled even harder and then … crack! I thought I had broken it, but it came off nicely:
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It’s a bit difficult to measure, but I’d say that it is 5.8/186 cm in length (without flippers). Most of the time spotted seals don’t get larger than about 180 cm. For example, a graph in Naito and Nishiwaki (1972) shows that the largest male was about 180 cm and largest female about 172 cm, while the smallest seal over 5 years old was about 137 cm. However, a graph in Quakenbush et al. (2009) shows that the largest spotted seal was about 205 cm. This was clearly an outlier; the next largest was about 188 cm. They also found that spotted seals mature at about 3.5-4 years, when they are about 130 cm. So in conclusion, the Qualia is very large, but probably not quite impossible.

Here is a comparison with the Qualia Caprium green sea turtle:
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Spotted seals are often made by Japanese brands because they live in Japanese waters. Colorata made one too (in 2004), which I’ve shown here before:
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It’s much smaller, 4.8/154 cm in length.

Kaiyodo made them too. This is the spotted seal from the ChocoQ series from 2003:
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It’s 5.0/160 cm in length.

And the most wonderful of them all, the Kaiyodo from the Japan Aquarium series (2011):
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Hard to measure, but I estimate that it is 5.6/179 cm in length.
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The pair of swiming figures is divinal!
My collecting orientation tells me the CollectA model is the perfect for me but I really recognize a superior artistic levell in some of these Japanese models.

What do you do with those sceneries?

Collecting to scale means I get some very high quality figures and also some low quality. I think that keeps it interesting. Even though there is a wide range of quality, when I put the figures together, I find that it looks remarkably good because sizewise they all go together.

I keep the scenery like I keep boxes, but I have to say they aren't much more useful than the boxes because I very rarely display them on my shelves.