1/32 scale animals

Roger, of course I understand but it is nice to put you under pressure.
Just kidding but let me give you an example. I'm not 100% sure if I keep my whole Play visions Weasels set. I think so but I also remember seeing on forum some people searching for a specific figure. The wolverine is clearly one I could give or trade, I have all wolverines from major brands and the PV is a poor representative when compared with the Safari or Mojö, for example. As I like the set, I've been keeping it and ironically, if I really start my 1:15 or 1:16 scale project, I suspect the little PV will be the only one to work at this scale even if it feels so small to me.
About the Sahara Desert Toob, it is not completely true the only figure I want of it is the fennec. Scorpion, desert monitor and horned viper would easily join my collection. It seems to be a very good toob, the cheetah is impressive to this scale.About the fennec, I think I like the toob version more than the standard sized one. About the Addax, it is just 2,54 cm tall at the shoulders what is probably to small for you. It is a pity because addax figures are rare. On the other hand the Dorcas gazelle is too big. Gwangi provided the measurments on ATB. Unfortunately, I think this tube doesn't have anything for you.

At 7.0 cm, this Colorata sea scorpion (Acutiramus macrophthalmus) comes to a scale of 1:24-1:35

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Interesting prehistoric animal, the size of the claws is frightening.

It can be funny what we value as collectors. A complete Play visions set wouldn't have much additional value to me because the Play visions sets aren't boxed (I think?) I enjoy having the models in their original tube or box because it tells me how they were sold, how they were marketed. The Papo tube itself is very poor, so it isn't as if I value the tube itself, the value for me is in having the complete set.

I have several Britains trade boxes like this one:
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The carton box isn't anything special in itself and the animals in it aren't either because I have several of them. This box is actually the most interesting one because it has 12 different animals, but I also have boxes with 12 gorillas, 12 polar bears, 12 hippo babies, 12 lionesses. I have no idea why I need so many of these boxes . And it is hard for me to explain why I would value these boxes less if one of the 12 animals were missing.

Kikimalou wrote:

Poor Kiki  Each time I look at this toob, I refrain from buying it, the price is a little prohibitive when you only plan to keep one animal, even an Indian Rhinoceros.

It's the same problem I had. Ultimately, I convinced myself that the animals that aren't 1/32 scale aren't a waste of money and that I enjoy them too. Once you have the whole set, you may find that the other animals are also useful for your "all scales" collection. I also think this is likely to be a rare set in the future because it doesn't sell well due to its price.

I bought this Papo tube too because of the pyrenean bear, the beautiful tiger and above all, the leopard that is surely at 1/32 scale! :)

Roger, I think those who have been participating in discussions on forum, can easily recall other collectors who valued this kind of things.
It happens with many other collectors. I remember the discussions about keeping the tags, we all know they're ugly, they do not help the figure to display and removes the realism we love to see when displaying it. We also recall easily collectors loving to keep their figures in their original blisters. It is not always because they preserve their value as a collectible for a future sale but I think it is also part of this hobby. Boxes and complete sets are collectible elements on its own. I'm not this kind of collector but I also have a few exceptions. A few of my special Schleich are still in their original bag or blister, I keep the two PNSO boxes and I also keep a box of Schleich Mountain animals and even if I only needed one of them, I will keep the trio because I like all the models and it is nice to preserve the whole set.
Another example but this time without pacaging, is my Maia & Borges water and lake birds, the swan is not even my favorite one and the mallard is dispensable but I feel a kind of emptiness if I get rid of one of them. It does not happen with the majority of the series, maybe just with those I'm more attached to.

rogerpgvg wrote:

Kikimalou wrote:

Poor Kiki  Each time I look at this toob, I refrain from buying it, the price is a little prohibitive when you only plan to keep one animal, even an Indian Rhinoceros.

It's the same problem I had. Ultimately, I convinced myself that the animals that aren't 1/32 scale aren't a waste of money and that I enjoy them too. Once you have the whole set, you may find that the other animals are also useful for your "all scales" collection. I also think this is likely to be a rare set in the future because it doesn't sell well due to its price.

In fact the toob only interests me because there is an Indian rhino that I like. For the others, they are not really useful for me to complete my collection, I prefer to keep space for animals that I really like or that give meaning to a shelf.
25€ for a mini model, it stings a bit.
Of course I understand your point of view.

Roger wrote:

Roger, I think those who have been participating in discussions on forum, can easily recall other collectors who valued this kind of things.
It happens with many other collectors. I remember the discussions about keeping the tags, we all know they're ugly, they do not help the figure to display and removes the realism we love to see when displaying it. We also recall easily collectors loving to keep their figures in their original blisters. It is not always because they preserve their value as a collectible for a future sale but I think it is also part of this hobby. Boxes and complete sets are collectible elements on its own. I'm not this kind of collector but I also have a few exceptions. A few of my special Schleich are still in their original bag or blister, I keep the two PNSO boxes and I also keep a box of Schleich Mountain animals and even if I only needed one of them, I will keep the trio because I like all the models and it is nice to preserve the whole set.
Another example but this time without pacaging, is my Maia & Borges water and lake birds, the swan is not even my favorite one and the mallard is dispensable but I feel a kind of emptiness if I get rid of one of them. It does not happen with the majority of the series, maybe just with those I'm more attached to.

Yes I know and I can understand, but as you know I'm allergic to that kind of stuff. I don't want to keep something for economic reasons, nor do I want to complete a series just because I feel obligated to have them all and the wrappers are temporarily on display in my trash can.
I understand of course that others work differently but it is really essential for my mental health to avoid all that.

Caracal wrote:

I bought this Papo tube too because of the pyrenean bear, the beautiful tiger and above all, the leopard that is surely at 1/32 scale! :)

I thought the Papo leopard was too large, but after doing some more research, I think it may just be OK for 1:32 scale.
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It has a head+body length of 4.5/144 cm. Or perhaps 4.6/147 cm, but photos of skeletons show that a leopard’s tail starts quite far up, so I’d say 4.5 cm.
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Interestingly, the sale listing of this skeleton says that it has a length of 145 cm, though that is probably the length of the base rather than head+body length.

The maximum head+body length that I have been able to find is 142 cm (minimum 93 cm). It is mentioned in the book “Mammals of the Soviet Union“ by Heptner and Sludskii (1992). They say that it was the largest leopard from Sri Lanka with a body length of 142 cm and a tail length of 96.5 cm. This gives it a total length including tail of 238.5 cm.

However, Farhadinia et al. (2014, Zoology in the Middle East) show that the largest Persian leopard in their sample (N= 33) had a total length of 240 cm and Stander (1997, African Journal of Ecology) reports that the largest total length of the Namibian leopards that they measured was 242 cm (N = 14). So it appears that leopards from other populations can grow larger than the largest Sri Lankan leopard. These articles don’t provide head+body length, but head+body length is quite consistently between 57 and 63% of a leopard’s total length, so it is likely that these leopards had a larger head+body length than the largest leopard from Sri Lanka. Based on this, the Papo has been accepted in the 1:32 reserve!
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Heptner and Sludskii (1992) report one larger leopard, a Caucasian (or Persian) leopard with a head+body length of 171 cm. The original source of this measurement is an article from 1924 (Bil'kevich, 1924, Turkestanskii  Okhotnik). It may be that Persian leopards are substantially larger than leopards in other regions, but the above-mentioned data from Farhadinia et al. (2014) suggest that this is not the case. It is difficult to rule out that a 171 cm leopard once existed, but such a leopard would be truly exceptional. Most likely this measurement is erroneous.

Reported leopard sizes are often wrong because total length including tail is reported as head+body length. For example, Wikipedia says that the head+body length of leopards ranges between 90 and 196 cm with a 66 to 102 cm long tail. Other websites mention similarly large sizes. I haven’t found any original sources that report such large leopards. Confusion between total length and head+body length is quite a common problem with length measurements, not just for leopards.

So the Papo leopard joins the 1:32 reserve. It is the second leopard to enter the reserve thanks to Alain. Here it is with Alain’s repainted Britains. The Britains has a head+body length of 4.0/128 cm, a more average length than the Papo (minimum leopard size is 93 cm).
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Even before the measurements, I am convinced you were tempted to join it to your 1:32 reserve. That's a figure with a cool pose, reminescent of the Britains model, only slightly larger and bulkier.
It is also a pose that does not make it look that large. There's a huge variation in sizes among leopard subspecies and populations. Having differently sized ones only reflect the reality. I love to see it together with the fantastic one repainted by Alain.

Oh I am not as meticulous as you are Roger about scales identification and I am happy that my "feeling" was not so wrong! It must be a persian or namibian leopard..

1:32 Acrocanthosaurus from PNSO

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Looks similar to a Tyrannosaurus rex, but are they related?

rogerpgvg wrote:

Looks similar to a Tyrannosaurus rex, but are they related?

Very distantly, their common ancestor split something around 140 milions of years before Tyrannosaurus appeared. But the big head small arms combo is really effective with the theropod body plan, and it evolved many times.

Thanks, that's quite distant.

Phidal is a company that publishes educational books for children. Some of their books include toob-like animal figures. I recently bought the “World of Sharks” book:
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It was a blind buy because it was hard to work out from the marketing photos what species of shark figures it contained, let alone what their size was. It worked out well because 7 or 8 of the 10 sharks are 1:32 scale and most are quite rare species at this scale. Let’s have a look.

This is the mako shark:
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They don’t say what species of mako shark it is, but the length of its fins probably suggests that it is a shortfin mako shark. Its total length is 8.3/266 cm. I have been a bit lazy in finding size information for sharks because the IUCN Red List is a well-researched site that provides shark size information with references. According to this list, the largest shortfin mako shark was 445 cm in total length, males mature at 166–204 cm and females at 265–312 cm.

Here it is with my other (shortfin) mako shark from the Safari Pelagic Fish Toob (8.1/259 cm):
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A bull shark:
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It is 7.6/243 cm. It is usually reported to reach 340–366 cm total maximum length. Males mature at 157–226 cm and females mature at 180–230 cm. It looks a bit different from the Colorata bull shark (10.3/330 cm), but not too different, you can see that they are the same species:
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Then there is a hammerhead shark. It’s probably meant to be a great hammerhead, but it might also be a scalloped hammerhead.
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Scalloped hammerheads reach a maximum size of 370–420 cm total length, males mature at 140–198 cm and females at 200–250 cm. With a length of 8.0/256 cm, it is a good size for a mature scalloped hammerhead. Scalloped hammerheads are very common in the 1:32 marine reserve. Here we have from left to right, top to bottom: Aquaworld, Kaiyodo Aquatales, Kitan, Phidal, Colorata Sharks of the World:
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Sizewise, the Phidal is also possible as an adult great hammerhead. According to the IUCN Red List, males mature at 225–269 cm and females at 210–300 cm. Great hammerheads can reach 400 cm, so they are not that different in size from scalloped hammerheads. There are some reports that great hammerheads can reach 550 to 610 cm, but I haven’t been able to find hard evidence for this. Here is the Phidal with the Schleich (great?) hammerhead, which is 16.0/512 cm. The Schleich is waiting until a hammerhead over 5 metres is discovered; until that time, she is not allowed to enter the 1:32 reserve.
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The book doesn’t tell us what species of hammerhead the Phidal is, but the smaller photo on the left seems to be a scalloped hammerhead. Not sure about the larger photo.
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The thresher shark is another ambiguous figure. With a total length of 9.6/307 cm, it works well as a pelagic thresher shark. Male and female pelagic threshers mature at 250–300 cm and they attain a maximum size of 365 cm total length. It doesn’t have the white patch above the pectoral fins that is typical of pelagic threshers, but the figure may not be sufficiently detailed to show this. Common threshers do not have this white patch and are generally larger (maximum 573 cm). The Phidal isn’t completely impossible as an adult common thresher because males mature at 260–420 cm, and females at 260–465 cm.
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No comparisons with other thresher sharks because it is my only 1:32 scale thresher!
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The tiger shark:
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It is 9.1/291 cm in total length. Males mature at 250-305 cm and females at 274-345 cm, while they rarely grow to over 500 cm. Here is a comparison with two Colorata tiger sharks, from the Sharks of the World Deluxe box (left, 11.0/352 cm) and from the “non-deluxe” box (9.4/301 cm):
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The sand tiger shark:
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It is 8.2/262 cm. Sand tiger sharks reach a maximum size of 325 cm total length, males mature at 190–200 cm and females at 220–235 cm. The Phidal is similar to the Colorata sand tiger shark (8.7/278 cm). Well, it should be because it is the same species.
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It is controversial whether the goblin shark should be admitted to the 1:32 reserve.
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Its total length is 7.9/253 cm. Little is known about goblin sharks, but the IUCN Red List says that males mature between 260-380 cm and females at lengths over 400 cm. The largest recorded goblin shark was 410 cm, but it is almost certain that they can reach much larger sizes. Here we have it with the Playvisions goblin shark (7.8/250 cm) I got from Rogério and the Colorata goblin shark (10.4/333 cm). All different colours!
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Finally, Phidal claims that this is a saw shark:
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However, it is clearly a sawfish. They also get it wrong in their book, where they show photos of sawfish rather than saw sharks. It is “just” a children’s book, but they should nevertheless get their facts right.
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What species of sawfish is it? Hard to tell, perhaps it looks most like a narrow sawfish and sizewise, this works well. The Phidal sawfish is 10.0/320 cm and male arrow sawfish mature at around 200 cm total length and females at 230 cm, with a maximum size of at least 470 cm. The Phidal’s size isn’t completely impossible for a smalltooth or largetooth sawfish either. Here we have it with the Papo sawfish, which at 18.0/576 cm, could be a largetooth sawfish, which have been reported to reach up to 656 cm.
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Two of the sharks in the book, the great white and the whale shark, are too small for 1:32 scale, but they are common species at this scale, so that’s OK with me. In summary, the Phidal book contains an interesting variety of shark (and one bony fish!) species. Although it does not have the very highest quality models (more like Safari Ltd toobs than Colorata boxes), the sharks are quite recognisable.

For a collector like you that is very scale-conscious, this book is a great find! Figures aren't too bad, either!

Some neat species there, congrats! I tried looking for more from the animal model series but only found one on horses and other cartoon characters... any idea what else there is out there?

Interesting shark figures

Although this is "blind" fishing, the net is not hauled up empty. I find them less beautiful than the Colorata but nevertheless very acceptable for miniatures of this size.

I think the size of the figure is a good criterium to determine the species when referring to ambiguous representatives as it is the hammerhead or the thresher shark. Hard to see from this angle but the hammer does not look as straight as the one of a great but the hammer is not the only feature that distinguishes both species, pelvic fins should be quite different too. I agree this set pairs nicely with some tube figures.
Oh, surely goblin is one of the species you should consider a bigger tolerance regarding sizes, I'm sure much larger specimens will be found. On the other hand, I think it is better to wait the Schleich hammerhead to shrink a little. I don't think such a large great hammerhead will ever be found.

bmathison1972 wrote:

For a collector like you that is very scale-conscious, this book is a great find! Figures aren't too bad, either!

Because sharks grow throughout their lifetime (I think), each species has a wide size range, so it is relatively easy to get sharks at the right scale. It makes size comparisons less interesting because it is hard to say what a typical size is. In fact, juveniles of many shark species are more commonly seen than adults.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

Some neat species there, congrats! I tried looking for more from the animal model series but only found one on horses and other cartoon characters... any idea what else there is out there?

I made an overview on TAW, but for some reason Phidal isn't appearing on the main page of companies: TAW Phidal. There is also a link to the Phidal website.

Kikimalou wrote:

Although this is "blind" fishing, the net is not hauled up empty. I find them less beautiful than the Colorata but nevertheless very acceptable for miniatures of this size.

The Colorata are better but more expensive and you don't get a play mat

Roger wrote:

Hard to see from this angle but the hammer does not look as straight as the one of a great but the hammer is not the only feature that distinguishes both species, pelvic fins should be quite different too.

The hammer isn't completely straight, but also not as scalloped as in a scalloped hammerhead shark. How do the pelvic fins differ?

Roger wrote:

I think it is better to wait the Schleich hammerhead to shrink a little. I don't think such a large great hammerhead will ever be found.

Most sources mention 610 cm as the maximum size. It comes from a book by Compagno (1984), but this book doesn't say what the original source is. I don't think such a large great hammerhead hasn't been seen since the publication of this book, but it is possible that current sharks are smaller than in the past due to overfishing.

I can't see the play mate

rogerpgvg wrote:

Roger wrote:

Hard to see from this angle but the hammer does not look as straight as the one of a great but the hammer is not the only feature that distinguishes both species, pelvic fins should be quite different too.

The hammer isn't completely straight, but also not as scalloped as in a scalloped hammerhead shark. How do the pelvic fins differ?

Great hammerhead sharks' pelvic fins have curved rear margins, while the scalloped hammerhead has straight posterior edges.
I copied this text and the word "quite" from my post was dispensable.

Most hammerhead shark figures seem to mix features from different species. It is possible that some sculptors use as reference pictures about hammerheads without worrying with the features of each species. If you adda pair of cephalofoils to a generic shark sculpt, you'll get a hammerhead.

About the sizes, that's a tendency that researchers will find larger sized goblins and smaller hammerheads. However, we never know if the largest of ever is still to be found, I remember that sunfish recently found in Portuguese seas which turned to be the heaviest bony fish of all time. The same can easily happen with sharks so, I'd not discard figures that are slightly larger than your desired scale.

Then it's a great hammerhead because the pelvic fins have very clear curved margins. (You can see this in the photos above.)

The more I read about sea animals, the more I realise how little we know about them. We never know what we'll find one day. This is an interesting graph from Randhawa and Poulin (2014) showing the number of discovered shark species :
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Yes, it is impressive. I enjoy the fact so much investment is made to search for signs of life in other planets but probably they could find more interesting things if they invested more to study the obscure parts of our oceans.
It is always a problem to find a correct species identification for hammerheads and we often revisit TAW pages because most of them are not marketed to the species level.
Here is a good example of how useful it would be if we had used the "Marketed as" field since the begining. I know most of them were just marketed as Hammerheads but there's no way to be sure now.

Animals do everything to get into the 1:32 reserve! This cunning bear cub from Kaiyodo (Capsule Q Hokkaido/Ezo mammals, 2014) even changed species:
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Initially, he wasn’t admitted to the reserve because it was thought that he was an Asian black bear. With a head+body length of 4.4/141 cm, he was too large for a black bear cub. Compare him with the Kaiyodo Choco Egg Japanese Animals 3 (2000) standing adult black bear, a large adult with a head+body length of about 5.0/160 cm.
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The Kaiyodo adult is probably a bit too large to be a Japanese black bear. Oi and Furusawa (2008) found that Japanese black bears had a HB length of 103-159 cm. The Kaiyodo adult could be a different subspecies, perhaps an Ussuri black bear, which are larger.

Here is a comparison of our bear cub with a black bear from Ikimon (Nature of Satoyama, 2021), which has a more appropriate size for a Japanese black bear (HB length 4.0/128 cm). Clearly not mother and baby!
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The bear cub now claims to be a brown bear! Here he is with two large brown bears by Kitan (Nature of Japan 1, 2013, HB length 7.5/240 cm) and Colorata (Wild bears and dogs, 2008, HB length 7.0/224 cm).
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Yes, perhaps he could be their cub, even though he is much larger than my other brown bear cubs. From left to right: two Hausser Elastolin cubs, Britains, our cunning friend and Britains:
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However, he also doesn’t look that young, so we’ll accept him in the 1:32 reserve. Kaiyodo did indeed market the bear cub as a brown bear. His collar may make him look a bit like a black bear, but brown bears can have this feature too.

Now suddenly this Kaiyodo bear cub also claims to be a brown bear:
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Hmm, no, no, I don’t think you are! In any case, you look rather young for your size even if you were a brown bear.
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This Kaiyodo sitting adult (Kaiyodo Choco Egg Japanese Animals 2, 1999) also claims to be a brown bear even though he is black (or perhaps very dark grey):
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Is he trying to cheat his way into the reserve too? With a shoulder height of 3.3/106 cm, he would be too large for a black bear. But yes, brown bears can be black. And brown black bears also exist. White rhinos aren’t white and red kangaroos can be grey. Anyhow, Kaiyodo marketed him as a brown bear, so I guess I’ll have to accept him.

And it isn’t only the Kaiyodos! Here is the Hausser Elastolin black bear (1970-1983), which is in fact brown:
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Well at least I suppose he isn’t cheating because with a HB length of 5.1/163 cm, he is the right size for either a black or a brown bear. Here he is with the real Hausser Elastolin brown bear (1967-1983), though who knows what is real?
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The brown, uh black bear is smaller than the possibly real brown bear, so possibly Elastolin intended the brown bear to be a black bear. Sometimes it was indeed painted in black. But is he an Asian or an American black bear?

Even the Britains brown bear (1931-1959 in lead, 1960-1998 in plastic) is suspect. This plastic version is clearly brown, but at some point during his life as a lead figure, he had black hair. And except for his colours, he has some Himalayan black bear features. Is he cheating too? Can I not even believe my trusted Britains?
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