1/32 scale animals

You're cheating me, at least I'm so confuse now.
The Hausser is an American black bear. Those are the ears of one.
I enjoy all the effort some figures do to be accepted in your reserve.

Some really lovely vintage and contemporary models here. That baby rolling on its back is too cute.

comment deleted; I missed something written :)

But yes, the first bear is a brown bear, not black

Thank you, Paige and Blaine.

Roger wrote:

You're cheating me, at least I'm so confuse now.
The Hausser is an American black bear. Those are the ears of one.
I enjoy all the effort some figures do to be accepted in your reserve.

Thanks, the ears of the Hausser black bear are indeed very different from the Hausser brown bear.

Thanks for this review! I'm not so familiar with most of these, but I have one of the Britains 'brown' bears myself. I've wondered for years if it was modelled after a Himalayan black bear. I've liked telling myself that it was a rare (possibly fictional - I don't know) brown colour phase of the black bear.

The Ikimon black bear and Kitan brown bear sure look great!

The lead Britains was definitely made in black. I don't have it, but I've seen it for sale at least twice. The brown lead version is more common. I don't know when it was made as a black bear, whether it started off as such or not.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] do you happen to have acquired the new Collecta elephant? What are your tought about it?

In my opinion, the CollectA is a great African elephant. In terms of the details of its skin texture and the quality of the painting, it is probably the best. I think the Eikoh and recent Mojö have a more interesting and probably more natural pose; I find that the CollectA looks ever so slightly awkward. Nothing major and in reality it looks better than in photos, but that's why I prefer the Eikoh and Mojö. I think it's a matter of taste though, I can imagine that other people prefer the CollectA. Perhaps because I collect vintage models, detail is less important for me than overall impression. But I think you will be happy regardless of whether you decide to go for the Mojö or CollectA (or Eikoh if you can find it). All are great models.
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I haven't had much time to write a proper post for this topic and it's a while ago that I showed a shelf photo, so here is one featuring the CollectA elephant:
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Arrrgh I was sure to resist to the CollectA elephant... until now Poor tempted Kiki

Yes, Kiki is also a temptable collector.
I like the CollectA elephant and I rarely like elephant figures.
Also, Roger surely knows how to make a weird mix of animals look really great!

Kikimalou wrote:

Arrrgh    I was sure to resist to the CollectA elephant... until now    Poor tempted Kiki

Yes, life is hard as a collector!

Roger wrote:

Also, Roger surely knows how to make a weird mix of animals look really great!

For a long time, I didn't realise that the way I display my animals is quite atypical. Strangely, although I want animals to scale because that is more realistic, I am quite happy to mix different animal groups and regions when I display them. I guess that's because that's the way I played with them as a child; I haven't quite grown up. Did you see that the pandas are gossiping about STS forum members?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] sorry for the late answer, work is seriously impeding my social life later on ahahah. Good to know about the Collecta!

rogerpgvg wrote:

I haven't had much time to write a proper post for this topic and it's a while ago that I showed a shelf photo, so here is one featuring the CollectA elephant:
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It's great to see animals to scale; even if I don't collect the brand or style

rogerpgvg wrote:

Roger wrote:

Also, Roger surely knows how to make a weird mix of animals look really great!

For a long time, I didn't realise that the way I display my animals is quite atypical. Strangely, although I want animals to scale because that is more realistic, I am quite happy to mix different animal groups and regions when I display them. I guess that's because that's the way I played with them as a child; I haven't quite grown up. Did you see that the pandas are gossiping about STS forum members?

I think it is a Britains influenced way, Farm and Zoo and a panda tea party at London Zoo. Well, at least it was what one of the pandas told me about you.

Leyster wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] sorry for the late answer, work is seriously impeding my social life later on ahahah. Good to know about the Collecta!

No problem, let us know when you have found your elephant.

bmathison1972 wrote:

It's great to see animals to scale; even if I don't collect the brand or style

Thanks, it's great when other people care about scale (even if they don't collect by scale).

Roger wrote:

I think it is a Britains influenced way, Farm and Zoo and a panda tea party at London Zoo. Well, at least it was what one of the pandas told me about you.

I didn't realise they were gossiping about me!

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Schleich had followed Britains and made animals in 1:32 scale. Finally, now I know! I found a few Schleichs in 1:32 scale:
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OK, they are knock-offs, not real Schleichs, but they still give us a good idea of what “might have been”. We can now compare arguably the two greatest animal toy companies in the same scale. Let’s have a look.

First, we have the Britains and knock-off Schleich lions:
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The Schleich original was made from 2008 until 2015. I like it, though the Britains is good too of course. They are similar in size and have a hip height of 3.3/106 cm, making them quite large 1:32 scale lions. Both have impressive manes, the Schleich overwhelmingly so when you see it from the other side:
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A comparison of the lionesses:
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The Schleich knock-offs aren’t exact copies of the larger originals. For example, the knock-off lioness is furrier. The painting is also less detailed, but the quality isn’t too bad, quite comparable to toob-sized figures by the major manufacturers. The paint quality of Schleichs would probably also have been lower if their figures were smaller. The original Schleich lioness was made between 2014 and 2019.

Both lionesses are probably too large for 1:32 scale. The Britains is difficult to measure but the “Schleich” is 3.3/106 cm at the shoulder. The largest lioness I have been able to find was only 102 cm (Meinertzhagen, 1938). Most of the time, lionesses were (and are) made in the same size as the lions, so most vintage lionesses are also rather large. For example, here we have the Hausser Elastolin and Starlux lionesses together with the Schleich knock-off:
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I don’t think such large lionesses should get into the 1:32 reserve, but the King of the Animals said that in accordance with the total gender equality policy in the reserve, lionesses are allowed to be equally large as lions. What can I do?

There is a knock-off polar bear too, here together with the Britains polar bear:
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Not Schleich’s very best polar bear, but still acceptable. The original was made between 2012 and 2018. It has a shoulder height of 3.4/109 cm, but it is quite short with a head+body length of 5.6/179 cm. Still, that’s possible, as Derocher and Wiig (2002) found that adult female polar bears in Svalbard were 175-210 cm in HB length.

Finally, the brown bear, not the friendliest chap:
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It was modelled after the Schleich grizzly bear that has been produced since 2013. Its shoulder height is 3.4/109 cm compared to 3.0/96 cm for the Britains.

As you can probably see, I got these Schleich knock-offs second hand, but unsurprisingly, I later also found them on AliExpress, where they were sold under the name Billbuff.

Then I found several extra-large knock-off Schleichs as well. All were larger than the original Schleichs except the giraffe, a copy of the Schleich male giraffe that was introduced in 2016.
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The original Schleich giraffes are too tall for 1:32 scale, but because the knock-off is smaller (15.2/486 cm including horns), it has been admitted to the reserve. Here it is with the latest female Schleich giraffe and the late-version Britains:
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At 15.8/538 cm, the Schleich female might perhaps be acceptable for a male, but it is definitely too large for a female. She therefore wasn’t allowed to enter the reserve. I asked the King what happened to the total gender equality policy, but he just growled.

So now we know what would have happened if Schleich had made 1:32 scale models. Something like this:
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Schleich makes their elephants in the right size, so they are originals.

Love this last picture, no doubts it looks much better at least for display purposes.
It is a good idea trying to find knocoffs in different sizes, I have the CollectA fennec in a much larger version than the original. Also, they show a quite decent quality, I guess. I think you opened a big gate to your reserve. Actually, those are what minis are supposed to be. Miniatures of the standard versions and not the cheap unrelated designs many brands use.
I love your gender equality policy , it works for kings but not for giraffes. Very realistic world. About your larger lionesses, they could work as maneless lions like those of Tsavo. Though, I don't know their sizes to be fair.

Thank you for these very useful comparison pictures Roger!

Roger wrote:

I think you opened a big gate to your reserve.

That’s what I had hoped, but knock-off companies aren’t very original, not even in the size in which they make their models. Occasionally, they may be very slightly smaller or larger than the originals, but not normally enough to make them 1:32 scale. So far, the knock-offs in my previous post are the only ones I have found.

However, the main brands sometimes resize their own standard-sized models into toob-sized or even smaller models. So we can now ask the next question. If Schleich had made their models in 1:32 scale, then it is likely that the other main brands would have followed it and made their models in the same scale. What would that have looked like? We can use some of the resized models to see what things would have been like in a perfect world where everything is in 1:32 scale.
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I wondered whether the Mojö lion might be a bit small with a shoulder height of 2.9/93 cm. I told the King about it, but he said that in accordance with the total gender equality policy in the reserve, lions are allowed to be as small as lionesses!

Caracal wrote:

Thank you for these very useful comparison pictures Roger!

You're welcome. Hopefully, the new photos are useful too.

Oh yes they are! .. the sea elephant isn't it a little too big?

This is actually quite to neat to see these species roughly in scale with each other. My only comment (because of personal experience) is that Mountain Goats are MUCH smaller than you'd think! And even then they are 90% floof.

Good to be critical about the sizes. Sorry for the long exposition, I had to check everything carefully!

Caracal wrote:

Oh yes they are! .. the sea elephant isn't it a little too big?

I was also astonished about the size of elephant seals, but they really are enormous!

Northern and Southern elephant seals differ in size, with Southern elephant seals being larger, so we first need to determine which species the Papo is. Apart from their overall size, the main difference between the species is the size of their proboscis: That of Northern elephant seals is larger. I can’t find the topics, but some time ago, there was agreement on STS that the Papo is a Southern elephant seal, whereas people on the Animal Toy Forum agreed that it was a Northern elephant seal. Blaine said that there is too much variability in the proboscis to be able to tell from a single individual which species it is. Looking at pictures of Northern and Southern elephant seals, I think he is probably right, so we can use the Papo as either a Northern or Southern elephant seal.

Because the Papo is not lying in a straight line, it is hard to measure it, but if I try to follow the centre between its back/spine and the bottom of its tummy, then it is about 13.5/432 cm without flippers and 15.5/496 cm with flippers. Following the spine, its length is about 11 cm and following its tummy, it is about 17 cm without flippers. The average is 14/448 cm, so I think we can say that the Papo is just under 4.5 m without flippers and around 500 cm with flippers in 1:32 scale.

That probably makes the Papo too large for a Northern elephant seal, as Deutsch et al. (1994, chapter 10 in “Elephant Seals: Population Ecology, Behavior, and Physiology”) reported that 89 male Northern elephant seals were between 350 and 420 cm without flippers. Wikipedia says that they are 4-5 metres, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. The Papo has the right size for a Southern elephant seal though. Carlini et al. (2006, Polar Biol.) measured 31 males and they were between 437 and 518 cm including flippers. Wikipedia says that they can even be up to 580 cm, but again it isn’t clear on what information that is based. Other studies (Modig, 1996; McCann, 1980) report similar sizes as Carlini et al.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

This is actually quite to neat to see these species roughly in scale with each other. My only comment (because of personal experience) is that Mountain Goats are MUCH smaller than you'd think! And even then they are 90% floof.

Thanks, Paige. Let’s see how the Safari mountain goat got into the 1:32 reserve. It has a shoulder height of 3.2/102 cm. Based on information from a chapter by Côté and Festa-Bianchet (2003, Wild mammals of North America: biology, management, conservation), this seems to be possible for a large male. They measured mountain goats at Caw Ridge, Alberta, and found that the mean shoulder height for males was 96.3 cm (91.9 cm for females). They measured 6 males and because the standard deviation is 8.0 cm, some of these must have been over 102 cm. It is also consistent with Foss (1962, Thesis Montana State Uni), who found that 3 males over 4 years in the Crazy Mountains in Montana were 86-108 cm and with Lentfer (1955, Jn Wildlife Management), who measured 2 males over 4 in the same area that were 99 and 116 cm. It is worth noticing that there is a high variability in the size of older males.

Things get more complicated when we look at the total length (including tail). It’s harder to measure the Safari’s total length because it doesn’t have its head and tail in a straight line. I think it is 6.0/192 cm, but that includes a tail of about 1.0/32 cm. The largest tail in any of the studies was 15 cm, so my measurement presumably includes a lot of hair. Without the long tail hair, the Safari has a total length of about 180 cm.

Côté and Festa-Bianchet (2003) don’t report total length measurements for older males, but they are 147-158 cm in Foss (1962) and 163-206 cm in Lentfer (1955). One of the males in Lentfer’s study is extremely large! One possibility is that this is an error, but when we compare other measurements of this individual with those in Foss (1962), then we see that it is also very large in terms of shoulder height, hind foot length, tail length and even ear length, suggesting that it isn’t an error. Furthermore, when we compare the hind foot data with those from Côté and Festa-Bianchet (2003) (who don’t give other measurements for older males), then it’s not so exceptional. The hind foot length of the very large goat in Lentfer (1955) is 39 cm while the mean length of 16 older males in Côté and Festa-Bianchet (2003) is 37.3 cm. So I conclude that some males can get very, very large.

Of course, most mountain goats are smaller. Only older males reach such extraordinary sizes and even in this age class, there appears to be a lot of variability. Females are smaller because, unlike males, they don’t grow much after 4 years of age. There also seems to be some variability between regions, with the subpopulations at Caw Ridge and in the Crazy Mountains being larger than those in areas such as Washington and the Sapphire Mountains in Montana. I have to say though: When I take my ruler to see how long 2 metres is, then I am absolutely astonished that a mountain goat can reach that size (albeit with tail)! Does it seem possible to you, Paige?

Many thanks Roger for your detailed explanations!

Looks a legite photo, this is a Southern elephant seal.

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