1/32 scale animals

rogerpgvg wrote:

It's a great looking mammoth. I don't collect prehistoric animals, but wait, when the Egyptians and Sumerians invented the script, mammoths still roamed the earth .

Will you dare to start collecting extinct animals?

I find extinct animal models interesting as hypotheses of what prehistoric animals might have looked like, but because we cannot be sure, they don't attract me much as a collector. Woolly mammoths are different in that respect because we now have a pretty good idea of what they looked like. The problem is that if I collect one woolly mammoth, he doesn't want it to be alone, so I need to find more. Perhaps when I don't have much else to collect, I'll consider it, but right now I still find too many extant animal figures in 1/32 scale.

Kikimalou wrote:

Kaiyodo Wild Rush series

Thank you!

Kikimalou wrote:

One more candidate for a 1/32 collection, the TNG wooly mammoth

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so impressive and beautiful!

This Yujin knob coral came up in today's daily 'Museum' post and can fall within the 1:32 scale range. The figure is 2.5 cm in diameter which puts in a broad scale of 1:12-1:40 for a large colony

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Great

Great photo and very interesting model. Unfortunately, these Yujin corals are hard to find.

sunny wrote:

rogerpgvg wrote:

I came across one of the long arms ones - but with a tail!  here it is -


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Looks like these missed the boat (ark) and became extinct! Unfortunately, no fossil records remain.  

Thank goodness there are plastic records .

A while ago, I completed my JEOL collection. Let’s celebrate that here! My JEOL collection isn’t completely complete because I miss the elephants and the giraffe. They are so rare and expensive that I don’t think I will ever get them, but I can live with that because I have enough other elephants and the giraffe is far too large for 1/32 scale.

Here they are:
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JEOLs were the first figures I collected after starting with Britains, but it has taken me quite a while to find them all. They are all African mammals and were probably first produced around 1977-1978. The JEOL figures are generally said to be 1/32 scale and going by the size of their elephants relative to the other animals, my impression is that they indeed tried to make their animals to scale. With the exception of Britains, this differs from other companies of this period, which generally made their large animals (such as elephants) too small and their small animals too large. But are the JEOLs really 1/32 scale? Let’s see.

Here are the beautiful lions:
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The male lion has a hip height of 3.6/115 cm. The largest lions I have been able to find are shown in a graph in Ferreira and Funston (2010, South African Journal of Wildlife Research), having a shoulder height of 97-118 cm. Lions in other reports are smaller, but I think we can accept the JEOL.
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Here is a comparison with the early version Britains, which is slightly smaller (3.5/112 cm):
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The lioness is impossible to measure accurately, but it looks as large as the lion. Females are normally substantially smaller than males. In Ferreira and Funston (2010), the females were 87-99 cm in shoulder height, although they can sometimes be slightly larger. For example, Meinertzhagen (1938) reports lionesses between 86 and 102 cm.
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Here is the JEOL with the early version Britains:
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Even the Britains lioness is probably too large, but the JEOL definitely is.

The lion cub is sometimes mistaken for a tiger because of its stripes, but as JEOL only made African animals, it must be a lion. I don’t know why they gave it stripes. As far as I know, young lions have spots rather than stripes. The lion cub is also very large; in fact, with a shoulder height of 2.8/90 cm, it could be an adult.
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A comparison with the Britains lion cubs:
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The leopard probably has the least realistic appearance of the JEOLs, though it looks good nevertheless.
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It is 2.2/70.4 cm at the shoulder and has a 4.2/134 cm head+body length. We saw before (Papo tube leopard) that leopards can be up to at least 142 cm in length, so the JEOL is fine. Here it is with the Britains:
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And with the Papo:
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The third predator that JEOL made is the spotted hyena.
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Its shoulder height is 3.0/96 cm. That’s rather too large. Hayssen and Noonan (2021, Mammalian Species) report shoulder heights between 70 and 88.5 cm. Wikipedia says they can be up to 91.5 cm (referring to Kingdon, 1988), which isn’t much larger and the precise number suggests that it was an actual measurement.

Britains didn’t make hyenas, so instead I compare them to a Colorata and two Bandais. The Colorata is 2.8/90 cm and the standing Bandai is 2.3/74 cm at the shoulder.
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More JEOL animals next time …

Let's celebrate the completion of an imcomplete Jeol collection.
This is a wonderful and puzzling series. First, it seems something unusual when a brand with such a small animal range can make so beautiful figures. Lion males are really hard to get right, many brands need to release many of them before achieving a good result.
Then, since they assumed such good proportions with most of the animals, why is the giraffe much larger than it should be when it uses to be the other way around?
Even the fact the brand is called Jeol and not Geol is weird. Their product numbers use a G and Geol sounds more like something related to science than Jeol.
The promotion of the series identifies the young feline as a lion and it is what it really is. Lion cubs usually show spots during their first months but they also show stripes sometimes. Stripes turn into spots when they fade.
In my opinion, it may mean that lion ancestors were striped. Curiously, tigers are considered the closest relatives of the lions among extant animals and they seem to have shared a common ancestor not long ago. Since tigers evolved in forested regions, the striped pattern favored them. Instead of calling natal coat to your cub, I'd suggest those should be called primitive markings being the Jeol model a very primitive one.
Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the information about lion stripes; good to know. Given that lion cubs are initially spotted, were the ancestors of lions striped or spotted?

JEOL means "Japan Electron Optics Laboratory". Their main business is electron microscopes: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Apparently, the animal models were a pet project of the company's director (you may remember this post):

Jason2013 wrote:

Just in case anyone was wondering about JEOL, we are a Japanese company and have been making Electron Microscopes for over 60 years. The President of the company in the 1970's had a personal desire to promote education among young people and commissioned the production of the toy animals as part of this strategy. The venture was short lived, but we still make Electron Microscopes today.  [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

No idea why they made the giraffe so large.

JEOL is listed as a Hong Kong company on TAW. The figures were indeed made in Hong Kong, but because the company is Japanese, wouldn't it be better to list it under Japan? Interestingly, I frequently check Japanese auction websites for animal figures, but I have never come across a JEOL. I wonder whether they weren't sold in Japan. They seem to be most common (still rare) in the UK. Does anyone know whether they were sold anywhere else?

Lovely animals. Especially your pack of hyenas!

Very interesting comparison pictures! What a pity these Jeol models are so rare! The leopard seems to have been imitated by some chinese production:


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Wonderful collection of Jeols!I so regret not getting these models at the time.I used to get a weekly magazine called World of Wildlife and they advertised these models for sale on the back of a few of them and I sadly never bought them.

Thank you, everyone! Yes, the benefit of hindsight is a great thing. I hope you will find them second hand, Taylor.

I also have a JEOL leopard copy. When I bought it in a lot on Ebay, I thought I had found a cheapy. It was cheap, but not a JEOL. JEOL on the left, copy on the right:
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That's why i wrote "imitated" and not "copied"!

 Thank you for this comparison picture which shows they have the same size!

rogerpgvg wrote:

Thanks for the information about lion stripes; good to know. Given that lion cubs are initially spotted, were the ancestors of lions striped or spotted?

JEOL means "Japan Electron Optics Laboratory". Their main business is electron microscopes: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Apparently, the animal models were a pet project of the company's director (you may remember this post):

Jason2013 wrote:

Just in case anyone was wondering about JEOL, we are a Japanese company and have been making Electron Microscopes for over 60 years. The President of the company in the 1970's had a personal desire to promote education among young people and commissioned the production of the toy animals as part of this strategy. The venture was short lived, but we still make Electron Microscopes today.  [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

No idea why they made the giraffe so large.

JEOL is listed as a Hong Kong company on TAW. The figures were indeed made in Hong Kong, but because the company is Japanese, wouldn't it be better to list it under Japan? Interestingly, I frequently check Japanese auction websites for animal figures, but I have never come across a JEOL. I wonder whether they weren't sold in Japan. They seem to be most common (still rare) in the UK. Does anyone know whether they were sold anywhere else?

Thanks for recovering all this information about Jeol. I fixed it on TAW, Hong Kong is just the place where they were manufactured, the brand is Japanese, so you are right.
It is not mandatory, features present on cubs are not necesarily present on ancestors but often they are and it is absolutely fantastic when some animals are in their embryonic or fetal stage. Some iconic examples are tails in human embryos: which are gradually absorbed by the body during development. Those whales with baleen plates, have embryos with regular teeth or digit structures in birds that are fused in a later stage to form the wings.
Some seal pups are covered in soft, dense fur shortly after birth. This is a feature of their terrestrial ancestors.
So, likely the lion cub spots are vestigial from their ancestors.
Actually, the controversial Papo Smilodon seems like the brand adopted it as a lion ancestor. I'm sure they wanted to represent it and the vestigial markings are a good idea, however, smilodons are not lion ancestors, not even closely related.

Kikimalou wrote:

One more candidate for a 1/32 collection, the TNG wooly mammoth

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Could you post here a comparison picture with muskoxes and reindeers from Starlux please?

Sorry, I don't have them here to take photos now, but there is a comparison of the Kaiyodo and Starlux musk oxen [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And the Kaiyodo and Starlux reindeer [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thank you for the links Roger!

Thank you Roger, so I don't need to make pics

Very interresting to read about lion cubs and Jeol, I forgot the Japanese origin. Too bad they never reach France at that time `

I loooove that Lioness !

rogerpgvg wrote:

Here they are:
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what a wonderful celebration Roger! I hope you manage to get the giraffe and elephants for your collection.
Do the elephants need to be complete with ears and tusks?

The hyena comparison is very interesting.

I think the sculptor/artist who did these sculpts is exceptionally talented. The details and nuances of each animal is spot on and they must have studied them for a long time to notice these. The Jeols are in a category all by themselves. The detailing on the impala hocks - with the black tufts is superb, and the very thin life like legs. I cannot admire these figures enough and every piece in their collection is incredible. I think the plastic choice also helped a lot in the final model and it is a true credit to the manufacturer in Hong Kong for producing quality figures.
The softness of the spray painting also takes them to another level and makes them inimitable.

In regards to the lion cubs with stripes - I saw 3 cubs a couple of weeks ago, and they all had stripes on them. It was at night, and in the light that's the way that they appeared. I didn't get a pic of them but if I see them again I will try to get one. I immediately thought of the Jeol cubs :)

It's great that you have a chance to see lions regularly. Do you live on the African Savannah? Or are they in Edinburgh Zoo . I agree about the quality of the JEOL figures. I suspect the company director was a collector and made sure that he was completely happy with the products. I'd be happy with JEOL elephants without tusks (they could probably be repaired). It depends on the price, but the only time I saw an adult JEOL elephant, it went for a fortune even without tusks.

Andreas just posted a photo of a K&M leopard [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. I don't know whether it is common for K&M (made by Wing Mao?) to imitate models and it is also very uncommon for JEOLs to be copied/imitated. Perhaps the similarities are just accidental.