Japanese Horseshoe Crab (For Corporation)

Walkaround of the Japanese horseshoe crab, Tachypleus tridentatus (Leach, 1819), by For Corporation - Another Aquarium, released in 2018. A little background on this figure. This figure was originally sculpted for the Season 2 line by Aquameridian and intended to be released in 2013. When sales for the first series were not as good as expected, Aquameridian canceled Season 2. Eventually, Aquameridian folded entirely (at least, their website has been down for a while). For Corporation bought the rights to several figures from both Season 1 and Season 2 and released them under the line, Another Aquarium. The accompanying paper for this figure, includes the original credits to Aquameridian and acknowledges the original sculptor.

The figure is a single-piece plastic, measuring 7.0 cm in length, making it roughly 1:10 for a maximum-sized specimen. Like all Aquameridian figures, it is intended to be attached to a plastic water stream, which in turn is attached to a trophy-like base with a placard with the Japanese and Latin names of the animal. The figure has two pegs to attach to the water stream, so it probably does not display well as a stand-alone figure. Also, like all figures, the water stream has an LED light in the base so it lights up when you flip a switch on the bottom (see last image below).

The figure is fairly comparable to the Kaiyodo Natural Monuments of Japan figure (see 4th image, below), which it will replace for my Synoptic Display collection. The Kaiyodo figure has slightly more detail, but I love the dynamic display of the Aquameridian model.

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That are interesting informations. I have seen the chinese dolphins and ask me what that is. It was the same like Aqua Meridian. Now i know more. Do you know more about that serie, especially what are the other figures?

widukind wrote:

That are interesting informations. I have seen the chinese dolphins and ask me what that is. It was the same like Aqua Meridian. Now i know more. Do you know more about that serie, especially what are the other figures?

I do not remember which ones in the set were re-released by For Corporation. The paper with mine has the original Season 2, some of which were never released I think...

bmathison1972 wrote:

widukind wrote:

That are interesting informations. I have seen the chinese dolphins and ask me what that is. It was the same like Aqua Meridian. Now i know more. Do you know more about that serie, especially what are the other figures?

I do not remember which ones in the set were re-released by For Corporation. The paper with mine has the original Season 2, some of which were never released I think...

Could you please share a picture of the paper?

widukind wrote:

bmathison1972 wrote:

widukind wrote:

That are interesting informations. I have seen the chinese dolphins and ask me what that is. It was the same like Aqua Meridian. Now i know more. Do you know more about that serie, especially what are the other figures?

I do not remember which ones in the set were re-released by For Corporation. The paper with mine has the original Season 2, some of which were never released I think...

Could you please share a picture of the paper?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I have not forgotten about your request. I am getting a couple fish from this line and I will image the papers together (assuming they are different).

Here are the papers. The top one is from the original Series 1 by Aquameridian LTD. The bottom one is from For Corporation that includes figures from Series 1 and Series 2.

It was hard to photograph them and keep them flat. Hope you can see what you need. Don't hesitate to ask if you need clarification.

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Thank you :)

Very nice swimming horseshoe crab

bmathison1972 wrote:

The figure is fairly comparable to the Kaiyodo Natural Monuments of Japan figure (see 4th image, below), which it will replace for my Synoptic Display collection. The Kaiyodo figure has slightly more detail, but I love the dynamic display of the Aquameridian model.

I understand your choice, less detailed but the pose is amazing and it is so difficult to make a dynamic model of this kind of animal.

Kikimalou wrote:

Very nice swimming horseshoe crab  

bmathison1972 wrote:

The figure is fairly comparable to the Kaiyodo Natural Monuments of Japan figure (see 4th image, below), which it will replace for my Synoptic Display collection. The Kaiyodo figure has slightly more detail, but I love the dynamic display of the Aquameridian model.

I understand your choice, less detailed but the pose is amazing and it is so difficult to make a dynamic model of this kind of animal.

Actually I kept both (of course - they are arthropods!). At first I only displayed one but now they are all out :)

It is interesting that on the Aquameridian website, this horseshoe crab is labelled as Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda, a mangrove horseshoe crab. It seems that the species changed when FOR Corporation bought the series. And not just this species, I think some of the other species in Series 2 too. How annoying, I just changed the species according to the Aquameridian website; I need to redo it again. Would it be OK to use your photo for TAW, Blaine?

I did the job right now

rogerpgvg wrote:

It is interesting that on the Aquameridian website, this horseshoe crab is labelled as Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda, a mangrove horseshoe crab. It seems that the species changed when FOR Corporation bought the series. And not just this species, I think some of the other species in Series 2 too. How annoying, I just changed the species according to the Aquameridian website; I need to redo it again. Would it be OK to use your photo for TAW, Blaine?

Yes. Any photos of mine on STS can be used on TAW.

Again I apologize, I did the job before I read your posts

Finally I did THIS. Is it okay for you ?

Thanks a lot, that's a good solution. I'll check whether any of the other species from Season 2 changed and make changes in TAW when I have some time.

What is funny is that morphologically it has characteristics of both the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) and Tachypleus tridentatus. Nothing about it looks like Carcinoscorpius rotundicollis. The more I study horseshoe crab figures, the more I realize many of them are not 100% correct for their intended species, often drawing on both L. polyphemus and T. tridentatus. This is probably from the artist/sculptor looking at examples from multiple individuals and perhaps not realizing they are looking at more than one species.

Interesting that it looks more like a Japanese horseshoe crab - good that FOR changed it.
A few other species changed too:

Yellow boxfish --> Bluespotted boxfish
Spotted seahorse --> Big-belly seahorse
Largetooth boxfish --> Smalltooth sawfish

Not sure whether these changes were so good. I don't know much about these species, except that I can see that the boxfish is yellow and not blue spotted and the seahorse doesn't have a big belly.