Mojo leopard & panther

leopard and panther join my collection/

I love the pose of leopard. But still feel that the spot is still lack of depth and doesn't give me the feel of leopard.

Black panther is ok! And maybe just black!

Congratulations Ken, both figures are wonderful! I agree with you about the leopard, none of the brands looks to be able of making a convincent patern in a leopard figure. Those are always simplified versions. Maybe it is not possible in a figure that is small and produced in large scale. Anyway the main characteristics are correct what do not happens with all leopards in the market. The pose is magnificent for a cat!
The black panther is black because melanistic variations of leopards are only black while the melanistics of jaguars are spotted. And that's a leopard.

Congrats Ken

They're nice, congrats :)

I think that proper leopard spots are possible to be made on such small model. It's just too much of time-consuming work for a mass-produced product. Paintjob has to be done quite fast.

Roger wrote:

The black panther is black because melanistic variations of leopards are only black while the melanistics of jaguars are spotted. And that's a leopard.

Melanistic leopards are also spotted

Melanistic leopards are rare in the wild, I have a friend who has one that is now almost 5 years old and she is still sort of friendly. Most leopards are not very friendly once they reach adulthood.

Beautiful models, I like the pose. On a model there is a way to make a spotted version, if you lighten the base color just a little, add some white or grey to the black then paint the spots with solid black it should come out close to a visible spotted pattern. Maybe that is a little too much work for a toy figure, sometimes the painters on an assembly line have never seen a black leopard and just don't know the correct pattern. In Miami there is a chain of sandwich shops called Miami Subs and in every one there is a tropical mural of palms, the ocean and always there are flamingos somewhere in the painting. The flamingos in the paintings are always drawn with the right wing pinioned, for those who don't know that term, it is what zoos and collectors do to stop a bird from flying, they surgically remove the forearm bones so the right wing is shortened and the bird can no longer fly. They do this so they can keep them outside without fear of them escaping. At a new location I met one of the artists who does the murals and I asked him why he always drew the flamingos that way and he looked at me and said, "Haven't you ever seen a flamingo, they all have one wing shorter then the other!" I realized at that point he had never seen a wild flamingo, only birds in zoos so he had never seen a bird with both wings. It is sort of sad, but maybe the artists who do the black leopards or jaguars have never seen one so they just don't know.

Yes, there are also white leopards, etc, etc.
The difference is that in jaguars in all melanistics we can see easily they are spoted and in leopards it hapens clearly in some populations and not in groups from other regions. South African black leopards are clearly spoted while in other regions they are almost of a solide black! The dominant characteristic is also preferrable, I guess. Anyway I must be wrong and thanks for your useful information. Also thanks for showing the first picture, mainly, I had some doubts about the shape of the head of the Mojo figure and your picture is showing that I was wrong!

Ah, I lost Phil's comment! That's very interesting! I also never saw before a black leopard in Nature.
But as I remember Papo made a black jaguar with spots and a black panther without spots! I must be wrong again because I don't collect melanistic variations and I don't pay atention to these figures.
It was very nice to remember how other brands painted their black leopards. Well, one of them is in the top of this page!

Ohhhh, Ken ! They are gorgeous

Those two just jumped right to the top of my wishlist, - spots or not

CONGRATULATIONS with yet more fabulous additions, - and thankyou again for your lovely photoes

Wow. I am not that crazy about mojo, as there could be improvements eg. in colouration etc. But the proportions, the shape:
very good. I like the black leopard, finally not an "attacking shadow of the dark with gloomy eyes" or a fat schleich joke.
But when there's still no good lion, tiger and jaguar, why should there be a good leopard?

Congratulations Ken

skysthelimit wrote:

Congrats Ken

Thanks Robert!

HKHollinstone wrote:

Congratulations Ken

Thanks Harriet!

PeGe wrote:

Wow. I am not that crazy about mojo, as there could be improvements eg. in colouration etc. But the proportions, the shape:
very good. I like the black leopard, finally not an "attacking shadow of the dark with gloomy eyes" or a fat schleich joke.
But when there's still no good lion, tiger and jaguar, why should there be a good leopard?

That's precisely my point and maybe I overlooked that is only for Children market and making it too realistic and cost is the factor.

SUSANNE wrote:

Ohhhh, Ken ! They are gorgeous

Those two just jumped right to the top of my wishlist, - spots or not

CONGRATULATIONS with yet more fabulous additions, - and thankyou again for your lovely photoes

Thanks Susanne!

Roger wrote:

Yes, there are also white leopards, etc, etc.
The difference is that in jaguars in all melanistics we can see easily they are spoted and in leopards it hapens clearly in some populations and not in groups from other regions. South African black leopards are clearly spoted while in other regions they are almost of a solide black! The dominant characteristic is also preferrable, I guess. Anyway I must be wrong and thanks for your useful information. Also thanks for showing the first picture, mainly, I had some doubts about the shape of the head of the Mojo figure and your picture is showing that I was wrong!

Thanks Roger!

It's ok to be wrong! no one is perfect!

Mangalarga wrote:

They're nice, congrats :)

I think that proper leopard spots are possible to be made on such small model. It's just too much of time-consuming work for a mass-produced product. Paintjob has to be done quite fast.

Roger wrote:

The black panther is black because melanistic variations of leopards are only black while the melanistics of jaguars are spotted. And that's a leopard.

Melanistic leopards are also spotted

Thanks Mangalarga!

Thanks for the facts!

Philter4 wrote:

Melanistic leopards are rare in the wild, I have a friend who has one that is now almost 5 years old and she is still sort of friendly. Most leopards are not very friendly once they reach adulthood.

Beautiful models, I like the pose. On a model there is a way to make a spotted version, if you lighten the base color just a little, add some white or grey to the black then paint the spots with solid black it should come out close to a visible spotted pattern. Maybe that is a little too much work for a toy figure, sometimes the painters on an assembly line have never seen a black leopard and just don't know the correct pattern. In Miami there is a chain of sandwich shops called Miami Subs and in every one there is a tropical mural of palms, the ocean and always there are flamingos somewhere in the painting. The flamingos in the paintings are always drawn with the right wing pinioned, for those who don't know that term, it is what zoos and collectors do to stop a bird from flying, they surgically remove the forearm bones so the right wing is shortened and the bird can no longer fly. They do this so they can keep them outside without fear of them escaping. At a new location I met one of the artists who does the murals and I asked him why he always drew the flamingos that way and he looked at me and said, "Haven't you ever seen a flamingo, they all have one wing shorter then the other!" I realized at that point he had never seen a wild flamingo, only birds in zoos so he had never seen a bird with both wings. It is sort of sad, but maybe the artists who do the black leopards or jaguars have never seen one so they just don't know.

Maybe this is right as the production line carry out is time & money concern. Therefore no time for researching spot should be irregular shape & not in uniform & standard pattern. And for sure when you mentioned about the flamingo, I felt sorry for them. But on another hand if without doing that we may not able to see them in the zoo.

Kenn Congratulations!
For my part I find these two models very nice
and we find them in my collection as soon as possible!

Congrats! I like the leopard a lot!

So is a panther a black jaguar? Or a black leopard? Or just a panther?

-Kristie

No, it's a Jagther or a Panthuar

Works for me. :)

-Kristie

There's a lot of divergences in this concept. A black panther is nothing scientific.
Panthers are all members of genus Panthera and the species are: leopard, jaguar, lion and tiger.
There's no species called black panther, those are the melanistic variations of the leopard and jaguar. Many people uses it to describe only black leopards while other people uses it to describe many black cats, even those that do not belong to this genus. So a black panther is what you want!
Here in Portugal, when people thinks in a puma people thinks immediatly in a black panther and that is absolutly wrong, or not!

Roger wrote:

Here in Portugal, when people thinks in a puma people thinks immediatly in a black panther and that is absolutly wrong, or not!

Roger, I am not sure what you mean by a black panther not being a puma, as with the leopard and jaguar there is a melanistic version of the puma, it is more charcoal colored then black but it is also one of the rarest of the color varieties. I have only seen 3 of them ever and there are so few photos of them that I think it is probably not a very common genetic combination that produces a "black" panther. The uncle to my puma is a black individual and he is just beautiful, but like I mentioned, it is more of a dark charcoal grey then true black.

Philter4 wrote:

Roger wrote:

Here in Portugal, when people thinks in a puma people thinks immediatly in a black panther and that is absolutly wrong, or not!

Roger, I am not sure what you mean by a black panther not being a puma, as with the leopard and jaguar there is a melanistic version of the puma, it is more charcoal colored then black but it is also one of the rarest of the color varieties. I have only seen 3 of them ever and there are so few photos of them that I think it is probably not a very common genetic combination that produces a "black" panther. The uncle to my puma is a black individual and he is just beautiful, but like I mentioned, it is more of a dark charcoal grey then true black.

Thanks for telling, it is very interesting! Are melanistics already confirmed in pumas? I didn't know that! Or is it only a regular colour variation? It is discussed for a long time in USA, isn't it? :)

Philter4 wrote:

Willy, I think this will be the last time I write here because this is an animal figure discussion and not the correct forum. I would love to hear more of your thoughts privately if you are also interested because it is a very interesting subject to me, instinct vs intellectual reasoning. Let me make one final point, are you sure it isn't our instinct to kill other humans for territory or resources? We grow food but we also rely on things like oil and other natural resources and if a neighboring village or country has what we need we go and take it. I know there are other reasons, hate over different religions or race, but at some point we have just given an intellectual or emotional argument to something that was at one time instinct. Who is to say that in 2 billion years ants wont justify the killing of a neighboring colony intellectually as a way to get a better position on the side of a tree?

I guess the term unfriendly is where my main problem comes from, dealing with wild animals (as I we both have done most of our lives) I have seen animals do things that seem mean and has no material gain that would help that particular individual survive. I am not talking about a large fish confined, or an animal that is bored, I am talking about animals I have seen on collecting trips and in the wild. Let me know what you think through email if this interests you, I would really like to know when you think instinct becomes intellectual or if intellectualizing an action doesn't change it from being an instinct.

WILLYBACOMAN wrote:

Ok Phil, we will talk about this later over e-mail, otherwise this discussion would go to far in this tread indeed.
I like those discussions, and i think it is not even bad that we animal lovers really think about what we love and see, even on this forum.
Because our love for our models comes from the real natural world in the first place.
Maybe an idea to make a new section for these kind of discussions and thought on this forum...

Shardur wrote:

That would be great. Isn't there a thread where we can discuss whatever we want?

Phil, Willy and Shardur

I don't know if it is an intellect problem or an instinct one, but I'm quite sure human beings are the great specialists for linking one idea to another...
The MOJO leopard and panther topic is a very good example

And I like things are going this way, it brings life to our forum .

But I will split this into a "MOJO black panther and leopard" topic and a "Instinct or intellect ?" topic in the "talk about what you want" section. I would prefer you continue the discussion publicly because it is very interresting. I guess it would be better than PMs