Anyway, today we shall look at the Schleich stalwart - animals, and
starting at the beginning; Dinosaurs! Funnily enough I picked-up a K&M stegosaurus the other day and
was quite surprised by its quality, but these Schleich are pretty much at the top of the game, and like the Papo range, don't have the weird
join-lines found on the larger 'CHINA' models - including the K&M example.
I particularly like the treatment of the
Dimetrodon 'sails' they have the radiating spars of the extended vertebra nicely
sculpted, but the blood-vessels have been given a more amorphic paint-treatment,
over and between the spars, ignoring their symmetry, which gives sense to
several of the theories concerning the functionality of the sails; either to
cool in the heat of the day, or to warm the blood in the rays of the morning sun,
or indeed - both!
The wild animal range is also pretty much
as it's been for a while now, a few new tools of old but popular sellers (when
everyone's bought your whatever, give them a new whatever to buy!), some totally
new animals, and the core range carried-over from the previous year.
Obviously with things like the cetaceans
'constant' scale has gone out of the window, but they would otherwise be
several feet long, I think for such beasts it's understandable.
Most of the arctic and marine animals (back
left and bottom row) are new for 2018, along with a lovely koala, whole lion
family, a delightful chimpanzee, a pair of zebras a hippo and a rhinoceros.
There's also a new pig family in the more toy-like Farm World range.
But with the domestic range there is both a
scale creep (upwards) and that move to a more toy like or juvenile look if you
know what I mean. This girl - for instance - is a part action-figure with
four-to-six points of articulation; I didn't study them closely? And - like the
Revell stuff the other day - seems to
be aiming to take market-share from people who were not previously seen as
obvious rivals, such as poor old Playmobile
. . . again!
For the animal fans though the core range
remains much as it's been for years and I was quite taken by the long-horn
cattle in dark brown to the far right and - as you saw earlier today - I keep
an eye out for new cat models!
A flavour of the catalogue gives more of
these play set type things, and while the longhorns are in the display rack the
rest don't seem to be and also seem to have a more playful, less realistic
countenance - but that may just be me seeing things which aren't there!
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