 Charlie Clone |
Welcome to Charlie Clone's All Action Figure Revue at SWAFT.info! I'm your host, Charlie Clone! |
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In my quest to find ever more challenging dollar
toys to review in this feature, I present to you one of the most banal
and least exciting hunks of plastic I've yet to have the pleasure of
meeting... It's the Safari Explore Safari Animal 1 Piece Lion.  I snagged this ferocious feline in the Dollar Spot section of a Target Greatland. There were numerous kinds of Safari Animals, like tigers, and hippos, and giraffes, but I somehow managed to restrain myself to just buying the lion. This Safari Animal is the product of a company named Boley, whose ambitiously trademarked tagline announces that this company is "Where the action is!" Boley is located in B.C. Chino, CA 91710, but you can visit them on the Web at Boley Corp. The toy was made in China (do I even need to keep mentioning this?). The toy's label, which has been ratherly violently skewered into the Lions haunches, indicates that this toy is meant for Ages 5 and Up. I'm not really sure how they came to assess the age range for this toy, considering we have certainly looked at more dangerous, more breakable toys with smaller parts that were deemed suitable for younger children. I suppose the toy is large enough that a kid could start swinging it around by it's tail and use it as a makeshift bola. Maybe some little tyke could get their fingers stuck in its open mouth...I know I stuck my finger in there and it wasn't all that comfortable. Now, on to the mane event... Sorry. Couldn't be helped. |
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CONCEPT:
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It's a lion. Yep. That's pretty much the concept. Now, the big question is what kind of safari he's supposed to be a part of. Is this a bona fide hunting safari, with Teddy Roosevelt, Earnest Hemingway, or Allan Quartermaine, out in the bush gunning down endangered species while drinking rum and carousing with indigenous women? Are is this one of those "photo" safaris? Or is it an amusement park style safari where they let you drive through a compound with captured animals? Equally ambivalent is the expression on the lion's face. I'm not precisely sure whether he is roaring, biting, yawning, or saying "Jolly good to meet you, old chap, would you like to come in for a spot of tea?" But he's definitely a lion. Perhaps not an anatomically proportional lion, but certainly a fair representation of the panthera leo nevertheless. You know, a while ago I was
reading some article about how modern day field researchers have
observed that the male lion typically doesn't make the kill. Often,
it's the lionesses of the pride or a pack of hyenas who make the kill,
and big ol' bully manehead over here just struts up and starts eating
the fruit of another's labors. Whoever was writing the article wanted
to pitch the story as though scientists had uncovered some great
political hoax. Oh, no! The great majestic lion isn't really the mighty
king of the jungle after all! He's really better classified as a
wimpy-sounding scavenger than a ferocious predator! But what the
article never really acknowledged was why
other animals are so quick to fork over the lion's share. The fact of
the matter is that most of the predators from which the lion takes his
food know that if they didn't surrender their dinner, they'd end up as
a side dish. They know the lion could have taken down the kill if he
wanted to, but he chooses not to...and they know the lion could take
them down too, so they encourage him not to choose it. If you think
about it, animals really do submit to the lion rather than face a
confrontation. The only reason that the lion can get away with a free
meal is because he obviously doesn't have to. That's real power. So, take that,
all you lion-haters out there! |
ACCESSORIES:
As the tag indicates, this is a 1 Piece toy. There are no accessories, unless, perhaps, you count the tag as an accessory. It's in the shape of a pith helmet, so I guess you could glue it to the lion's head or something. The tag is also attached by one of those little plastic thingies that usually attach tags to articles of clothing. It's kind of like an accessory.
Hey, I'm grasping at straws here just to beef up the word count.
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FEATURES: There's no articulation, unless you count the mild flexibility of hollow, rubberized plastic to be a kind of articulation. The sculpt is reasonably detailed. Someone
spent an awful lot of time making sure there were countless divets
across the lion's body to simulate the look of lion's fur, and I can
easily imagine the artist cursing as he painstaking rendered the
flowing locks of the lion's mane.
The toy appears to be cast in white plastic, with yellow and brown paint applications for the fur coloring. The brown is largely used on the mane, and it goes right over the ears. To their credit, the brown also runs down the spine to add a hint of depth. The inner mouth has a coat of fleshy pink, and each of the foreclaws is painted black...well...a patch of plastic in the proximity of each of the foreclaws is painted black, at least. The eyes are painted a rather implausible black with green irises. Now, I've never been close enough to a lion to know whether or not they have black eyeballs and green irises, but my suspicion is that they don't. They aren't that way in The Lion King, that's for sure. Probably the most disturbing aspect of the paint are the six fairly broad brushstrokes for whiskers. I just finished looking at a heckuvalot of images of lions on the Internet, and I can't say that any photograph of a lion shows its whiskers so predominantly as the ones on this toy. Between the lion's whiskers and the rather less than ferocious but widely-spaced fangs, I can't help but think of the late British actor Terry-Thomas every time I look at it.
Another feature I find intriguing is on the lion's underbelly. The word "Lion" appears just above the ubiquitous "Made in China," just in case you forget what you are playing with.
Another interesting bit of production trivia
is that certain sections of the head appear to be glued shut,
particularly along the bottom of the neck. However, the seam
vanishes around the shoulders and back of the neck. I have no idea what
this means, but, again, I'm trying to write a complete review for a 1
Piece plastic lion...and I already squandered my witty political
allegory in the "Concept" section. |
PLAY VALUE:
Well, it's a little too big to meet scale for
3.75" figures, unless, of course, your story arc calls for going on a
safari to take down giant, mutant lions. Most kids probably wouldn't
recognize that it's out of proportion with their action figures,
though.
In this post-Pokemon age, a kid could
probably have some fun buying a
couple of these different and then running bets on which would when in
some kind of modern-plastic equivalent of a bear bait. Lion vs.
Hippo...who will win? Or maybe you could unleash it on a big rubber
T-rex and finally settle age old challenges to mammalian
superiority. Or maybe you can just see which one is the bigger
scavenger.
He can also function as a cheap replacement for an Aslan toy if you have any Narnia fans in your household. Although, it would more likely be suited as Aslan's wimpier, possibly drunken younger brother (although that might throw off the whole Christological metaphor depending on your theological tastes). Maybe his mouth is open to knock out opponents with his stinko-breath.
And, being a big, cheap, plastic toy, this is the perfect kind of thing to give to the basher in your household and keep their dirty mits off of your collector's items.
A lot of kids go through an animal-craze phase, and for a buck, this could keep a kid amused for awhile. I don't see it doing much for the older dollar store toy connoisseur, however. Maybe you could buy two of them, spray-pain them gray, and set them up as a tacky lawn ornaments at the gateway of your suburban fortress diorama.| Until
next time...
--Charlie Clone |
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