Neanderthals (CollectA)

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Review and photos by Takama, edited by Suspsy

When I first joined this community, I fell in love with the company known as CollectA due to their abundance of species that no other company had made before. At the time, their models were only starting to become the gems they are today. For me, my favorite year was 2012, when they released a unique slew of new species including their first hominin figures that just so happen to be prehistoric. The CollectA Neanderthals may not be as realistic as the other prehistoric mammals in the line, but since they came out the same year as the well hung Megacerops, I don’t think we can expect a resculpt of this couple any time soon. Back in 2012, Anthony Beeson said that he had the Neanderthals made to stray away from the common media depiction of these people as stupid ape men that say “Ugh.”

​In this review I will be reviewing the two Neanderthals in the order in which I acquired them in, which clearly means that I did not buy them at the same time. In fact, the female was given to me for free for some odd reason by Dan’s Dinosaurs(I don’t remember why, but I sure did thank him for it). One of the things that stood out to me most of us about this model is the fact that her mammary glands are exposed for the world to see. Usually, when a company makes toy Neanderthals, they usually create them in winter attire and thus they are fully clothed. This is the first time I have seen any company create a toy for kids that depicts a topless woman. At the time that this model was first revealed, I was shocked to see it, and I wondered if there would be a backlash from some angry parents. Fortunately, no such backlash has happened (though the Mapusaurus released that year was not so lucky, as collectors were annoyed over the final product). After all, there is nothing overly sexualized being displayed with this model, as she is just minding her own business, carrying a club and the skull of an ungulate.

In terms of accuracy however, this model is too cartoonish to be taken seriously. The face should be more rounded and I think the nose should be a lot bigger. The club she is carrying is nice, but it is much too akin to the stereotypical depictions of cavemen, and I don’t think that these type of clubs existed. If they wanted to be more accurate, they should have given her a stick and a stone hammer instead. On her neck is a necklace made from claws and rocks, and she has a series of lines painted along her shoulders and around her arms.

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Moving on to the male, we can see he is a lot more active, holding what appears to be a stone-tipped spear and using it to poke at some unseen animal. This is as far as I know, accurate, as Neanderthals used short-ranged weapons when hunting large game. He too is topless and not in winter attire. The face has the exact same issues as the female, though personally, I think it looks like my mother’s fiance to an extent. He also has a necklace made of what I presume to be bear claws.

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The colours on these two individuals are your typical human tans, although the male is a lot darker than the female, which I will assume means that he is a hard worker and must get down and dirty with his life as a Neanderthal. One of the things I noticed when examining these figures is that these two lack undergarments. Fortunately, CollectA was wise enough to leave these regions unsculpted.

Overall, if you want a good representation of a Neanderthal couple, there are better choices made by other companies. But if you’re a completist for CollectA’s newer mammals, then these will do for now. Otherwise, you can wait another 10 years when they may finally run out of brand new dinosaurs(Editor’s note: not bloody likely!) to release and start remaking their older models that have not stood the test of time.