Edited by Dinotoyblog, photos by Halichoeres
Ah, Cladoselache. The first shark! How exciting. Up for review today is the first rendition of the first shark, made by Kaiyodo.
Cladoselache is believed to be a very agile and swift predator – this is very well represented in this replica. The smooth (and scaleless) skin, the large keels, and the thick caudal fin are all features of this replica that point to it being a swift predator.
Everything in this replica is relatively okay. The colours are nice. One colour variant is brown fading into grey and white on the underside, with the flanks adorned with white spots. A second colour variant is blue with a white underside, with a row of white dashes along the flank.
The paint work on the gills is slightly sloppy, but it doesn’t really matter, as the figure is so small you really have to look at it closely to see anything out of the ordinary (it is about 2 inches long).
The pose is nice with the tail slightly pushed off to the right, and the accuracy is very good.
The pelvic fins are joined together in kind of a “speed bump” — they are not separated and resin fills the place where a space is supposed to be. The lower jaw is also a little too pointed, I would have liked it to be a bit rounder. There is one spine in front of each dorsal fin, just as there should be.
All in all, this is a very sound replica, and if you like your prehistorical fishies, this guy is definitely for you. I think prehistoric sharks are sorely underrepresented in figure form. Currently this is the only Cladoselache out there, so hopefully other companies will start making renditions of this guy! (I’m looking at you Safari Ltd!)
9/10 stars
Disclaimer: links to Ebay and Amazon on the DinoToyBlog are affiliate links, so we make a small commission if you use them. Thanks for supporting us!
You’d think prehistoric sharks would be an easy sell; yet all these years later, hardly any of the companies still touch them beyond the megalodon species. What a waste! At least this little figure is still a delight.
Fish can be very hard to sculpt, especially as fins and scales makes a whole lot of work. I once sclpted a small Cladoselache, and I needed many hours for it, but still am not really happy with it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32329052@N00/1409023812/in/set-72157601561815064/
These are great little figures but way too small for my taste. I do wish someone would produce prehistoric fish in a decent size/scale.