Safari Ltd: New for 2023

[Primeval12]

S @Shane Nice, thank you for the info! Looking forward to that. So the non-stock pics that are on Safari's site for each figure feature the final figures (the ones that are sold)? I don't know why, but I assumed they featured the prototypes.

Mind you if I ask when will the Stegouros and the Therizinosaurus be in stock?

The photos are usually the final approved sample which, if all goes as it's supposed to, should be indistinguishable from the final product.

It's hard to say when they'll be available. Sometime early next year if everything goes according to schedule.

Darn, I was hoping to get it on Black Friday.

[Joliezac]

Will this be the same estimated time for the other upcoming figures? Axolotl, everglades toob, African grey, silky shark, rattler etc...

I was hoping to see them soon, but sounds like we will have to wait a few more months? 

[SidB]

2023 has been a disappointment for me with Safari. Not a single dinosaur (except repaints) in the 1/35 scale or thereabouts range, nor a cenozoic mammal, and now this word that the one ray of hope, the Therizinsaurus, will be a 2024 release. I'm sure glad that HLG has emerged as a top-flight source for these figures. Seems to me that they've decisively replaced Safari, which, IMO, is only a shadow of its glory days in the mid to late decade past.

[Lynx]

2023 has been a disappointment for me with Safari. Not a single dinosaur (except repaints) in the 1/35 scale or thereabouts range, nor a cenozoic mammal, and now this word that the one ray of hope, the Therizinsaurus, will be a 2024 release. I'm sure glad that HLG has emerged as a top-flight source for these figures. Seems to me that they've decisively replaced Safari, which, IMO, is only a shadow of its glory days in the mid to late decade past.

I thought the figures from this year were great. People asked for a lot of the stuff a ton, and Safari delivered perfectly good models.

[Jose S.M.]

I think we should just stop thinking Safari will be doing their releases in one sweep and start treating them like the companies that announce a product and released at a later date. I don't think is fair to say they are worse than before because one doesn't like their release schedule or the taxa they release. The sculpts keep being great for the most part, this year all are Doug Watson usual level of quality sculpts.

I really like Haolonggood but I feel they are at the starting stages of a cycle that has been repeated with almost every company: they appear or have a boost in quality, get lots of praise, then after a time they start making decisions that don't please everyone and then people start getting harder with them. I'm not saying we should praise everything every company release or like it and get it. But there's a novelty factor that makes everything exciting when it comes out and tends to wear out later. Safari has decades in the business and I can imagine is harder for them to come out with products that would be great sellers and is cute at the same time.

[Sim]

I think this is one of Safari's best years.  They've made lots of excellent models of interesting species, extinct and extant.  And they've done that without making a tyrannosauroid, ceratopsid or allosauroid, something rare in the yearly releases of a prehistoric company.

Haolonggood I think is only getting better, their Dilophosaurus and Megaraptor are in more unusual poses than their nice but often used walking poses, and are just excellent.

[Shane]

Will this be the same estimated time for the other upcoming figures? Axolotl, everglades toob, African grey, silky shark, rattler etc...

I was hoping to see them soon, but sounds like we will have to wait a few more months? 

Axolotl and Rattlesnake *should* be here sometime before the end of the year. I believe Blue Phoenix may also arrive sometime in December.

The rest will probably be sometime hopefully in Q1 2024.

[Gwangi]

2023 has been a disappointment for me with Safari. Not a single dinosaur (except repaints) in the 1/35 scale or thereabouts range, nor a cenozoic mammal, and now this word that the one ray of hope, the Therizinsaurus, will be a 2024 release. I'm sure glad that HLG has emerged as a top-flight source for these figures. Seems to me that they've decisively replaced Safari, which, IMO, is only a shadow of its glory days in the mid to late decade past.

Just because Safari hasn't catered to your specific scale range or release schedule doesn't mean they're a "shadow of their glory days", that's extremely hyperbolic. This has been Safari's best year in the post-Covid era. Need I remind you...

Majungasaurus
Utahraptor
Estemmenosuchus
Stegouros
Therizinosaurus

That is a fantastic lineup and all of them are among the best ever sculpts of their genera and/or high demand genera. When you make a choice to only collect a specific range of things you have only yourself to blame for your disappointment. And you certainly can be disappointed but the company itself did just fine this year.

[Shane]

I think we should just stop thinking Safari will be doing their releases in one sweep and start treating them like the companies that announce a product and released at a later date. I don't think is fair to say they are worse than before because one doesn't like their release schedule or the taxa they release. The sculpts keep being great for the most part, this year all are Doug Watson usual level of quality sculpts.

I really like Haolonggood but I feel they are at the starting stages of a cycle that has been repeated with almost every company: they appear or have a boost in quality, get lots of praise, then after a time they start making decisions that don't please everyone and then people start getting harder with them. I'm not saying we should praise everything every company release or like it and get it. But there's a novelty factor that makes everything exciting when it comes out and tends to wear out later. Safari has decades in the business and I can imagine is harder for them to come out with products that would be great sellers and is cute at the same time.

If I'm reading it right, it's not even the taxa that's being complained about, but the scale? I'm sorry if people are strict 1:35 scale collectors, but it's not particularly realistic to expect toy companies to adhere to that for every single release.

Personally I feel like a year of releases that includes Majungasaurus, Utahraptor, Estemmenosuchus, Stegouros, and Therizinosaurus is a pretty good year. The latter two may come out in 2024, but they are part of Safari's 2023 releases. I'm sorry if folks are upset about having to wait a few more months, but the approval, manufacturing, and shipping process takes time. If I could snap my fingers and get these toys to your doorstep today, trust me, I would.

[Carnoking]

That Therizinosaurus seems like it will be well worth the wait 

[SidB]

2023 has been a disappointment for me with Safari. Not a single dinosaur (except repaints) in the 1/35 scale or thereabouts range, nor a cenozoic mammal, and now this word that the one ray of hope, the Therizinsaurus, will be a 2024 release. I'm sure glad that HLG has emerged as a top-flight source for these figures. Seems to me that they've decisively replaced Safari, which, IMO, is only a shadow of its glory days in the mid to late decade past.

I thought the figures from this year were great. People asked for a lot of the stuff a ton, and Safari delivered perfectly good models.

I never said that the current figures aren't great, I said that they didn't fit into my collecting window.

[Lynx]

2023 has been a disappointment for me with Safari. Not a single dinosaur (except repaints) in the 1/35 scale or thereabouts range, nor a cenozoic mammal, and now this word that the one ray of hope, the Therizinsaurus, will be a 2024 release. I'm sure glad that HLG has emerged as a top-flight source for these figures. Seems to me that they've decisively replaced Safari, which, IMO, is only a shadow of its glory days in the mid to late decade past.

I thought the figures from this year were great. People asked for a lot of the stuff a ton, and Safari delivered perfectly good models.

I never said that the current figures aren't great, I said that they didn't fit into my collecting window.

The wording on the original post was a bit confusing.

[Concavenator]

I think Safari has done a great job this year. Interesting species choices, and the models are just really good representations of the creatures they represent. I would've preferred they would have gone for a more well-known therizinosaur than Therizinosaurus - but that's it, a personal preference of mine. The Therizinosaurus itself is great (as is the rest of the new Safaris). I don't expect the majority of Safari's target to care about fossil completeness. Clearly, the name Therizinosaurus is more recognisable than Nothronychus (although for example Safari made Citipati instead of the more famous Oviraptor). On another hand, I would have liked to see Kentrosaurus receive a new sculpt rather than a repaint, but what can I say about this? I guess Safari just thought that wasn't feasible and that releasing the repaint is the better decision, commercially.

S @SidB Regarding scale, not even all of the companies who do advertise their figures at a particular scale always offer them at the promised scale. HLG, for example. While it's true their latest pieces are more accurate to the advertised 1:35 scale, some of their pieces from this year are made to different scales than that, i.e., the ceratopsids and the ankylosaurs. Another example, Rebor's Deinosuchus and Tyrannosaurus. By contrast, Safari's figures aren't advertised at a particular scale, so technically we can't complaint about that.

[Fembrogon]

I sympathize with those who prefer more consistency with scale between models, but I'm not going to let my own pickiness in that regard distract me from the fact that I finally have a good Utahraptor in my collection. We've been waiting too long for this genus to start complaining about the toy's size now. It's up to date, it's affordable, it looks great. The pros outweigh the cons several times over.

And that's just the Utahraptor.

[Concavenator]

@Fembrogon My thoughts exactly.

[Concavenator]

Review of the Stegouros, courtesy of D @Dino Scream3232

Looks very nice. See, CollectA, you can also make relatively big figures of small animals without them being ginormous!

[SenSx]

Still waiting for the Safari Utharaptor and the Estemmenosuchus to reach Europe 

Is it normal ?
Are they available in other countries ?

[postsaurischian]

Still waiting for the Safari Utharaptor and the Estemmenosuchus to reach Europe 

Is it normal ?
Are they available in other countries ?

 Meanwhile it's normal for the Safari figures to arrive a year late.
 This means in Europe 2023 figures are 20024 figures. Sometimes I even forgot about the "new" figures when they're finally available.
 I guess the European marked isn't very interesting for Safari. Maybe not enough sales in the recent past.

[Prehistory Resurrection]

[GojiraGuy1954]

2023 has been a disappointment for me with Safari. Not a single dinosaur (except repaints) in the 1/35 scale or thereabouts range, nor a cenozoic mammal, and now this word that the one ray of hope, the Therizinsaurus, will be a 2024 release. I'm sure glad that HLG has emerged as a top-flight source for these figures. Seems to me that they've decisively replaced Safari, which, IMO, is only a shadow of its glory days in the mid to late decade past.

Just because Safari hasn't catered to your specific scale range or release schedule doesn't mean they're a "shadow of their glory days", that's extremely hyperbolic. This has been Safari's best year in the post-Covid era. Need I remind you...

Majungasaurus
Utahraptor
Estemmenosuchus
Stegouros
Therizinosaurus

That is a fantastic lineup and all of them are among the best ever sculpts of their genera and/or high demand genera. When you make a choice to only collect a specific range of things you have only yourself to blame for your disappointment. And you certainly can be disappointed but the company itself did just fine this year.

I'm still salty that I bought CollectA's Estemmeno last year under the pretense that it would never get another figure ever again. Not making the same mistake with the safari Shringasaurus I just know as soon as I get it CollectA will announce a better one