Schleich - new for 2020

[PumperKrickel]

I honestly have no idea what´s so bad about this new attempt at a franchise. They´ve been doing wildlife rangers for years and nobody said anything. Now they´re doing rangers for dinosaurs and suddenly people whine about it? That´s not jumping on a bandwagon, that´s a good business decision, just like it´s a good business decision to include a Rex or a Velociraptor in your toyline. Their great figures from a few years ago probably didn´t sell enough, which is why they had to retire most of them already. Realism experiment failed, so now they´re embracing the cartoony (ugly) style that seems to be doing well. What´s wrong with that, exactly?

[Takama]

I honestly have no idea what´s so bad about this new attempt at a franchise. They´ve been doing wildlife rangers for years and nobody said anything. Now they´re doing rangers for dinosaurs and suddenly people whine about it? That´s not jumping on a bandwagon, that´s a good business decision, just like it´s a good business decision to include a Rex or a Velociraptor in your toyline. Their great figures from a few years ago probably didn´t sell enough, which is why they had to retire most of them already. Realism experiment failed, so now they´re embracing the cartoony (ugly) style that seems to be doing well. What´s wrong with that, exactly?

In this case, its clear they were throwing Cropolites at the wall, and seeing whats unfossilized.

Just look at this taken from the website



Anyone whos UP TO DATE on there prehistory should know that Postosuchus is now primarily a Biped,

Like this




let alone, NOT A DINOSAUR

Im about to stop collecting Schlleich if this is the Direction there going

[Libraraptor]

Oh man, how I had sworn to myself to keep my mouth shut on those Schleich matters. And then I saw their crippled attempt to get rid of their overstock of figures beaten with the ugly stick by inventing a "franchise".  And they even can´t tell the toys educational, for they simply spread misinformation as we see with that Postosuchus. If they don´t care about children knowing basic facts, they do not care about children at all.
Their main target group are now fathers on their business trip thinking of their children at least shortly before departure, buying them some loveless crap. Schleich are true capitalists.
But now, and this is my promise to you all in order to discipline myself, these were my last words about ridiculous, awkward Schleich company.
I will only say somethig if I have to praise something they do, in particular when I get the feeling they at least try to release good figures again.

[Lu_Yuping]

Oh man, how I had sworn to myself to keep my mouth shut on those Schleich matters. And then I saw their crippled attempt to get rid of their overstock of figures beaten with the ugly stick by inventing a "franchise".  And they even can´t tell the toys educational, for they simply spread misinformation as we see with that Postosuchus. If they don´t care about children knowing basic facts, they do not care about children at all.
Their main target group are now fathers on their business trip thinking of their children at least shortly before departure, buying them some loveless crap. Schleich are true capitalists.
But now, and this is my promise to you all in order to discipline myself, these were my last words about ridiculous, awkward Schleich company.
I will only say somethig if I have to praise something they do, in particular when I get the feeling they at least try to release good figures again.

I agree that Schleich dinosaurs are ugly, but surely you're used to misinformation by now? Even zoos do it, they put entertaining guests above education a lot of the time.

[stargatedalek]

For me "teeth cane be seen in their strong, flexible jaw." has to take the cake. Educational product, educational product right here.

I honestly have no idea what´s so bad about this new attempt at a franchise. They´ve been doing wildlife rangers for years and nobody said anything. Now they´re doing rangers for dinosaurs and suddenly people whine about it? That´s not jumping on a bandwagon, that´s a good business decision, just like it´s a good business decision to include a Rex or a Velociraptor in your toyline. Their great figures from a few years ago probably didn´t sell enough, which is why they had to retire most of them already. Realism experiment failed, so now they´re embracing the cartoony (ugly) style that seems to be doing well. What´s wrong with that, exactly?

What's wrong with that is that Schleich still claims to be an educational company. This isn't being marketed as a line of "cool action play sets", it's being marketed as "educational and researched products".

Also, they didn't in any way "experiment with realism". A few of their dinosaurs happened to be closer to reality, probably because they were "C list" background species like Psittacosaurus and Oviraptor which were presumably deemed not important enough to get micromanaged by executives demanding pop culture appeal. And even these were given garish, overly simplistic colour schemes.

[Faelrin]

I don't know if this was shared here yet, but I found out from one of A @Andysdinosaurreviews videos that the Oviraptor, Dinogorgon, and Herrerasaurus (the blue one) are being retired this year. Really a shame about the Dinogorgon being retired so fast, with it being one of the few affordable Paleozoic and Permian figures as it is, let alone one of the very few gorgonopsid figures in existence so far. The Oviraptor was also not that bad at all either, despite the simplistic color scheme. It was the closest they ever come to producing a proper feathered dinosaur. Granted I'm also a little surprised at seeing the Herrerasaurus leaving. I hope CollectA or Safari Ltd can produce an accurate rendition in due time (if not its newly discovered, and relatively complete relative Gnathovorax).

[Dinoxels]

Schleich seems to be trying to get away from their better figures for some reason, and opting for something more childish. I thought they were moving up in quality like CollectA did, but they seem to be right back where they were, if not worse.

[EmperorDinobot]

One of the characters is named Luis!


I love the playsets, honestly, they're gonna work really well in my Jurassic display and with my other 3.75 inch figures.
But yeah it's a little goofy.

[PumperKrickel]

For me "teeth cane be seen in their strong, flexible jaw." has to take the cake. Educational product, educational product right here.

Wow, german company has a typo in the english translation. Guess I better don´t misspell any words, otherwise people here will think I´m uneducated.

What's wrong with that is that Schleich still claims to be an educational company. This isn't being marketed as a line of "cool action play sets", it's being marketed as "educational and researched products".

I´m just gonna quote myself here:

Educational does not mean scientifically accurate. An educational toy stimulates a child´s development through play. Lego Duplo is an educational toy, despite not exactly accurate depictions of animals or objects. Wooden toys are educational, not for their scientific accuracy, but for their unique properties like texture, smell or shape. Schleich toys are educational because they encourage a childs development by promoting creativity. When you have a look at one of their figures on amazon, you won´t find any claims of being scientifically accurate. You will however find claims of being highly detailed, durable and inspiring play. They aren´t lying by any means. Their fantasy figures are also listed as educational toys. Are they claiming that their unicorns and dragons are scientifically accurate as well? Or could it maybe be possible that the bias some people have against Schleich is clouding their judgement? Fun fact: Safari Ltd is claiming that their werewolf is educational as well. Guess they deserve the same amount of hate Schleich does for claiming that werewolves are real.

https://www.amazon.com/Safari-Ltd-Fantasy-Collection-Construction/dp/B01LFTKQTE/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=safari+werewolf&qid=1586710924&sr=8-1

[Loon]

For me "teeth cane be seen in their strong, flexible jaw." has to take the cake. Educational product, educational product right here.

Wow, german company has a typo in the english translation. Guess I better don´t misspell any words, otherwise people here will think I´m uneducated.

I think there's quite a difference between one person making a typo and a multi-million dollar corporation, who has employees in English speaking countries, making a mistake on their own website.

Also, @suspsy , I do find it odd that all of the characters are male as well. Even there horse line, despite featuring mainly female figures, has quite a few male characters. Maybe at some point, female figures will be added.

[EmperorDinobot]

Pump is right. Playing with stuff is educational enough as it is. HOWEVER, they do have the responsibility to make more decent and modern dinosaurs. Their research is certainly not up to date and they're ripping off some *ahem* franchises.


Again, I enjoy the look of their playsets for play and display value [we all live in a 1:18 world(meta reference)], but their dino lineup is kinda bad.


Then again, I never thought I'd have a model of Barapasaurus in my collection. I hope they give us Vulcanodon next XD

[PumperKrickel]

HOWEVER, they do have the responsibility to make more decent and modern dinosaurs.

Do they? Why?

I think there's quite a difference between one person making a typo and a multi-million dollar corporation, who has employees in English speaking countries, making a mistake on their own website.

It´s still just a typo and hardly warrants the ridicule and hate it receives here.

HOWEVER, I will say that I absolutely agree with the disappointment at the lack of representation in the human figures. A female figure and perhaps a little more diversity in terms of skin colour would have been far better. The three figures look basically identical, which is just boring and lazy.

[Varanops]

I can find it in my heart to overlook a few Schleichian missteps when I survey that series of magnificent prehistoric mammals they gave us several years ago.  Though personally I don't care overmuch for the other four of this year's offerings, I am forced to purchase their Postosuchus because I am a slave to the Permian-Triassic time frame.  (Also, I'm limited by budgetary constraints.)

[suspsy]

LEGO has made a concerted effort in recent years to attract girls to buy their products, and I'm not just talking about the Friends line. If you look at the LEGO City sets, you'll find that there are female as well as male minifigures in nearly all of them. Police, firefighters, construction workers, miners, astronauts, explorers, or just average citizens. The Minifigures line itself includes multiple females in every series and Ninjago made sure to include a female main character(Nya) from the very beginning.

One would therefore think that any former LEGO employees now at Schleich would be pushing for female characters in a theme such as this one. Instead it's just three males who all look pretty much the same save for their haircuts and shirt colours.

[Concavenator]

Schleich are true capitalists.

Oh yeah, a company seeking profit for themselves. Truly unbelievable, isn't it?   

And every company who produces Tyrannosaurus figures are 

I will only say somethig if I have to praise something they do, in particular when I get the feeling they at least try to release good figures again.

Well, they produce good figures when they want. Look at their newer Spinosaurus and Psittacosaurus. Those are really good models.

[stargatedalek]

For me "teeth cane be seen in their strong, flexible jaw." has to take the cake. Educational product, educational product right here.

Wow, german company has a typo in the english translation. Guess I better don´t misspell any words, otherwise people here will think I´m uneducated.

What's wrong with that is that Schleich still claims to be an educational company. This isn't being marketed as a line of "cool action play sets", it's being marketed as "educational and researched products".

I´m just gonna quote myself here:

Educational does not mean scientifically accurate. An educational toy stimulates a child´s development through play. Lego Duplo is an educational toy, despite not exactly accurate depictions of animals or objects. Wooden toys are educational, not for their scientific accuracy, but for their unique properties like texture, smell or shape. Schleich toys are educational because they encourage a childs development by promoting creativity. When you have a look at one of their figures on amazon, you won´t find any claims of being scientifically accurate. You will however find claims of being highly detailed, durable and inspiring play. They aren´t lying by any means. Their fantasy figures are also listed as educational toys. Are they claiming that their unicorns and dragons are scientifically accurate as well? Or could it maybe be possible that the bias some people have against Schleich is clouding their judgement? Fun fact: Safari Ltd is claiming that their werewolf is educational as well. Guess they deserve the same amount of hate Schleich does for claiming that werewolves are real.

https://www.amazon.com/Safari-Ltd-Fantasy-Collection-Construction/dp/B01LFTKQTE/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=safari+werewolf&qid=1586710924&sr=8-1

And yet that wasn't good enough when you criticized Safari ltd. You said they were fraudulent about their claims of having educational figures because they had a werewolf.

A werewolf that came with material talking about how werewolves weren't real, and a medical condition purported as a possible origin of the myth.

You said that wasn't good enough, and that we were hypocritical for saying Safari doesn't (**create new products which) actively mislead consumers, while Schleich does.

** Obviously they still produce some older products designed before adopting the current knowledge of the subjects and in some cases before current industry technologies.

Meanwhile Schleich is calling an animal which, fun fact, was never considered to be a dinosaur, a dinosaur. This isn't outdated information, this isn't even a popular reconstruction chosen out of perceived financial necessity, this is nonsense. Someone wrote this up without even bothering to check Wikipedia, and the write-up got OKed by a multi-million dollar organization.

[suspsy]

Wait . . . someone was accusing Safari Ltd of not being an educational company simply because they make fantasy beasts alongside real animals?

Well gee, going by that reasoning, Sesame Street isn't an educational program because roughly half the cast consists of monsters or grouches.

[Loon]

? @Stolpergeist I definitely see what you're talking about. It's really a wider issue in the toy/media market as a whole. Luckily, at least a few American companies seem to notice this, and even Lego has been introducing more non-white, non-male figures.

Unfortunately, I still think the general conception is that dinosaurs are only for boys. My heart was absolutely broken by this at a Michael's crafts store later last year. I saw a young girl ask her grandmother to buy her a Safari Triceratops and the grandmother told her that she doesn't get those kinds of toys. Needless to say, I feel the Schleich line is a huge missed opportunity, regardless of accuracy, or decent sculpting, or quality.

[suspsy]

@Loon I noticed that too and it's a bit off putting to me.
I talked a bit about it on my blog but I didn't know if it would be too political for the forum but simply put I am not a white man and wouldn't have been able to relate to those characters at all as a child.
I feel like they only went with this decision to please conservative German parents.
Even when you look at their Wild Life sets which seem to be mostly set in Africa only one of the characters isn't white and they also seem to have only one woman.
Maybe they add a Colby sister one day but it's unlikely as they clearly market it as a boy thing unfortunately but if that ever happens I hope she won't introduce herself with "my favourite colour is pink", I'd go absolutely feral.
I'm still numb from the video where the youngest Colby brother says "I'm a YouTuber".

I'm not convinced the lack of diversity was deliberately done in order to please conservative Germans. Playmobil is a German toy company, after all, and they've been including females and non-white people in their sets for years and years. I think it's more likely a lack of imagination of Schleich's part.

[SidB]

Schleich seems to be trying to get away from their better figures for some reason, and opting for something more childish. I thought they were moving up in quality like CollectA did, but they seem to be right back where they were, if not worse.

Yes, the Schleich mini-Renaissance of the past few years is over. 2020 indicated this and these developments seem like nails in the coffin.