Megalodon (Schleich)

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4 (1 votes)

Otodus megalodon is a difficult shark for me to get excited about, despite my love of cartilaginous fishes. Although captivating in concept (a gigantic whale-hunting shark with 7” teeth) there aren’t enough remains of it to really…well…sink your teeth into. Just teeth and vertebrae. We don’t really know what it looked like, despite the best efforts of paleontologists. Thanks to once being included in the Carcharodon genus, along with the great white, the majority of megalodon reconstructions, including toys, just end up looking like white sharks.

Not wanting to display what is basically a great white in my prehistoric animal cabinet, I’ve passed on all previous megalodon figures. But as the world’s most famous prehistoric fish, with a decent fossil record in my home state of Maryland, I felt like it was finally time to cave in and get one. I was originally going to get and review Haolonggood’s but I don’t like jaw articulation on toy sharks, so I decided to try out Schleich’s, new for 2025. Afterall, Schleich did produce two of the best great white shark toys in recent years, so they should be able to nail megalodon too. Let’s take a look and see if they did.

First off, we can’t really evaluate the accuracy beyond the teeth here. A recent paper titled Body dimensions of the extinct giant shark Otodus megalodon: a 2D reconstruction used some clever calculations to try and deduce the size and proportions of megalodon. It provides about as informed an inference as possible as to what megalodon looked like and I would have liked it if someone made a model matching the illustration we see in that paper but alas. Schleich’s toy is essentially a great white shark.

Now, in defense of the white shark model, megalodon does belong to the Otodontidae family, which appears to be closely related to the Lamnidae family that white sharks belong to. So, they’re still closely related enough to Lamnid sharks that those are the best species to infer their appearance from. But there’s no reason not to deviate from white sharks and draw some inspiration from other Lamnid species. In my opinion, it leans a bit too heavily into the white shark look.

With the Safari Monterey Bay Aquarium and Schleich white shark figures.

For a white shark the toy is accurate enough that it could stand in for one in a collection of extant animals. It even includes some less obvious whitey features, like the keel on the caudal peduncle and black tips on the underside of the pectoral fins. Things that are often forgotten on toys of actual white sharks. The snout appears blunter, and the dorsal fin is proportionally smaller than you would see on a white shark though.

The size of megalodon is almost as speculative as what it looked like. All we really know is that it was large. Size estimates range between 47–80’ (14.2–24.3 meters). The study mentioned above suggested a length of 52’ (16 meters). The Schleich megalodon measures 11.42” (29 cm) in total length, it’s larger than I anticipated, being about the same size as my PNSO Livyatan. We can come up with numerous scales for this thing. Scaled down from 47’, it’s 1/52. Scaled down from 52’, it’s 1/54. Scaled down from 80’, it’s 1/84.

While we’re here let’s scale it down from a white shark, just for fun. Great white sharks reach a maximum length of 21’ (6.4 meters) but have an average length between 11-16’ (3.4-4.9 meters). Females grow larger than males, and this figure can be identified as a female due to the lack of claspers attached to the pelvic fins. Scaled down from the maximum length the figure comes out to be 1/22 in scale. Scaled down from 16’ the figure comes out to be 1/16.8 in scale. So, if you need a 1/18 scale great white, this might be a figure to consider.

Looking at the fine details it behooves us to start with the head. The mouth is agape and filled with rows of triangular teeth set within nicely textured gums. The last row on the bottom jaw is sculpted folded back, against the gums. A few teeth are intentionally missing and the alignment of some is off, showing some nice attention to detail. There’s an odd-looking hole in the back of the throat and the toy is hollow. I guess a kid could fill it with water and dump it out while playing in the pool or tub.

Small creases of skin are sculpted along the upper lip, and the teeth and gums are extended forward. Additional creases are sculpted along the back of the head, illustrating how the snout tilts back when the shark is opening its mouth. In sharks, the upper jaw is not fused to the cranium and is instead attached via ligaments, allowing the jaw to extend outward and away from the cranium. I feel like the figure does a good job of illustrating how shark jaws work. Various attempts at articulated jaws for megalodon just give it a generic flappy jaw and until someone figures out how to do it right, I have no interest in articulated shark toys, even if those by Haolonggood and CollectA have other things going for them that this one doesn’t.

Small black dots can be seen along the underside of the snout, and these are the shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini, electroreceptive organs that detect the electrical fields produced by other animals. Very few shark toys include them, but Schleich notably included them on their 2018 great white shark. It’s a nice touch.

Five long gills are sculpted on each side, ahead of the pectoral fins and the pectoral, first dorsal, pelvic, and caudal fins all have jagged edges. The figure is almost entirely smooth but there is some nicely sculpted musculature along the underside and the faint outline of the lower jaw under the skin. The figure is covered in an excessive amount of scars that are made worse by being highlighted in black. The gills are also highlighted in black. I don’t like the amount of scaring we get here, and outlining the scars and gills in black cheapens the otherwise excellent sculpt.

The figure is painted like a great white and is gray dorsally with a white underside and a sharp demarcation between the two along the flanks. A darker shade of gray would have been nice, or perhaps a wholly original but informed paintjob that didn’t match the great white so closely. The gums are painted with a nice blend of pinks and reds, and the teeth are white. The eyes are black and shiny.

With the PNSO Cretoxyrhina and Helicoprion.
With the CollectA Xiphactinus and Safari Dunkleosteus.

The Schleich megalodon is yet another great white doppelganger but does an admirable job of paying close attention to shark anatomy and is one of the better large, non-articulated, megalodon figures available. That it could also pass as a decent great white figure might also make it appealing to some. The amount of black highlighted scars really is off-putting though, and the toy suffers for it from an adult collector standpoint. The paintjob is flat and dull when compared to megalodon figures by PNSO, Haolonggood, and CollectA but those figures have their own faults, like weird and unsightly jaw articulation and loose skin in the case of the larger PNSO. This figure is currently in production and widely available, it retails for about $25.

With the PNSO Livyatan.

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Comments 1

  • Thanks for the informative review. I have the Monterey Bay great white and i use that for my 1/18 Great White (for a 15 to 16 foot long animal). It doesn’t have the caudal keel, which is annoying, but is otherwise a pretty nice figure. I put a Kaiyodo Sea Lion figure in it’s mouth and posed it breaching (one of the most impressive sights in the animal kingdom).

    Anyway, the Schleich figure is certainly surprisingly good. I’m not a fan of the gashes all over its body but otherwise it’s quite nice. I can see it being a great addition as a GW or Megalodon to people’s collections. Schleich is an odd company. They produce figures that are real clankers and then others that are really nice. Curious.

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