Many readers will be familiar with the Fauna Figures site set up by our very own Sean Bell in 2019. The blog was a follow up to his online store of the same name, and explores his extensive toy collection, which ranges broadly across time and taxa.
He currently has a whopping 4432 figures, and owned even more when he first started the blog. As with most of us collectors, ongoing sales/trades and continual additions, means the make-up of his collection is constantly evolving. Sean posted on Fauna Figures discussions on all manner of figures, companies, and ‘clades’ or ‘grades’. However, a few years ago, time and burnout kept him from continuing to post, and he eventually decided that the cost of maintaining it wasn’t worth it.
But there’s a massive volume of excellent stuff on there, and some posts seem to have had a weird traction. For example, it appears to be the only source of a least one photo of each Dinosaur King series 2 figure by Playmates that actually got released. In total there are well over 300 posts on Fauna Figures, and thousands of photos! So, he didn’t want it to just disappear forever.
That led Sean to reach out to me to discuss the possibility of hosting the Fauna Figures site as a kind of archive. I was more than happy to agree, and while it could have become a sub-site of the dinotoyblog.com domain here, we concurred that our sister domain animaltoyforum.com would be the better fit for Fauna Figures as a sub-site, where it could continue alongside the Animal Toy Forum and Blog, in a place that’s mostly consistent with the theme. These days Sean is mostly interested in modern animals, in particular fish, and when it comes to writing posts he has spent time this year getting back into posting on the Animal Toy Blog, where there’s a whole team keeping it going, which means less personal pressure!
You may have already seen the new links to Fauna Figures added to the top menus of the Dinosaur Toy Blog and Forum, as well as the Animal Toy Blog and Forum, so Fauna Figures is now an official part of this network. It can be reached directly here: https://animaltoyforum.com/faunafigures. The general shape of the site didn’t change, and everything should be back in place at its new address. Maybe you know the site already, or maybe it will be new to you, but I strongly recommend you check it out either way. I was already familiar with the original site, but the act of migrating it has given me a renewed appreciation for the huge amount of work Sean has put into it, and a greater realisation of the vast amount of interesting content he generated in a relatively short time. The site is live and editable, so there’s even the possibility of Sean adding more content in the future, and although that might not happen, I personally hope it does – Sean’s insights into his unique collection are always fascinating!
So, now the site has fully moved, and the original is ‘unpublished’, we’re excited to announce it here! The original faunafigures.com domain will eventually expire as well, but at least the site will live on! That address again is https://animaltoyforum.com/faunafigures, so, go and explore Fauna Figures!
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