Simosuchus (“PLANET WOW” by Blue Ocean)

In this review, the fact that a species that has so far hardly ever been considered as a toy has been considered and that very species come together. For collectors, this creates an exciting combination that justifies a “Wow!” The figure absolutely serves its purpose: to amaze children and hopefully introduce them to zoology and paleontology. But let’s go step by step.

Blue Ocean Entertainment AG is a German publisher based in Stuttgart. The company publishes children’s magazines with included collectible figures, comics, trading cards, and other collectibles. The publisher releases both licensed brands (e.g., LEGO, Minecraft, Pokémon, or Playmobil) as well as its own brands. “Planet Wow” is one of these brands. Obviously, this brand aims to get kids excited about the fascination of quirky and special animals. There are geckos, chameleons, snakes, crocodiles, as well as ‘poisonous animals’. I like this approach. First, it’s a possible gateway for later scientific interest, and second, it takes the kids away from the devastating and harmful pull of their phones to the analog world – at least for a while. The company itself states on their homepage:

“The rubber animal collectible series from PLANET WOW stand out especially for their close resemblance to their real-life counterparts in nature. With their bright colors, unique features, and realistic effects like glowing, color changes, and sounds, they amaze young collectors.”

According to Wikipedia, Simosuchus is an extinct genus of notosuchian crocodylioforms from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. It is named for its unusually short skull. Fully grown individuals were about 0.75 metres in length. The type species is Simosuchus clarki. Its teeth were shaped like maple leaves, which coupled with its short and deep snout suggests it was not a carnivore like most other crocodylomorphs. In fact, these features have led many palaeontologists to consider it a herbivore. I imagine a stunned child looking up from the magazine, showing the figures to its parents: “Look, mum and dad, this prehistoric crocodile ate plants!” In this case, the figurine series would have reached its goal.

The figure itself is 12,5 cm long and 2,5 cm tall, which means a scale of about 1:6. The very flat figure is made of a floppy, not really flexible yet stretchable rubber, whose consistency meets high safety standards. I know this because I directly asked Mr. Markus Sonneck, Director of Buying Premiums, who answered me with friendly, long and transparent mail that that dispelled my concerns about the material. I’ll gladly make them available to you on request. At its end he wrote:

“In short: we take product safety very seriously and can assure you that our products – including the crocodiles – are safe. We can confidently guarantee the market compliance of our products. By the way, the material of the crocodiles is TPR (Thermoplastic Rubber).“

My research showed that TPR doesn’t contain any phthalates.

The structure of the skin is surprisingly detailed, while the color scheme is pretty simple: A bright green covers the entire top of the figure, while the bottom was left as it came out of the mold: white. No focus was placed on painting individual claws or other anatomical details, except for the yellow-black eye. Each limb has five fingers or toes, which is actually correct according to current knowledge.

Honestly, I can’t say for sure how accurate other anatomical details are. I just have this gut feeling that the leg positioning is a bit too spread out, more like with modern crocodiles than the actually presumed more upright gait. But we shouldn’t forget the purpose for which figures like this are published. If even one in a thousand kids eagerly ends up digging into the details of this species and falls down the rabbit hole of prehistory, Blue Ocean´s goal is achieved. So we should be grateful that editions like ‘Planet Wow’ also take prehistoric species into account.

The little bags come with information sheets. They include details about the animal, a decent life-like illustration, and a small points scale that kids can use to have their animals compete against each other. Certainly a little extra fun!

Besides Simosuchus, other species have also made it into the crocodile edition, including other prehistoric ones – among them the bizarre Desmatosuchus and Carnufex, which aren´t really crocodiles at all. I plan to review all of them except for the Sarcosuchus and the Kaprosuchus (a secret bonus figure) which I don´t own.

Blue Ocean has an an online shop, but not all figures are available there: https://www.blue-ocean.de/planet-wow/?utm_source=slider&utm_medium=boe-shop&utm_campaign=banner&utm_id=pwow-sharks-app Try your luck, but keep in mind, they don’t ship outside the EU, if I understand correctly. To my knowledge, on the forum a small “support network” is currently forming.

Thanks for your attention!