Another strange crocodile species Planet Wow has made a wobbly rubber figure of is Anatosuchus, the interesting “duck crocodile”. Planet Wow is a trademark of a publisher named “Blue Ocean”, located in Stuttgart, Germany. They release magazines for children with blind bags of all kinds of animals added to them. But they also distribute some of those blind bags without the magazines.
The figures are released to encourage kids to collect, trade, be amazed and compete against each other in a harmless way. In short, to foster imagination and the awareness of the world we live in. That’s a very good intention, which I welcome. And based on exactly those standards, we should judge this figure. It’s not a sophisticated model (of which I found two on the Internet, one by paleoartist Vitor Silva and one from a certain ‘dragonartist015’ on Instagram.
But which species are we even talking about today? According to Wikipedia, Anatosuchus (“duck crocodile”, the name from the Latin anas (“duck”) and the Greek souchos (“crocodile”), for the broad, duck-like snout) is an extinct genus of notosuchian crocodylioform discovered in Gadoufaoua, Niger. It was described by a team of palaeontologists led by Paul Sereno in 2003. It was quite small, measuring only about 70cm in length, lived in the early Creataceous and is mostly known for its unusual, shovel- or spoon-shaped (“duck-billed”) mouth. Which ecological niche it occupied with this tool remains speculation, but it´s very likely it tracked down small animals like crustaceans and worms, ate small fish and filtered or picked food out of mud and shallow water.
The figure is 16 cm long and stands 4,5 cm tall, that is if it keeps standing, which my copy does not due to the wobbly plastic. But they just depicted it in this very upright pose, which looks great. The scaly skin pattern is depicted in detail, just like with all the figures from this series. A row of osteoderms runs along the back, while the rest of the body has simple, small scales. My copy has a paler color scheme than shown in the reference image. A light brown tone on the back is decorated with dark brown stripes that wrap around the legs in a circular pattern. The underside has been left in the original mold colour of a dark beige. I’m still not completely sure if these figures change color with temperature changes. I tried it without success, but maybe I did it the wrong way, so the final proof is still pending.
Don´t expect too many anatomical details on the figure, you can only depict so much detail with this kind of material. The mouth does reveal some mini teeth, and even the little structure on the tip of the snout, looking like a one-pronged French fry fork, is there. The pupils are shown in black on a yellow background as crocodile-like vertical stripes.
All in all, I like the world better with this figure in it. It invites awe and complements any collection in a quirky way. One should, however, be aware that it is a simple toy, albeit a toy of an unusual species – and that’s exactly where, at least in my opinion, its charm lies.
As I said for the other Planet Wow figures, it’s not easy to get them overseas, and I don’t know the current status of the efforts of the ‘self-help group’ on our forum. Within Europe, you should be able to get the figure directly through Blue Ocean’s online shop (see link below) or maybe you can find one on eBay.
Krokodile-Sammelserie PLANET WOW Anatosuchus | Blue Ocean
All articles on the Dinosaur Toy Blog are written without the use of ‘AI’
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