The flakes are pelting down fiercely, but one still must eat. Peetyuk is hunched over in the middle of a sea of white, doggedly digging away at the hard-packed snow with his one good tusk. He remembers all too well that day when he lost most of his other tusk, in a musth-fuelled scrap with another bull last season. Broke it clean off with only a yard of stump remaining. But he also remembers, with a touch of pride, how he still ended up victorious and getting to mate yet again. By jamming the jagged stump into his opponent’s eye, no less. That was swell.
There, grass at last. Cold and dry, it is, but much needed and appreciated during these harsh winter months. Peetyuk rises to his full height and begins pulling out the shoots with his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. He will, unfortunately, have to keep at this tiresome work for a long time in order for his belly to feel anywhere close to full. That other tusk would have been a big help right about now . . .
The woolly mammoth is one Cenozoic beast that needs no introduction here, what with the number of toys of it that have already been reviewed. But I daresay that the one I’ll be tackling today is a most special case, a most special case indeed, as it is made by the masters at Creative Beast Studio for their collaborative Prehistoric Elephants series with Complexly, the company behind the PBS show Eons. The 2024 Backerkit campaign for the series was not quite as successful as many had hoped it would be, as the stretch goals of Gomphotherium, Moeritherium, and Platybelodon were not met. However, David Silva has stated that he hopes to eventually include those genera in his Beasts of the Cenozoic line. And happily, the 1:35 scale adult woolly mammoth and the 1:18 scale adult and calf were fully funded. I opted to go with the former.
The front of the mammoth’s box features a superb painting by paleoartist extraordinaire Gabriel Ugueto. I rather like that it’s showing the animal grazing in the middle of a grassy plain instead of the usual snowy setting. The back has a detailed description of Mammuthus primigenius as well as catalog images of the 1:35 toy and both versions of the 1:18 adult and calf.
The insert depicts the same grassy plain as on the box front, with a large forest in the background and a trio of what appears to be Equus scotti galloping along merrily.
Finally, there is the collector card, which also features the same artwork and a briefer description.
As with any Creative Beast product, the first thing to do upon liberating the mammoth from its packaging was to carefully loosen up the many joints in order to prevent accidental breakage. That meant holding it in front of a hairdryer with the setting on ‘High’ for a fairly lengthy amount of time. The shoulders and hips and torso were fine to begin with, but the trunk and the lower joints in the front limbs required a lot of warming. A tedious task to be sure, but one that’s certainly imperative. I’ve named my mammoth Peetyuk, after an Inuit character who appears in the Farley Mowat novels Lost in the Barrens andThe Curse of the Viking Grave. Both stories take place in the wilderness of northern Manitoba, Canada, where woolly mammoths are known to have once resided.
Now, Peetyuk may be the ‘small’ version, but he is in fact a reasonably large woolly mammoth toy. When posed in a neutral stance, he stands around 11.4 cm tall, measures 18.5 cm long from his tusks to his tail, and is a little over 6 cm wide. Plus he weighs in at 273 g. He is significantly larger than the Safari Ltd. mammoth and close to the size of the Eofauna Columbian and steppe mammoths. The average size of a woolly mammoth bull was between 2.8 and 3.15 metres tall at the shoulder and 4.5 to 6 tons in weight, but some have been known to achieve up to 3.5 metres tall and 8 tons. Some bulls may well have grown even larger. So the 1:35 scale works perfectly well if you consider Peetyuk to be a particularly immense specimen.
Being a large land mammal, Peetyuk is, naturally, a stark contrast in colours compared to the very flashy, spiffy, and loud dromaeosaurs, ceratopsians, and tyrannosaurs of Beasts of the Mesozoic. But that is not to say that he looks boring or lifeless. Goodness, no. His base colour is a rich, dark chocolate brown. A pleasing shade of burnt umber wash has applied everywhere save for his underbelly and the inner sides of his legs. His tusks and his toenails are flat beige and the inside of his mouth is a slightly purplish glossy pink. Lastly, his eyes are light brown with glossy black pupils. It has all been beautifully done, with nary a blemish to be seen.
And whereas the BotM dinosaurs’ colour schemes are largely speculative, Peetyuk’s can definitely be said to be accurate. Decades of research has shown us that woolly mammoth fur ranged in colour from very dark brown to medium to light and even close to blonde. But medium to dark brown still seems to be the most familiar and popular look, and it makes sense to go with that for Prehistoric Elephants. And who knows, perhaps Creative Beast will release a blonde version of this toy sometime in the future. Could make for a good male and female pairing, just like in the Ice Age franchise.
Let’s begin with the bum region. Peetyuk possesses a proper woolly mammoth tail adapted for the cold: short, stout, and furry. It is ball-jointed at the base, allowing it to be lowered, raised, and rotated 360 degrees.
The legs are furry as well, and very thick and muscular, but they also have a certain grace and elegance to them, just like with modern elephants. The hind pair of feet have four toenails. The ankles are ball-jointed, the knees have universal joints, and the hips have double ball joints.
The longer and thicker front limbs have double ball joints at the shoulders and universal joints at the elbows, wrists, and feet, which have five toenails. The soles of all four feet are sculpted to appear as though they are covered in thick padding, which again is something we see on modern elephants. The hind soles also have holes in them, although at present, there’s no display base to attach the figure to.
Peetyuk’s torso has the correct mammoth appearance: big, deep, distinctly pear-shaped when viewed from above, and with very high shoulders and a distinctly sloping back. And oh, how magnificently ulotrichous it is! The fur looks thick and luxurious all over, but especially so on the belly, with great tufts dangling down. This is as good a point as any to note that the sculpting detail here is nothing short of masterful. Easily museum quality. Just look at it. The two sections of the torso are connected by a double ball joint and the base of the neck connects to the shoulders by one too.
Now we come to Peetyuk’s hefty head, which connects to the neck by yet another double ball joint. The forehead is high and dome-shaped, with an ample amount of thick fur on top. The small, furry ears are on ball joints and the pointed lower jaw is hinged. This enables Peetyuk to raise his head up and down, turn it from side to side, and rotate it in either direction. No teeth are visible inside his mouth, but there’s a great deal of rough fur hanging down from his chin. His default set of tusks are long and thick, with the tips curving inward toward each another. They are mostly smooth, with only a few shallow grooves here and there, and slightly asymmetrical.
Last, but certainly not least, there is Peetyuk’s invaluable trunk. It is divided into three sections, each one connecting to the other via ball joints. Most of it is furry, but the underside has bare, wrinkled skin. The very tip of the trunk is curving back and while there is an indentation, there are no visible nostrils. Not that it really matters anyway at this scale. The trunk can’t be manipulated to look as though Peetyuk is spraying water or shoving food into his mouth, but it can be curled downward, swung from side to side, and raised high as though he were signalling or trumpeting or plucking vegetation from trees.
So now that we’ve covered Peetyuk’s anatomy, let’s talk more about his poseability. It’s great. Really, really, really great. The combination of improved joints and mammoth anatomy means that Peetyuk can achieve a greater ranger of poses than any BotM toy. He can go for a casual stroll.
He can be moving with great haste.
He can stand tall and proud like a sculpture in a museum.
He can fighting ferociously!
He can lounge peacefully.
He can sit up.
He can crouch down and use his tusks to scrape away snow or earth.
He can rear up to browse on high vegetation.
And he can bust moves that would be utterly impossible for any living or extinct proboscidean to achieve.
And that’s not all! Peetyuk comes with two sets of alternative tusks. Just carefully pull out the default ones and insert whichever ones you want into the sockets. They all stay in securely, thankfully.
The first set of tusks is much smaller both in terms of length and thickness, and again slightly asymmetrical. And since we know that woolly mammoth cows had smaller tusks than the bulls, meet Ahnah, whose name means ‘wise woman’ in Inuit.
The second set of tusks has clearly been through a rough time indeed. Both of them are broken, with the right one being little more than a jagged stump. I find having both of them attached to be a bit depressing, honestly, but a broken tusk paired with a full one gives Peetyuk some extra character.
Peetyuk is the very best woolly mammoth toy that anyone anywhere has made to date. Hands down. He’s just the right size, he’s masterfully sculpted, he’s as accurate as one can get, he looks powerful, rugged, and majestic, and he’s most definitely a heap of fun to play with. I treasure all the Creative Beast products that I’ve acquired over the years, but Peetyuk is now my second favourite after Marbhtach. And I would be more than happy if CB made other of their Cenozoic creatures at 1:35 scale, including the Smilodon, the Andrewsarchus, and the Platybelodon. In the mean time, this and the 1:18 mammoths are currently available for purchase. The price tag certainly is high, but I do believe it to be well worth it.
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