Tag: snake

Official vs Bootleg: Seletti x Toiletpaper Snakes Cushion Cover

This cushion cover I first bought the bootleg – back when Superbuy used to do warehouse sales. Ah, getting up at 3am to buy… tat. Though I did get some authentic figures for great prices as well from the sales. I saw the cushion cover and thought “hey snakes”, and in the cart it went.

When the cushion cover arrived, it was soon adopted by my husband who also loved the idea of a snake cushion. So the bootleg cover has been his couch cushion ever since.

Some time later, I visited Selfridges and saw the Toiletpaper-branded items, and found the “snakes” design items amongst them. Not feeling so flush at the time, I settled for buying a placemat.

This year, I decided to hunt around and found the cover for a more reasonable price and decided to go for it. But then I also added some other snake-design items to my cart for the free shipping ¬¬. As for the price? Truly reasonable? Haha, probably not 😅.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): €90.00 (~£77)
Price I paid for the official: £64.00
Price I paid for the bootleg: CNY¥7.20 (~£0.77)

As it was a warehouse item, the price is cheaper than the original person paid. Looking on Taobao, the bootlegs are ~¥36 (~£4). So not very expensive at all.

Packaging

The official came in a plastic baggie with some information labels. The bootleg came in…. nothing.

Back of the official packaging:

No labels here, but can see this cushion cover has a logo on it.

So an easy win for the packaging for the official here – though it only had to qualify as “existing” to win. Does the job, get a good view of the product, kept it clean and dry in transit.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Seletti x Toiletpaper Snakes Cushion Cover” →

DaoDaoDan Snakes

These were very much an impulse buy. I had been seeing them around Taobao for a little while, but then saw them on another international site and decided to take the plunge.

Set of 6 hognoses with wooden base: CN¥1,078 (5 x ¥168, 1 x ¥238)
Set of 3 kingsnakes: ¥504 (¥168 each)

I shipped them in a sizeable haul, so calculating shipping cost would not be entirely accurate.

Box

I wasn’t originally intending to write a review, so I ended up disposing of the boxes before taking photos. But seeing as these were a proxy order, I do have the proxy photos.

Front:

They came in cute little eggboxes, but the eggboxes weren’t very strong so they got a bit crushed in domestic transit and more crushed during international transit.

Each box fit two snakes:

Whilst cute, I wish the cardboard was more substantial or they included some bubble wrap to protect them.

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Tooth Fairy Studio – Feathered Viper – Iysis

For this one, I originally decided to pass on the preorder, being very undecided which variant I wanted and the price. However, I saw some photos from Wonfes Shanghai and changed my mind – so I ordered the last one in stock of the “Isys” variant. They did three versions –

Blue Prey (Unlimited):

Keraha (limited to 20):

And the one I ordered, Isys (limited to 20):

The limited variants were CN¥2,280 to preorder and Blue Prey was ¥1,980. I couldn’t resist the shininess of Isys, so into my cart it went.

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Animal Planet – Blue Baron’s Racer

For the more budget-conscious snake figure collector, I now present the Blue Baron’s Racer (philodryas baroni) by Animal Planet. This figure was CN¥428 and is the second figure in their “Realistic Nature Series”. Most of Animal Planet’s figures have a chibi quality, so this is a line of reptiles with realistic proportions.

As they’re a company that mass-produces, we get a pretty retail box:

The company name gets translated a few different ways so you may also see “Animal Heavenly Body” and “Animal Nebula”, but it will always be the same logo. It’s a very solid box, and we have some product photos so we know what we’re getting. The lid slides off, but due to the sturdiness of the cardboard it forms a strong vacuum seal so takes some effort and time to open. They do provide a couple of small cut-outs to grab the inner of the box, but they don’t give a huge amount of purchase.

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Snake Gorge – Ball Python (normal morph)

Continuing my snake purchases from Snake Gorge, I pre-ordered this ball python figure. I was particularly interested in this one as I have a normal morph ball python as a pet. Ball pythons are also known as Royal pythons and have the scientific name of Python regius.

So I paid my deposit, paid the balance and CN¥1,880 and some days later…

See the red writing on the right? Yeah, that restriction stops you from shipping an item out. Oops. And that’s a lot of money to spend on something I couldn’t return and potentially ship out. After writing an email to support, thankfully they changed the restriction and allowed me to ship out. I wasn’t worried about customs issues personally – on an x-ray it would appear as an inorganic “poo” (last I checked PU resin didn’t have any bones or organs), and anyone inspecting it for more than two seconds would know it was a resin model. However the proxy was nervous about it, so slapped it with the most restrictive restriction… which still allowed EMS, so EMS it went. Didn’t even hesitate to clear Chinese or British customs. Glad to know I can still import PU resin.

But hey! It’s a testament to Snake Gorge’s quality! So realistic your proxy may refuse to ship it 😅. I would love to order one of their 1:1 scales, but they’re around CN¥5,000 and not sure if I want to deal with the back and forth to be allowed to ship it. Oh, and also scrounging up the CN¥5,500-6000 to buy and ship it.

Snake Gorge just package their snakes in foam:

Not the most glamourous, but gets the job done. The snake itself came in a plastic bag so that it wouldn’t rub up against the foam.

So let’s have a look at him:

Well, I say “him”, not sure how you can sex a resin snake, especially when the species lacks external physical traits to denote gender. No cloaca to probe on this one. But hey, this one I won’t have to clean up any stinky poops! Or get lost behind my desk…

Continue reading “Snake Gorge – Ball Python (normal morph)” →

Figure Spotlight: McFarlane Viper King

This is one of the figures I bough early on in my collecting. Being McFarlane, it’s still a quality figure in my collection:

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This figure looks cool… but has a habit of falling over. He doesn’t come with any stand holes either, so I’ve developed various ways of standing the bugger up over the years. Though after this photo session, I did manage to get him to stand up on his own!

Close-up of his face: 

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Very much an angry fellah :P. The arms move up and down, and his neck moves, which gives some poseability. 

Viper King from the back:

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The Blu-Tack mark is from the original owner – obviously the technique they used to keep him upright. I favoured stands and string, rather than tack. 

Here’s a close-up of his back:

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Some interesting details back here, I like the tail part on his head. 

The black, red and silver colour scheme works well, and there’s a decent amount of detail in the sculpt. Just a shame they didn’t provide him with a stand so you could pose his snaketacles fully, thus making him prone to faceplanting. This issue can be resolved by sticking him down, or coming up with your own form of stand, but it’d be nice if he was provided with one.