What's new Pussycat ?

Did you guess that they're meant to be tigers ?

This is a first for this blog, being something recently painted! I've haven't managed any figure painting since being ill in March but that has now been remedied with a couple more animals for my gladiators to combat .
They're a couple more of the soft plastic squeaky toy types, similar to the two bears I posted about last week, so of course they suffer from all the same problems and faults that the bears had.
There is a lot of flash on these models (some of which I missed, but meh, they're merely playing pieces and I'm not attempting to win any prizes with them!) and they have a horrible join around their waist which had to be cut off, filled  and disguised as fur.

Should have a black pupil of course

For all their faults though, they're recognisable as what they're meant to be and the detail isn't that bad either - for a very cheap toy (50p), as can be hopefully be seen in the photograph on the left, despite my painting skills (or lack thereof) - if I'd had a steadier hand I'd have added a black pupil.
For the purists however there is one inescapable fault with these models in that they're rather over-sized, being at least one and a half times as large as they should be. for my purposes though it does mean that they look better on the larger base size. I reckon that if they were in scale they'd fit onto a single hex.

"Ubi irrumabo quod non venis?"

When put against a 54mm gladiator, they're a veritable monster of a beast!
I've left the bases of all the animals in a raw state, to be finished at the same time for consistency.

To get an idea of just how large these beast are, the photograph on the left shows one of these large lions (in its straight-out-the-bag state) shown alongside the lion that comes with the Italeri set of Gladiators.
Below is a couple of photographs showing how they match up to a 54mm gladiator, clearly showing the well-scaled Italeri version compared to the rather over-scaled "Bag-O'Animals" version (with newly added base)

Gladiator v the Italeri Lion

Gladiator v the "Bag-0'Animals Lion

It's obvious to me that the cheaper model is vastly over-sized - I've visited our local museum to see their life-sized, fully grown stuffed one but the cheap toys ones do stand out!

Lion menage a trois

In my collection of the cheap big cats I have two lions, a lioness, a cheetah and a leopard plus another cat that came from a tabletop sale.
Definitely at least one  cheetah (on the left)

Definitely at least one  cheetah (on the left)

Shown on the right, a cheetah and two leopards or maybe a leopard and two cheetahs, very tricky to say, but I reckon there's definitely one cheetah.








If my current painting spree continues, then next week I may well be posting more 'new' stuff, failing which I'll be digging into the archives to fit the bill of "Here's one I did earlier" but in the meantime, here's a quick welcome to my latest follower and to all those reading this, I hope you're finding something of interest.

You may also find something of interest on my other blog too, which you can find HERE