Florida · Series One
Skunk Ape
The Everglades Phantom
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Florida's reeking swamp ape, photographed, legislated about, and hunted across the Everglades for sixty years — never caught.
- Hand-painted collectible figure
- Collectible trading card in every box
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Skunk Ape
Florida
- Size
- 6-7 ft
- Habitat
- Cypress swamps
- Sighting
- Everglades • 1960s
- Trait
- Overpowering stench
Florida's reeking swamp ape, hunted across the Everglades for sixty years and never caught.
★ America’s ★
Legendary Creatures
Tilt it for a closer look
Box exclusive · Never sold separately
Evidence enclosed
Tucked inside every Skunk Ape box is card #011 of 50: a collector's card you won't find in any shop, pack or booster. The only way to get it is to bring the Skunk Ape home.
Fifty legends, fifty cards. Collect the figures, complete the field guide.
- Size
- 6-7 ft
- Habitat
- Cypress swamps
- Sighting
- Everglades • 1960s
- Trait
- Overpowering stench
Sculpted from the sightings
Skunk Ape, up close
- Figure height
- 5 inches
- Finish
- Hand-painted
- Edition
- Series One — The First Sightings
- Classification
- Swamp Hominid
- Family
- Forest Folk
- Legend reports it at
- 6–7 ft tall
The legend of Florida
“You'll smell him before you see him — sulfur, swamp gas, and something worse. By the time the stink rolls over your campsite, he's already watching you from the sawgrass.”
The Everglades is the last true wilderness east of the Mississippi — a river of grass the size of a state, laced with cypress strands and hardwood hammocks that no human has ever fully walked. Out of it, for at least sixty years, has come the Skunk Ape: six to seven feet of shaggy, reddish-brown muscle with long arms, an unhurried stride, and a stench that witnesses compare to rotten eggs, wet dog, and a backed-up septic line all at once.
Lore says the smell comes from the creature's habit of sheltering in abandoned alligator dens, down in the methane-soaked muck. Whatever the cause, the odor is the Skunk Ape's calling card — campers in Big Cypress report the reek arriving on the night air minutes before something enormous moves through the palmettos at the edge of the firelight. Florida being Florida, the state's response to its monster has been characteristically baroque: tourist traps, sheriff's photographs, even proposed legislation.
The Legend+
Seminole and Miccosukee tradition spoke of a wild, man-like being in the deep swamp long before highways crossed the Everglades — a creature best left alone, whose smell announced its displeasure. Settlers in the cypress country traded their own stories of a 'swamp cabbage man' raiding camps and shadowing hunters through the strands.
The modern legend ignited in the 1960s and 70s, when a wave of sightings swept south Florida. The creature loped across the Tamiami Trail in front of trucks, peered into trailer windows in Dade County suburbs, and left flat-footed tracks through tomato fields. For a few strange years, the Skunk Ape was practically a Florida commuter — and the name, coined for the smell, stuck for good.
Documented Sightings+
The 1970s wave got official attention: in 1977, a bill was introduced in the Florida legislature making it illegal to 'take, possess, harm or molest anthropoid or humanoid animals' — the Skunk Ape nearly became a protected species. The bill died, but the filing remains one of cryptozoology's great bureaucratic artifacts.
In 2000, an anonymous woman mailed the Sarasota County Sheriff two photographs of a huge, glowing-eyed ape she said had been stealing apples from her backyard near the Myakka River. The 'Myakka photographs' remain the most argued-over images in the creature's file. Meanwhile in Ochopee, on the Tamiami Trail, Dave Shealy — who saw his first Skunk Ape at age ten in 1974 — operates the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, America's only full-time Skunk Ape research facility, and has spent five decades collecting casts, photos, and eyewitness reports from the Big Cypress.
The Lore+
Skeptics point to black bears — Florida has plenty, they can reek, and a mangy bear on its hind legs covers most descriptions. Believers answer with the tracks, the long-armed gait witnesses describe, and the simple arithmetic of the terrain: Big Cypress and the Everglades together cover well over a million acres of country that swallows airplanes whole, much less an ape that doesn't want to be found.
The Skunk Ape has settled comfortably into Florida's identity — part menace, part mascot, wholly on-brand for a state that collects strangeness. He appears on murals, hot-sauce labels, and roadside signs along the Tamiami Trail. And every year, a few campers deep in the Big Cypress wake at 3 a.m. to a smell rolling over their tent that no bear ever made, and lie very still until dawn.
Good questions
What comes in the box?+
A 5-inch hand-painted collectible figure of Skunk Ape from Series One — The First Sightings, plus its collectible Fablins trading card — with Skunk Ape's size, habitat, first sighting and signature trait.
When will it ship?+
Skunk Ape isn't released yet. Join the waitlist and you'll hear first when it's available.
Do you ship internationally?+
Yes — to the US, Canada, the UK, most of the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and more. Prices show in your local currency and checkout calculates shipping for your country.
What if I need to return it?+
You have 30 days from delivery to start a return (return postage is on the buyer). Reach us through the contact page and we will walk you through it.
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