M is for Merten's Menagerie

While I was taking the shot's of the exquisite little wooden animals yesterday I took these as well, they are not all the Merten animals I have, just those that fell out of a box during the move in November and nearly got left behind! Still they are a reasonable sample to give an impression of what Merten were capable of.

The loose set at the top is set 1001, but there is a question mark over the central horse running without a base, then there are two 1002's (one missing the two smaller animals) to show how the paint changed from batch to batch (or; out-painter to out-painter?), while Preiser went with lesser numbers of animals in a standard box depending on the size (with exceptions for the very large and very small), Merten produced custom boxes for each set, with the N-gauge being left on the sprue.

Set 1003 has the larger native wild animals, common to central Europe with three different types of deer and a couple of wild boar for Obelix to track down!

Below are some more wild and domestic animals, probably the contents of more than one set, with pigs, sheep, goats and some smaller Red deer (fawns?).


Some more horses, with a comparison Airfix piece and one of the aforementioned sprues with N-gauge versions attached.