M is for Marx Miniature Mash-up

Both a lovely thing and a bit of a shitter! A 'lovely thing' because it contains very fine polystyrene animals which have - mercifully - not been damaged, yet 'a bit of a shitter' as it's clearly designed (as if the word even pertains here!) to exploit a TV franchise, by grabbing whatever is to hand and shoving it in an existing format box, with no thought other than to make a few bucks!

The box follows the format of the late window boxes; we've looked at here before now - several times. Quite dramatic artwork with the zebra-stripes, it is guaranteed to catch the eye and generate pester-power for a purchase! 'DAKTARI' writ large only increases the desire to 'own a bit' of the child's current favorite TV series.

But hold on! No people, no vehicles, no recognisable characters; human or animal . . . just a bunch of European-looking deer and some giraffes, all from the Noah's Ark sets. Also; a quick investigation of the contents reveal that they are not the soft [unbreakable] plastic usually associated with these window-boxes, but rather the very frangible polystyrene of the earlier Miniature Masterpiece Ark sets.

Of interest though is the attempt to add interest to the contents with pop-up, card cut-outs of the grass-clumps. Although the two largest ones at the back have been ignored by 'staple-machine person' back at the factory! I should add that the three types of palm and the 'tropical' plants are soft ethylene however.

The missing: 'r'

The deer! Least said soonest mended forgotten! If any of these walked the plains of Africa, it was a Hollywood Africa, probably filmed in Yugoslavia!

Made by the Taiwanese arm of a US company, shipped to and packed in Hong Kong for onward transit to the British arm's marketing men to 'tie-in' with a TV series set in Africa.
I still think you'd be bloody disappointed when you got this home and broke half the animals getting them off the cardboard they've been grimly glued-to with something looking like Evostick . . . rubberised, brown snot!

The carbon-footprint of this item is frightening enough given what we know now, but the intent to rip-off is more worrying, and points to reasons other than oil-crisis' and Eastern competition for the demise of some Western companies; they were taking the piss out of their customers!