F is for Fluffy the Feline

It turns out that it's not just Phidal who have been issuing these interactive book/play set volumes, this is one of those others, issued by Century Books, the company - based in Torquay, Devon - was previously (and is again) known as Centum, and this was another charity shop lot, back in early June.

The pages are simpler than Phidal's, being pretty basic with a couple of rendered, low-resolution CGI kitten images on the cover - they look like they may be TV related, but I've never heard of Fluffy? But the story is actually more fully formed than the thumbnail 'captions' of most of the Phidal examples I've seen.

[Google suggests it's piggy-backing a more well known 'Fluffy the Kitten' touch & feel book?] 

The big difference is that rather than commissioning their own figures, they have taken off-the self generic items from China, which we have actually seen here at Small Scale World before twice - or at least the cats we have, the dogs are obviously taken from a sibling set.

We first saw them when Brian Berke donated a blistered set (branded to MTC) to the blog, and while I was very good and left it sealed, I then found them in a plain bulk bag (branded to Amscan) in a party shop, all this about a year ago? Two years ago? Doesn't matter, these are they!

The above shot actually adds to the overall count, as my find had several duplicates both with its own contents and with Brian's four-different sculpts, we now have a fine orange bi-colour and a stripy marmalade and black! Being 'off-the-self', none of the models equate to Fluffy's artwork!

This [unknown] dog was added by the owner of the set, has clearly had more play than the others, may have been the owners favourite and he or she may be heartbroken to find Mum's given it to charity, I should fell a heel, but I don't; as I don't know it's real history!

The other weird thing about this set is that the enclosed animals - while being nice, certainly fine for a kid and having great play value - bear little relationship to the fleshed-out story which involves a rabbit and hedgehog among other things, well not many; another cat, a dog, a puppy and a little girl!

Fluffy snuggles-up with the rabbit for a happy ending! All the cats I've ever known have found the happier-ending involving rabbit was as a meal . . . except George P's cat, which used be chased round the carefully chicken-wired garden by a rabbit twice its size!

A couple of fuzzy shelfies I took in TKMaxx of another issuer of these sets, this one from Igloobooks has four figures and a cartoon cat and dog, TV related, large scale - shelfies are all I'll ever need to ID them in loose lots, the people will likely go back-out to charity if they turn-up.

Igloobooks and Century Publishing; two new tags in one post, rare these days!