N is for Nadi 'Nanimals

Like Nardi, but not! Café Nadi was a European (French) Coffee house, and included these premiums on their coffee to encourage sales through pester-power in the 1950's, as every other coffee, margarine, tobacco, laundry-powder and cereal issuer was, along with various other common 'household' products or 'consumables', that is; those items which are in, or likely to be- in each week's shopping-basket, regular as clockwork.

Not a full set, I could cut-n-shut a few from around the internet, but that would lower me to Giselle's level, equally; I could show his under the implied ten-for-one rule, but as you can see - they really aren't that exciting!

As with a lot of these sets (there are many; flat and semi-flat) it's an odd mix of mostly African species with the odd Eurasian or American animal thrown in and the almost de rigueur Polar Bear and Kangaroo/Wallaby. The gorilla (if that is its designation) is the oddest sculpt; looking more like some kind of an early prehistoric-hominid!

A couple of duplicates in close-up, along with the lion and tiger, the small deer in a darker 'Ivorene' and a donkey who is paler, and greyish and belongs to the Nativity set from Nadi where he bears witness to the birth of the little baby Jesus. The horse is rather fine I think; not that finely detailed, but quite expressive.

Someone - Ludo I think (but don't blame him if I'm wrong) - had tied these flecked/marbled-plastic ones into British Petroleum, also as premiums, but French service stations I suspect, not our BP 'garages', I don't remember these back in the day, but if they were issued in the 1950's they would have been pretty scarce by the time I was paying attention to such things in the late 1960's, so they may have been issued here too?