More information about the Fernel East African Safari game

I found this Mini a long time ago when I first started this task of finding as many different models as I could. A few weeks previously I had noticed a blue Mini sell for a crazy amount - well over £300 - and all that I could see that was different about it was a hole in the base. The description referred to something called a Fernel game. In that case it was a Monte Carlo game where (I am guessing) players threw dice and their cars were propelled by some device that fitted into the base around a track.

I remember looking this up at the time but never expected to see any more. Then this one appeared. It got little attention as the photos were poor and that hole was not at all obvious. the person selling it made no mention of it either, which was good as far as I was concerned. I won it easily and have since been trying to make sure that there was, indeed, a version of the game with purple Minis too.

Before buying it I had found a good reference to a later version of the game but no decent images. Now, at last, I have found all the information that I was looking for.

It's an odd looking affair. A Monte Carlo version is for sale at about £800 but I haven't seen this East African Safari one for sale yet.

My car didn't have the stickers. I have added a replacement East African one for the bonnet - they are the same as Corgi made for the VW1200! The numbers do not look familiar so I may skip those for now.

I would love to get hold of one of these games - and the other car as there would have been two - but suspect they'll be at crazy prices unless I happen to see one somewhere completely off the collectors' beaten track. Actually, I would love to find some places where odd cars and things like this could still appear and the people with them having no idea of what they have. This game, for instance, looks really quite cheap and nasty with its red and yellow plastic and not a great deal more!

Now that mine does at least look a bit more like it should I shall see what interest there is but I am definitely not letting it go for a song.

I would dearly love to give some credit to the place where I found these images a few days ago but I'll have to search through my browsing history to find the site again. I have tried a pile of Google searches to no avail.