Here is the box of the Marx Desert Fox Playset I recently purchased. One correction the box number is 4818 MO not 4819 as I thought.
Here is a close-up of the contents listed on the box.
Here the play mat that was in the box. The play mat is marked copyright 1963. Do you know what playset is this play mat was original in.
That looks like the play mat I’d gotten in mine. I thought it odd that it should have a river running through it. That’s why it stuck out in my mind. I never used it.
Same for me Greg !
The play mat shown is similar to one I have which came in a Civil War set in 1963. The bridge goes across the island in the river. The WWII play set I have from 1963 has a play mat with a beach, not a river. I sent in pictures / drawings of these years ago to PFPC and he published them.
That would work for the Civil War sets. I got a ‘beach’ mat for my Navarone set and I think one of the Battleground sets. At any rate, I never used them; too shiny, to easily disturbed.
One thing great about most of the Marx place sets was for a little kid the boxs seemed huge, even at 10 years old my Desert Fox box was huge !
The mats worked good for the bridge & other accessories, but the figures did not stay upright for long. Later I traced the mat onto plywood and painted on the river & other details. You can actually make a great ‘play board’ this way. Set up temporary dioramas or battles – scenarios, etc. As long as you keep it 2 dimensional and flat you can fit a lot of figures on it and they don’t keep falling over.
Everybody in my family seems to be born with the ability to draw and paint. I made ‘battle boards’ like that several times and just free-handed it. Later, when my parents put an old dining room table in the basement, I framed the top board, sifted dirt and used dead, dried pepper and tomato plants as trees. It looked like a WWI no man’s land. Well, apparently I didn’t sift it fine enough. There was some kind of fly eggs in the soil. It was like that scene from Amityville Horror for a while. Then it stunk in that basement for about a week. Eh….it was worth it.