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INTRO TO MONDOS
(Last Updated: 11 August 2004)
Mondos belong to a long line of candy-related collectables, which include Kinder Surprise, Yowies, Crazy Zoo, Whitman‘s Looney Tunes, Winnie the Pooh eggs, Chupa Chup Surprise and so on. Mondos were created by Vizargo (who made all the figurines and cards) and initially marketed by Mars. Next to Yowies, they are arguably the most educational collectable devised Down Under. However, whereas Yowies emphasise the Animal Kingdom, Mondos were all about history. And, in keeping with the age we now live in, the Internet played a key role in the Mondo hobby, as we shall see shortly.
Let’s look at what comprises a Mondo. When they were first introduced, Mondos were sold inside little boxes, which were all identical. From each box you would get the following: a lollipop (orange or strawberry flavour), a figurine and a collector card. The figurines represent various characters of history, while the cards give a little info on events in a certain period, or “epoch”, of history. The epoch is a central concept in Mondos. You see, there are ten such “epochs” per series, ranging from the Egypt of 1500 BC to World War II. Each “epoch” has three figurines and six cards. In the first series, there were 30 figurines and 60 cards to collect. The same applies to the second series. A possible third series may have 45 figurines.
OK, now let’s examine the figurines and cards in a little more detail. Each figurine has a serial number on the base. The number might be something like “FRA3”. The three-letter code is an abbreviation for the epoch. In this case, “FRA” stands for the “France 1815” epoch. The number is just the number of the figurine within the epoch series. There will also be a year which represents the epoch the figurine is from. Please note, however, that the year on the figurine may not coincide with the epoch year. For instance, figurines from the “France 1815” epoch have “1800AD” inscribed on the base.
The cards have a representation of a painting on one side. The other side is the interesting side. It is headed with the epoch, e.g. “EGYPT 1500 BC”, “AFRICA 1880” and so forth. Then comes a headline in bold type. These headlines are used by Mondo collectors to catalogue the cards. After the headline is a little story. At the bottom is a caption (in italics) explaining the picture on the other side, the Mondo official Web site address and, in the bottom right-hand corner, a three-letter, three-number code (eg ABC123). Mondo collectors sometimes identify cards by their codes, though this is a bit problematic, as the codes have no particular order or logic to them. Now, this is where the Internet came in. When Mondos first came out, the Mondo official Web site (www.mondotime.com) played an integral part in this collecting hobby. When you got a card, you would go to the Mondo site and enter the code. From there, you could select a character from your Epoch and follow a little story, in which there would come a point when you have to choose between Option A and B. At the end of the story, you got to learn a bit more about the character. Once you had entered three codes from the same Epoch, you got to see the outcome of the decisions you made and whether history might have been different if you’d been in charge of a given situation. You also got more information about each character in the Epoch when this occurred. But to go on to even greater honours, you had to collect the remaining three cards of the Epoch to get a Clue card which you could use in the Mondo 3D Game.
Basically, the more you collected, the more you were able to do on the Mondo Web site, and the more you could learn about history. The aim of the game was to become 100% Mondo. This was when you collected all the figurines and cards, and could call yourself a Mondo Master. In this regard, it was a bit similar to Pokemon, where you’ve “gotta catch ‘em all” to become a Pokemon Master. But unlike Pokemon, which is based solely on fantasy, Mondos were based on real people and real historic events.
Alas, the Web site part of Mondo collecting is no more, and Vizargo and Mars have “divorced“. How did it come to this?
Initially, Mondos looked like they’d be something pretty special. They were launched in Australia in October 2000 and became an instant hit in that country, especially among Yowie collectors fed up with Cadbury‘s slackness at putting out new series. They were launched in New Zealand a week or two later. When I first created this site, I said that I reckoned Mondos had the potential to become one of the most successful collectables of all time, but then Yowies had that same potential, only to be brought close to ruin by some appalling marketing. I then said that the people at Mars appeared to have learnt from the mistakes made by the likes of Cadbury (too slow to release new things, don’t appear to care about consumers) and Whitman’s (far too few collectables released, and at a rate that makes a snail’s pace look like Olympic sprinting!) and had created a collectable which was not only educational, but highly interactive and which could become a big hit in, to use an Italian phrase, tutto il mondo! (In case you’re wondering, mondo is Italian for “world” - that‘s where the name comes from!)
Sadly, I was wrong. There was a honeymoon period in late 2000 and early 2001 in which Mondos were one of the coolest collectables around. Many of the earliest collectors to become 100% Mondo won some great prizes – even world trips! Mondos appeared to have been a huge success. The Mondo Web site proclaimed that new epochs would be out fairly early in 2001, and these were very eagerly anticipated. But these new epochs never came. 2001 dragged on into 2002, and still there were no new series. With the lack of anything new, collectors began losing interest in Mondos. Cadbury meanwhile got their act together and released new series of Yowies, two in April 2001 and another two in April 2002. But there was no sign of any new Mondos.
Finally, in February 2003, a new series was issued. But rather than marketing this series in the same way that they did the first series, Mars dumped it onto the Salvation Army! Yes, the only way to get new Mondos is buy them from a Salvation Army Family store. But there’s a catch – you have to live in the state of Victoria. Or know someone who does.
Quite why Mars did this is beyond me, and baffles many other collectors too. It seems they have Martians (or people from some other planet!) working in their marketing department. Anyone with half a brain cell knows that to successfully market a collectable, you have to release new stuff regularly and fairly often. Even Cadbury has got the idea, releasing new Yowie series once a year now (although they were a little slow with their latest series). But if you promise new stuff, then don’t release it, expect your customers to become disillusioned and your sales to drop. However, judging from the popularity of the new Mondo series, collectors still like the product, despite the best efforts of Mars – and now the Salvation Army – to drive them away from it with dunderheaded marketing strategies.
But all may not be lost. Vizargo for one has not given up on Mondos, and is working on new series at this moment. Click here to read an e-mail from Ted Blackall of Vizargo that explains a little more about it. Then go here to see what could be in Series Three.
Let’s move on to discussing how to collect Mondos. There are two main methods, which I call the “purist” method and “separatist” method. The “purist” method involves keeping figurine and card together in the original sealed bag. The “separatist” method, on the other hand, involves treating the figurines and cards as separate collectables, removing them from their original packaging and storing and trading them separately.
I myself am a separatist. To me, the bag adds no value whatsoever, as it does not have markings of any kind. Moreover, the cards are frequently damaged by getting bent. Removing them from immediate contact with the figurine limits this damage. And if you trade cards only, you only have to pay letter rates rather than parcel rates, which to some extent offsets any perceived loss of value that arises from opening them. But the most appealing aspect of the separatist mode of collecting is that you can collect one lot of figurines and cards with NO DOUBLE-UPS! I am free to trade ALL my spares, both figurines and cards. A purist collector does not have that same liberty.
Having said that, I do keep some of my spares sealed to cater for the purists. Or at least, I did until trading away all my remaining spare figurines in early June 2003. So now I just have spare cards on their own. Whilst on the subject of figurines and cards sealed together, a popular trend for a while was collecting “reversed cards”. Normally, a card is inserted with the picture facing outwards and the text side next to the figurine. But with reversed cards, the text side faces outwards and the picture is next to the figurine. Reversed cards were slightly less common than “regular” cards, though by no means a rarity.
What I Like About Mondos What I Don’t Like About Mondos
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