Magic Garden: A consumer report (tested 31-12-2004)
It's magic!
The back of the box, let's make no bones about it, makes some lofty claims (apart from the one about harnessing the awesome power of 'magic', there are others). A magic garden made out of paper? Flowers will bloom? Trees will bud? In only 10 hours? Colour me sceptical.
You start with some wholly
unimpressive bits of coloured card, which you put in the prescribed slots in the plastic tray. Then you pour 'magic' liquid into all the grooves
and you sit back and wait as a world of magic unfolds in front of your eyes.So I've done all that and when four hours later nothing's happened, I'm expecting... not much, really. Look how fluffy and colourful it all looks in the boxfront illustration. But then look how tasty a Big Mac looks in the advert.
Returning to our project some hours later, we discover...The trees are indeed blooming, with little pink cherry blossom-like (be quiet) buds. So the box's claims of breath-taking action within an hour were perhaps a little optimistic. How much else was, I now begin to wonder.
It's a few hours later now,
and you should be able to make out multicoloured "grass" beginning to sprout in the foreground.The trees, too, are looking a good deal fluffier.
It's all so unbearably exciting, we decide to open a bottle of wine to accompany us on this rollercoaster ride.
We're about an hour into 2005 now, and one of the collective
spots the beginnings of snow (!) on the top of Mount Fuji.This is immediately toasted with more wine, and one can feel the earlier cynicism just dropping away as our attention span gets ever shorter.
Look at those pink trees... See the yellow, pink and green grass... And above all (quite literally, in fact) look at that deep, fresh, white snow.
This is the view that greets us when we rise, somewhat
wobbly, a little gingerly, on New Year's Day.Not really in a state to appreciate the mountain's flank's veritable sheet of snow, and the carpet of wild flowers, but give me a couple of hours in a quiet, dark room and I might.
And by the following morning, how does
my garden grow?The great (pink) oaks stand mighty (and fluffy) beside the wild flower meadow, while Fuji-san is covered with thick drifts of virgin snow and a couple of fluffy cirrus clouds dance around its summit. Ahem.
And that is how my garden grows. The chemistry will forever be unknown, for the manufacturers put no chemical composition details on the package other than to assure us punters that the whole spectacle is non-toxic. (Disappointing. The warning "HAZCHEM: Handle with extreme caution" would have spiced it up a bit.) But that leaves me in a spot. Having believed that only virulently dangerous chemicals could bring about such vivid colour and strange textures, this leaves me only one option - to believe the blurb, that this is indeed MAGIC that I've just witnessed.
Well that's all for today, kids. We'll be test-driving more wonders of nature for you soon. But until then, take care.
## Blue Peter-type theme tune ##
Fade out.