Compare the Meerkat Trivia Quiz

Answer: Price comparison website

The company, comparethemarket, is based in the United Kingdom, but they have an Australian branch which started running the meerkat commercials approximately four years after their introduction in the UK. The main characters and their history is shared between both markets, but the UK has seen a much larger range of ancillary characters introduced than has been the case in Australia.

The original Australian advertisements were purely offering the service of allowing customers to compare a range of health insurance policies; they have since expanded to allow comparison of a range of purchases.

Originally they still concentrated on different kinds of insurance, but within five years were offering comparisons on energy suppliers, subscription television, loans and credit cards.

Answer: Yes

Indeed you could! The site, which was set up to be active on the same day as the first ad was aired, initially only offered a limited amount of information about the characters in the ad campaign, but it was later expanded. One of the added features, mirroring the process involved in making an actual comparison of products at the company's working site, allowed you to enter the criteria that interested you in finding a meerkat, and one that matched your information would be displayed - picture and brief humorous description. You then had the chance to select from a few others, and see a side-by-side comparison. Your criteria were size, location (which determined the backdrop that would be displayed) and preferred activity (which determined how the meerkat would be outfitted).

For example, if you entered interest in a Melbourne-based meerkat that enjoys taking marks, you would be offered a meerkat in an outfit that resembled an AFL uniform, but with team colours that did not correspond to any established club, seeming to stand in the middle of a football field.

The extra biographical details were a significant part of the fun.

Answer: Russian

The first meerkat to hit the television screens in Australia was Aleksandr Orlov, CEO of comparethemeerkat.com.au, who earnestly asked us not to confuse his website with that of a competitor who sells insurance. For meerkats, come to him; for insurance, visit them.

His speech, both in this ad and in most subsequent ones, ended with him tapping two foreclaws, while grinning and saying, "Simples." The Russian accent was not explained at this time - that came later!

Answer: Head of IT and tea making

According to Aleksandr's introduction, "As well as being Head of IT, Sergei is also Head of My Tea. I like it milky." The full biography, revealed piecemeal over time, indicates that Sergei was something of a computer prodigy, and that he attended MIT (Meerkat Institute of Technology).

The biography also includes some chronologically-challenged information: apparently Sergei designed the Mir(kat) Space Station in the 1980s, but he also lost his job in the space program because he faked a moon landing in his own garage.

It is Sergei who is officially running the website, and being inundated with traffic from people who have gone there looking for insurance.

Answer: They were escaping from a great famine in the area

One might have expected that animals whose natural habitat is the desert would be more flexible in times of drought, but apparently this one was a doozy! The brave meerkats struggled across the desert until they hit the coast, where they bought a map and set sail for the Bahamas. Clearly not expert navigators, they washed ashore in Russia, where they were joined by other meerkat refugees.

There they settled down to a life of subsistence farming.

Answer: A Mongolian mongoose named Monghis Khan

According to the ads, young Vitaly led the defense against the attacking Mongolian horde. As a result, Vitaly was awarded the Order of the Purple Claw, and provided with a luxurious mansion. Here they began to collect family portraits, until the house was lost in a game of chance, and the family had to take refuge with some nearby gypsykats, taking the family portrait collection with them.

Answer: Gypsykats

There Grigory fell in love with Anastasia, a lovely gypsykat, and they had a son, Anton (Aleksandr's father). Once again, the family's life was disrupted when the gypsykats were rounded up and sent to a ghetto in Moscow. Since they were, for some reason, still carrying the family portraits around with them, young Anton and his friend Stanislav began to play a game with them, a game they called Compare the Meerkat. Details of this game are intentionally vague.

Answer: comparethemeerkat.cart

Times were tough, but once the mayor's daughter Valeria came past and fell in love with Anton (choosing him instead of one of the two portraits he was holding up for her to inspect), things definitely improved. They moved the business on to comparethemeerkat.shop, and did a booming trade, until Anton died and Aleksandr took control.

As he learned the trade, with the support of his father's partner Stanislav, he realised that it was time to move into the computer age, and took on Stanislav's nephew Sergei as his assistant in developing a computer-based business model. So was born comparethemeerkat.com! And that brings the backstory up to where we started, with Sergei stressed over all the people accessing the site by mistake.

Answer: Oleg

Baby Oleg featured in the commercials for nearly a year, before he appeared to have worn out his welcome. None too soon for poor Sergei! One of his ads included the statement from Aleksandr that they had discovered he liked Thai food, as he munched on Sergei's tie. Sergei's blog provides more details than those seen on the ads.

Answer: A free meerkat soft toy for each policy purchased through them

The original promotion offered a choice of two figures (Aleksandr or Sergei), and required that the relevant policy be purchased by the end of March that year. They proved so popular that their availability was extended for over a year. A thriving market in secondhand meerkats developed, with people (like me) who didn't want to purchase new insurance, but desperately wanted a meerkat toy, searching for people who wanted insurance but not the free toy.

The UK market had a much larger range of figures available at different times, so avid collectors could obtain literally dozens of different meerkat toys.