It seems the inspiration for the Sony 'Play-doh' advert I (and the rest of the world) love may well have been, er, 'borrowed' from illustrators Kozyndan reports Creative Review. And having checked out Kozydan's blog and looked at their original illustration (see below) they may well have a point.
Now it is often said there is no originality in design anymore (I may well argue against that!) and that we are all influenced by what we see around us and we obviously absorb 'stuff' on conscious / subconscious levels but this does look like a coincidence too far.
Original illustration (click for a bigger version):
Section of illustration:
