Okay lets try the sneaky approach. Remember that you do not have to unwrap all of your model, just faces where you want to apply the uv image. So just assign a material to the top faces of the upper box, another material to the remaining faces of the top box, and another to the bottom box.
Select the faces on top of the upper box, unwrap, open your duck pic in the uv editor. Go to object mode, select the material that these faces use, use the color picker for diffuse, select the background color in your image in the UV editor.
In edit mode, select the remaining top boxes faces, repeat above process for changing that materials diffuse color to the pics background. Click hsv in the color picker when you begin changing the materials diffuse color.
Now select the material where you applied the UV map, assign its texture the ducky pic, set mapping to UV. If the pic appears odd still, tinker with image mapping setting, prolly change to clip.
If its still driving you crazy, upload the zipped VMRL file here, and put it in you next post. Either or someone else will be glad to fix it up for you. If you do not know how to do this, browse to the zipped folder, upload in next post.
This is a pretty ugly, but good example of using uv maps, diffuse and texture paint on a model, to demonstrate options.
https://images.shapeways.com/model/picture/674x501_742854_612 634_1350591440.jpg?key=c0fa3437b8a49ddf9ee91abbcf86b4c0
Keith
By the way, you might want to think about updating your Blender version. If you are happy with your version, that is what matters.