Neville Chamberlin's ill-fated trip to Germany in 1938 was rather brushed-over at the time, and all but forgotten in the heady chaos of 1940, and the shoe-in of Churchill to lead us in our 'finest hour' which became the prase-de-jour however, once Hitler had been dealt with and the threat from the East become more obvious, Chamberlain's ringing endorsement of dealing with strongmen was remembered for the first-class naivety it was.
By the early 1950's parents were regularly chiding
their unruly children to bed with the threat of "Peace In Our Time with Mr. Hitler's ghost if you don't behave and settle-down quickly", Squaddie's going
off to fight Communism in Korea scrawled PIOT on their helmet covers when the
QM wasn't looking and then blamed each-other to get off RP's, while on Humberside
striking Dockers even had rubber-stamps made-up in the tool-sheds to leave
oxide-red PIOT's on mounted policemen's' horse's rumps during the less than
peaceful ruckuses' that accompanied their Industrial Action!
So it's unsurprising to find that the nascent
plastics industry soon adopted this cultural meme for the production of novelty
figures of Mr Chamberlain with the offending letter he had waved all those years
ago tucked into his headband.
The above figure (counting out the
'peace'es') has been credited to both Rafael
Lipkin and Chad Valley, although
- with its resemblance to Britains 'Twizzle Town' circus - I wonder if it was an early, undocumented experiment in polymer from
the - then still - hollow-cast experts? The unpainted one (with body on backwards) could be a later
issue but is more likely to be an out-painters cast-off, as unpainted he has no distinctive moustache?
Chamberlin was always depicted as a
slightly lunatic character with his hair all over the place and the look of a
childish simpleton in these novelties and by the time I was born (1964) the
phrase was one every school-boy knew, but the cultural overtones had all but
disappeared - along with the novelties - and it was just more 'boring' history!
This 'booble head' figure of Chamberlain (looking fruitlessly in the
dirt for the lost peace) is in a phenolic or early styrene resin and could be Kleeware, early Airfix or whoever did the crazy-clown circus?
Nice to finally track them down and at less
than a tenner - Bargain! Have you ever seen any readers?
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