S is for Snowbabies!

Having touched on them earlier we might as well have a decent gander at them, 'Snowbabies' or Snow Babies (?) is the term (going back to Victorian chalkware and bisque items) used for cake-decorating models of small children in one-piece, hooded coveralls or snow suits, these would have been plain, quilted-linen, kapok-filled things which got bloody heavy as they got wet, now they are multicoloured, synthetic-fibre, breathable Gortex things.

I have covered aspects of them before once or twice I think, but they are all together now, although I am short one pose and still need more yellow (or other coloured) ones.

The three standard poses of tobogganist, we saw the one on the left earlier, where he was being used as a crashed skiier? Nursery slopes are a mass of tangled sticks and skis! But the one on the right has also been fitted to skis, along with a variation of the prone rider. We looked at the other version/marking of Festival toboggan here.

I shot the upper image to show the locating studs on his forearms, but you can just see the Festival mark, there are two versions of these. In the lower shot we have two variants of Hong Kong piracy (believed to have been sought/commissioned by Culpitt), one being exact, the other far more colourful - as the austere 1950's faded and the 1970's arrived with multicoloured snow suits!

The snowball fighters! There are two quite different sculpts of the standing 'over-arm' chap, one with longer legs and a thinner, more-ovoid base, the other has short, fat legs and a thicker, rounder base. I suppose the same will prove true for the 'swinger' or under-arm thrower, but so far I've only found the one.

The chap at the back (with multicoloured snowballs(?)) is the HK clone, he's a copy of the taller, thinner version, which I suspect is the earlier, so probably ran alongside the later British one in some bakers?

Again from the much larger, old, museum image we see the sitting guy on skis (no sticks and looking out of control!) and the missing - from my collection - prone 'donkey kicker' also fitted with skis, it seems they were a comedy/clowning set/trio; as skiers.

Whether white, or yellow (or other colours?), the Snowbabies have a uniform paint-scheme of blue booties and red mittens.

Unmarked and showing a few of Gem's skateboarder colours; both plastic and paint, these are unmarked but are catalogued Gem (items X5 to X11), as they are children they scale to about 60/65mm or even 70mm - as do the Snowbabies?

The reason for their existence as such is a bit of a mystery, Gem made a lot of stuff which could be considered 'Novelty' or 'Touristy' while Festival did Christmas, Easter (the 'festivals'!) and Birthdays. But then why did so much Gem stuff end-up with Culpitt, alongside the Festival stuff, and why did Gem have a Christmas range (albeit small) if Festival was supposed to handle that sort of thing?

Remember both Gem and Festival had their own packaging as well as being anonymised as 'generics' by Culpitt? Sadly - with Mr Musgrave's passing; this is a question we may now, never get an answer to.