M is for Magneto's Magnetic Men & Maidens

I'm not going to suggest Magneto is responsible for all the magnetic novelties copied in Hong Kong from the 1950's until, well, now! Nor will I suggest they were necessarily first with any of them, but I suspect they can claim ownership of some of the originals of/and or some classic firsts.

 

This all (a huge Google session) came about after Chris Smith spotted this in a charity shop cabinet and realised it was ID'ing a past unknown here at Small Scale World, it's the Oompah dancer in his Tyrolean get-up and his lady (not seen before) in her Dirndl outfit.

 

They have a mirrored drum to dance on, with - presumably - a pair of clockwork magnets under the glass/polished surface providing them with their gyrations. I would add that 25-quid takes East Anglian Charity Shops onto a retail universe all of their own, so Chris left it there!

A reminder of mine, on the right, and another Magneto on the left, he usually has a lady to dance around his 'rock', who looks nothing like him having a round base (which won't catch on his rock's corners), and from the styling, I reckon the white ballet dancer we saw on another occasion may be Magneto too, but I haven't tracked down her set yet.

Although when I say tracked down, it was just Googling, and I found all the usual cars, Scottie-dogs, frogs, flying carpets, bath beauties and the like branded to the same German firm, and of better quality than the HK versions, but these things go back to the days of wood, lead and ceramic toys, so the true origins are rather lost. I did purchase the non-magnetic farm by the same company we saw a month or two ago.

 

The one on the right has lost his magnet, while the one on the left, fully marked, has lost power (as has the ballet dancer), but these novelty magnets often do, I found a horseshoe magnet the other day with no power left in it.

 

When I have more time I'll track down a few of the better toys from this company, and we'll have a couple of posts box-ticking their output and comparing them with the British (Bell, Merit, Fairylite), US (Lionel, Commonwealth) and Hong Kong products, but that probably won't be for a few years.
 

However, thanks to Chris, Magneto are now ID'd and can easily be found as the general toy collectors knew about them all along, and they are regularly on evilBay, Etsy and the like, if you want to find them.