U is for Unknown Salesman's Samples

A bit of a find here, and not mine, Adrian found them, and thinking I'd like them, saved them for the blog, and posterity! There's no clue as to their origins, and the message on the slips of paper pasted into the inner edge of the boxes (suggesting they were placed rather as the shots below, upright in a cabinet of some kind), which reads "Specimen contents as used if boxed to retail at 5/6d" [five shillings and six pence].

 

The mix of metal and plastic novelty 'prizes' places this very much in the 1950's, as do, strangely, the hats, rather squidged into one of the boxes, which are about three times the size of the hats I've known all my life, but which I remember from old TV shows (think 'Love thy neighbour,' Hancock, the soaps), where people often had the taller ones? Hard to unfold now, but they all have crude 'jewels' made from silver-foil, diamond (parallelogram) offcuts glued to them, which I also remember.

 

Both boxes have similar contents, indeed, very similar to the Old World Series we looked at years ago, with wooden whistles, steel wire-puzzles, paper logic puzzles and the novelties, which include stand-alone flats, broach-badges, the inevitable thimble (Christmas was almost a disappointment, if somebody didn't get an impractical, plastic thimble!), and rings. Many thanks to Adrian for grabbing these.