O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Animals

Welp, seems to be turning into the animal end of the week! Back to Whitton, back to June, back to a Sunny day among friends, and it's the animals, now; prehistoric, wild, farm and domestic, and with a couple of Vitacup to start - I detect a theme!

 

A couple of Vitacup boxed animals, who seem to have been sold separately to any jar of bedtime cocoa-powder, but, two shillings & sixpence wasn't cheap in the early 1960's! So it may be that the price label is for animal AND drink?

 

And, further to the two previous posts, if both sets were twelve, that leaves a 24-count, which, with the other mostly domestic or woodland animals, means probably not enough room for three fallow deer, but there must have been three sets for a 36-coumt? Note their spelling of 'Ivorene'.

 

Already seen, they snuck into a Rack Toy Month box-ticking exercise!

 

A bunch of 'unknown' dinosaurs, the T-Rex is a particularly good sculpt.

 

Mixed, small animals, the blue monkey seems to have had a plug-on hat? While I forget if the ostrich premium flat had a branding or not. The crocodile is a 'rubber jiggler' type, while the monitor lizers may be Kinder?

 

Marking on the base elicited nothing from Google or evilBay, but it looks recent, and is KFS a subsidiary of Kentucky Fried? I don't think so, nothing about Animal premiums in searches ether, but?

 

Three polar bears, the left-hand one, despite not being the best quality copy of Timpo, you're likely to find, may be Blue Box, while the right-hand one is a more generic Britains copy, while in the middle, a modern vinyl-PVC jobbie!

I was sure these were Charbens, but now I'm not so sure! Early British plastic for sure, and very clean for their age, if not Charbens, who, Hill, Cherilea?

 

Mixed small farm, some Hong Kong, some better, hen & chick are PVC rubber.

 

Probably from a bagged rack-toy set?

 

Chambourcy nodder premium, the ring may have been for a cord or ribbon to hold the animal on to the 'petit-suisse' cheese product, or possibly for a keyring, a bit of a survivor, by the looks of it?

 

Mini-animals for future sorting, with a quite well painted OBE of the Airfix draft-horse, a Merit pony to it's right, and a bunch of piggy-wiggies!

 

Modern'ish sheep-dog, which I may already have, and might have ID'd somewhere, a fox who looks like he's from some larger scale action-figure, or doll type play set, and a - probably - premium peke, but he could be a better quality Hong Kong rack-toy?

F is for Follow-up, as Mentioned Earlier!

So, my thoughts, not canon, not necessarily true, but just my thoughts on, specifically, the origins of the Vitacup premium dear/fawn, and more on its ubiquity, which has appeared here before, in various forms, painted and unpainted.

 

Vitacup deer? The one in the middle, is the most likely, if Vitacup only had one (and they had no multiples of their other animals, except the 'Three Wise Monkeys' who were a single moulding), as it's the one most often found with the other Vitacup animals. But the male with small antlers has also come in with them.

 

Then this one came-in a while ago, a larger scale, and painted like others we have seen, a vague attempt at fallow deer spots, and will look at below, slightly more baby-fawn like with big ears and shorter proportioned body.

 

It's marked as a raised relief DEP, which can be short for Depose, a French term meaning 'Registered Design', but equally, can be short for Deponiert,  German, and also 'Registered Design', I suspect the latter, but the former can't ruled-out.

 

Shown next to a tourist figure of a miner (?) I remember a gift-kiosk full of this stuff back in 1969, somewhere on the Rhine, possibly the Niederwald Monument, but it could have been somewhere near Koblenz, or one of several castles in the ENESCO world heritage Middle Rhine section, I was six, and it was very foggy, I can only remember a large car-park/viewing area, and a long stone balustrade. We ended up with two gold-chrome plated plastic dwarf miners, with deer which were - possibly - even smaller versions of some of the deer seen here?

 

We saw a paler one, in a previous post, with similar but unrelated sculpts.

 

While this broken one also came in and was seen previously.

Note the Indigo-inked, rubber stamp 'Foreign', on the tail.

Here we have much larger ones, but with what appear to be painted versions of the Vitacup ones being used as actual babies, to the two juvenile-looking 'adults' who are about half-a magnitude larger, the slight absurdity being they are plastic figures pretending to be wood, on a pretend wood base, on an actual wooden plinth!

 

And I think Chris Smith took this image in a Charity Shop for the Blog, some time ago, knowing these were being collected in one place! So thanks to him for taking the opportunity presented, to add to the subject.

 

Here's another, from the scale of the figures, the same larger size, but now suggesting the 'babies' in the previous image, may themselves be larger than the Vitacup 'Ivorene' models.

 

Of interest here, is than despite now having over a dozen of the barometer figurines, loose, I don't have either of the two in the background here, so I need to look out for them both, and there must have been dozens over the years coming from the workshops of Switzerland, Austria and Germany, since plastic came into use, with many more wooden ones before them!

 

Here’s what looks like the painted version of the Vitacup, from the previous post, with the stamp again, but here on the belly. The Foreign mark was more common on German (and Japanese) stuff between the wars, and Japanese stuff after WWII, but that's a whole 'nother post, in porcelain it applies to a period between 1893 and 1923, while it is found on US workman's tools for the period 1890-93, and that's the tip of an iceberg connected to . . . Tariffs, taxes, recent enemies, new friends, and the hiding of origin, while flagging origin!

 

A painted version of the feeding pose, and a fourth pose/fifth variant, laying on the ground, these also look to be a larger size, and have a surface texture which suggests they may be a different maker, to most of the others, either as copies, or a renovated tooling?

 

While this is just a homage, in glazed china!

Much smoother lines. 

It seems, someone, probably German, who may or may not have been Siku, had a catalogue of these, sculpted as if made of carved wood, in the Erzgebirge style, in two or three sizes, at least four poses, with a head variant on the commonest pose, of which Vitacup took between one or three, in the plain Ivorene, while anyone else who needed them could arrange a supply to suit their tourist trinket, or, kitch tchotchke, in a variety of paint styles (they may have added themselves) with or without the white dots hinting at fallow deer, while other people copied the sculpts!

 

The Vitacup sets, however, are drawn from various parts of the supplier's wider catalogue, and the work of different sculptors, with several other animals having the carved-wood look, but more being realistically sculpted and one or two slightly cartoonish, but still with more realistic fur/hides.

 

Now, I never got round to updating the post which tried to list them all;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/f-is-for-follow-up-vitacup.html 

 . . . following the comments of Jungle Kim, and both (that post and the listing) need to be sorted properly, but suffice to say, all the ones with the pale blueish-white background are soft polyethylene (elastische plastik) and known to be Siku (tools which don't seem to have gone to DS Plastics, of the Netherlands), which suggests that while I might like the Vitacup et al to be Siku, for neatness, they may be by someone else?

 

However, Siku are known for providing may of the margarine/tobacco/coffee/soap-powder premiums of the 1950's, in hard styrene, so it's still an open question?

T is for Two-Dimensional Terrasaurs!

I think we've looked at these before and I explained my lack of a decent sample, but I've picked-up a few interesting bits on them, or related to them, in the last few years, so time for a better overview despite the lack of samples! Nabisco's Dinosaur Flats.

 

Except they aren't Nabisco, and there are only twelve of the 20, and I don't think they are even the Aussie issue, in fact, I think they are quite recent manufacture, (possibly from older tools), and came in this red and a mid-blue (below), and in the slightly chalky polyethylene of some really cheap rack-toy 'Army Men'.

As we can see from this comparison they are slightly smaller copies of the original set, but are otherwise quite good, sculpturally, with minimal loss of etched detailing, and no more than a millimetre smaller, overall, with thicker bases.

 

Most notable is the loss of depth to the mouldings, making them even flatter flats! The UK issue came in various shades from almost pure white to an 'ivorene' shade of clotted-cream!

 

Wagner in Germany also carried these - possibly first? And I'm pretty sure some of the base-names were Germanised, so they are something to look out for, but those with the same spelling can't be told apart, unless they have a Wagner sticker, which you don't usually get on the cavity-based issues.

 

Another comparison shot.

 

I am slowly picking up the set, but at my current rate I'll need at least another 30-years! The red polyethylene one on the right, is a modern copy, possibly from the same source as the animals I got from The Swagman's Daughter (and which were used as window-missile prizes, on feast-days in Malta), a few years ago, of a second, nicer set of Euro-flat premiums, where each animal comes with a little bit of prehistoric landscaping! Here, it's probably from a Christmas cracker?

From Cluck 1, and I can't find Cluck 2 right now, which had a better image of one of the kids-comic advertisements for the series, but, it's a checklist, and Cereal Offers have the whole set and more here;

http://cerealoffers.com/Cereal_Partners/Shreddies/1950s/1/1.html

Those data rings from the end-of-promotion mail-away, are very hard to find!

F is for Follow-up - Merit 'Tarzan And His Animals'

Last time we looked at this set (ten years ago!) I suggested an Elephant was the missing animal, and I'm pleased to say it was! I also said if I got a better one, I'd swap box lids, but I didn't, I got a worse one, however it did fit the new A3 scanner so . . . swings and roundabouts!

Figures first, and the immediate question is -  was the previously seen set home-painted? I suspect not; this game probably ran for a few years and like a lot of people at the time (Britains, Crescent, Lone Star), painting was seen as a quick money-saver and got dropped at some point?

So now 'Ivorene' flats, in a creamy-white, the dark spots are the anchor-points of embedded metal plates on the underside of the base, used for magnetic manipulation!

The cage you are trying to drag the animals to, if you are the horrid player (nice players [Tarzan] are trying to save them) with a hidden wand, it's half Driving School and half Answer Robot (both also Merit games as some point), missing it's door/gate last time, when I unpack I will save this board and the older box!

I will also have to carefully transfer the older pull-ring, and it will have to be careful, as this one was complete until I touched it, whereupon it fell into three pieces and I have to assume the other will be equally age-brittled?

The magnetic arm with which you locate, capture and drag the poor animals by any-which-way (even tail-first) possible, back to the cage!

Scanned lid; a bit tatty, but higher resolution/detail than last time!

Rules, also scanned as a high-res' for those who need to know how it ends!

B is for Bijou Little Canoe

Except it's Beeju and it's a small-scale, not 'little'! I was hoping to find the other one, but I've already buried it again, so it will have to be seen another day, surface to say it's powder-blue and red if memory serves, which it usually does, but not always; it might be mint green, or even another yellow one!

Picked this up from Adrian at the recent Sandown Park toy fair, and it's a little peach, I'm pretty sure the aforementioned 'storage' one is lacking the oar, or has a rather truncated one hanging on at the glue-points like a cross-bar!

Full set of marks for EVB/Beeju some of who's 'planes, lorries/trucks and civilian vehicles we've seen here at SSW in the past. Hull is plain red, deck is plain yellow and sandwiched between the two . . .

. . . is a marbled layer of the two colours mixed to make an orangey Native American and his load, which consists of a slightly relief-carved bundle of provisions, two piles of furs, a tomahawk and the hint of a rifle under the other cargo - to keep it dry of course!

B is for Brown-water Navy

Quite by accident and without noticing I seem to have built a small fleet of Vietnamese Resistance vessels, gun-smuggling, for the use of!

Top left is a Hong Kong-made cake decoration fisherman on his little boat, based on earlier lead models originally used to decorate bonsai or miniature rock-gardens. Bottom right we have the small vessel from the Atlantic 'Mao and the Chinese Revolution' sets while the other vessel in both shots is a celluloid 'ivorene' touristy keepsake thing (like the little wagons) which may be factory painted, but I suspect a war-gamer's brushwork; from the matt-finish and accuracy!

Seven pieces for the factory glued one, the other having five-pieces for self-assembly in a plastic which doesn't like gluing! The  first - fisherman's boat - is a single moulding with a wire rod, a second wire-rod for fixing in the gravel/cake has been removed.

And the ironic thing is, while I think of them/present them as Vietnamese, one's actually Hong Kong-Chinese, the others Japanese and the third an Italian rendition of a Chinese boat and all pretty fictional/out of scale with the real things; but they look the part!

F is for Follow-up - Vitacup

You may remember that Colin Penn kindly send some images of his Vitacup animals to the Blog a while ago now, with some I hadn't posted, one of which I called - at the time - a "gazelle/deer (with curved horns)", well I now know it was issued as an Impala . . .

. . . and Chris Smith sent me one the other day! Both horns intact which is the trick with several of these 'Ivorene' polystyrene animals, who are both quite robust and brittle at the same time! And - in my defence, I did call it an Impala in the first post, so why I was so vague the next time I don't know!

I have also said - in the ever-lengthening number of Vitacup posts here at Small Scale World - that I believed there was a painted set, or painted versions, and a damaged one of them was also in the lot Chris sent.

Now, it has 'Foreign' on the base which is usually a sign of it being German or Japanese from the 1950's/60's, Hong Kong stuff tended to bang-on about 'Crown Colony' back in the early days. While the temptation is to think Japan (due to its similarity to HK) I wonder if it wasn't actually German.

We had several similar pieces as kids, which we got in 1960 from some hill on the Rhine in Germany (I've mentioned before here), the home of the gnomes? Anyway, they were gold-chromium plated with little plinths and plastic-jewel lanterns etc . . . long-gone now, sadly.

I further stated in one of the early posts on Vitacup that "There are two distinct sculpting styles; a realistic look, which is most of them, and a stylised 'carved' effect..." This deer and several of the other animals are in that style.

Another one on the right, cropped-out from the feebleBay, it has no white spots on it's rump, while mine is compared to the bare one on-screen. I now don't believe the painted ones are Vitacup, but that Vitacup sourced some of their range from the moulds previously used for tourist novelties . . . and possibly German (or Eastern European; Czech?) moulds at that?

That was going to be the full extent of this post, but I was on a roll!

There are in fact six deer, the three above which are quite common, in the carved style and bough-in or otherwise outsourced, and the three below, far less common and possibly from the last set (see below) Vitacup issued, they are - obviously - more realistic sculpts.

We have looked at the horn-addition phenomena before, but it's interesting to see on the [later] three others a male (reverse pose) a female and a smaller fawn, with the common ones they are all the same size and two are the same sculpt, but they fill the same roles?

Suggesting the source of the previous [tourist novelty] poses had dried-up?

That's enough deer dear; trying to get a definitive 'head-count' from the evilBay lot these pale blue ones are cropped out of, led to question marks of what is actually a Vitacup sheep and what isn't? The lamb with inner-flat legs is very Vitacup (the baby elephant is very similar) but seems to need  a base, yet; not to have had one, while the sheep (bottom left) may be a soft-plastic infiltrator to another eBay auction lot.

The common goat seems to have been replaced - like the deer - by a similar species (is it a Chamois? Cheviot?) in a new leaping-pose, along with a little kid, fitted with a small bell on a collar.

The horses also suffer from redundancy in what I think was the last issue, with a new halter'less adult (2) replacing the older one (1) and an almost identical foal (4) replacing the earlier sculpt (3), but while the early one was the same size as the horse almost, the new one is smaller, yet there is a smaller one still (5) in the common sets, a copy of 3 but with a bent leg?

Is it (top left) a wolf, a vixen or just a replacement 'fox'? For a while I thought it might be a corgi-type, but with a big tail! It might be an Alsatian hound? The wild boar also seems to have had a late update.

Speaking of dogs, they have risen to five (six if the foxy-wolf is an Alsatian!), with the addition of a racing-dog and a boxer (Dobberman? Rotweiler?), note also that the Internet bulldog doesn't have the painted collar he is often found with.

Studying them on the internet can lead to a belief or suspicion of two alternate rhinoceros sculpts, but I think there is only the one, it's just that it can lose a lot of fine detail in low-resolution images and appear quite different.

I suspect we are looking for a total of 52, broken down into 3 issues of 12 animals per issue being - each time - a mix of farm, woodland, wild/'zoo', birds and domestic pets (including the common sculpts and both versions of the ['bough-in'] deer), and one late issue of 16 less common animals, all pets, farm or woodland.

My current totals are a minimum of 53, or a maximum of 55, if we lose both of the two question-mark sheep and one horse, it adds up? But I bet more turn-up! We will - clearly - return to Vitacup here again; before it's all told.

Known Listing [updated]
(headings are mine)

Domestic (6)

Cat

Poodle

Airedale/Scottie type

Bulldog

Greyhound/Lurcher type

Boxer (Dobberman?)

Farm (14 to/or 16)

Horse (bridle and halter, one leg bent)

Horse (bare head, standing)

Pony/foal (larger, tail longer and pointing up)

Foal (smaller, tail short and pointing down)

Foal (smallest, bent front left leg, copy of pony)

Donkey

Pig

Cow

Calf

Goat (standing)

Kid (bell)

Ram

Lamb (standing head turned)

Lamb walking

Lamb (semi-flat, might not be Vitacup?)

Sheep - Prone (might not be Vitacup?)

European Wildlife/Woodland Animals (14 from 13 sculpts)

Wild Boar 1 (common)

Wild Boar 2 (rarer)

Deer - Doe/Fawn - head to left (no horns, stylised - bought-in moulding)

Deer - Young Stag - head to left (small horns added, stylised - bought-in moulding)

Deer - Young Stag - head to left (small horns, realistic)

Deer/Fawn - looking forwards (no horns, realistic)

Deer - Doe - feeding (no horns stylised - bought-in moulding)

Deer - Fawn (realistic)

Deer - Large Stag (reindeer?)

Mountain Goat/Chamois (leaping off hind legs)

Squirrel

Fox (common, looking to right)

Fox/Vixen or Wolf (rarer, looking forwards, might be Alsatian shepherd-dog)

Rabbit (Hare?)

Wildlife (11)

Rhinoceros

Elephant - adult trumpeting

Elephant - baby

Polar Bear

Bison (Wisent?)

Camel - Bactrian two humped

Lion

Lioness (or Jaguar?)

Giraffe

Kangaroo
Impala

Birds (7)

Pheasant

Duck

Stork/Crane

Pelican

Penguin

Ostrich

Eagle (sea eagle?)

Other (1)

Three Wise Monkeys [left to right-]

·         Hear No Evil

·         See No Evil

·         Speak No Evil