A is for Additional Avian Advertising Articles

As well as the links to his Jig Toy pages Nick Symes also sent a follow-up to the Vitacup figure posts, I think we have seen the Penguin, but the other two are new to the blog so thanks Nick. That's it really...I'll work on a list to add before I publish...now below, as if by magic! :-)

Penguin, Ostrich and Eagle

Known Listing
(headings are mine)

Domestic (4)

Cat

Poodle

Airedale/Scottie type

Bulldog

Farm (6/7)

Pony (four legs on the ground)

Foal (one leg bent)

Horse

Goat

Lamb (standing head turned)

Lamb (lying? head forward)

Sheep - Prone (might not be Vitacup?)

European Wildlife/Woodland Animals (8 from 7 sculpts)

Wild Boar

Deer/Fawn - head up (small horns)

Deer/Fawn - head up (no horns)

Deer/Fawn - feeding

Stag

Squirrel

Fox

Rabbit (Hare?)

Wildlife (10)

Rhinoceros

Elephant - adult trumpeting

Elephant - baby

Polar Bear

Bison (Wisent?)

Camel - Bactrian two humped

Lion

Lioness (or Jaguar?)

Giraffe

Kangaroo
Gazelle / Dic Dic?

Birds (7)

Pheasant

Duck

Stork/Crane

Pelican

Penguin

Ostrich

Eagle (sea eagle?)

Other (1)

Three Wise Monkeys

Google isn't giving-up any others, neither is FeeBay (which has a nice group on at the moment), so that seems to be it for now. There's more on them here.

V is for Vitacup Update...

These have come in with odd lots over the last few months, we saw most of them last time; V is for Vitacup, but the reindeer stag and the eagle (Sea Eagle?) are new to the blog, and push the total number of sculpts up a bit.

I was also reminded the other day that Plastic Warrior magazine covered these years ago (Issue; 66) and identified them, so my still not knowing who they were made by a few months ago was down to my PW's being in storage and the fact that Asperger's is partly a memory thing! Another reason to subsribe!

P is for P..p..per...Pick-up a Penguin!

Another quick follow-up to recent posts...

I picked-up two additions to the Vitacup sets, a penguin which wasn't in the list of animals still to find in the previous post, so there may still be more out there to track down? And a variation of the little deer/buck.

When I first saw him I assumed my existing example must be damaged, so bought him, but when I got him home and compared the two figures it was clear that both are complete mouldings, they are not glued on as an afterthought; it's two differing mouldings. Which came first is anyone's guess, they may have removed the antlers to protect children's fingers (1960's? I doubt it, you learnt from painful mistakes in those days!), or they may have added them to differentiate between the two deer, sex-wise?

The rest are here

V is for Vitacup

Those animals I was asking for help with the other week...Vitacup! Someone else asked the same question on an animal forum the other day, and they already knew something about them and had a name for them, so after a quick Google enough of the bare-bones fell into place to stick them up here and drop them in a 'finished' file!

Vitacup was the second attempt by Rowntree's of York (later Rowntree-Macintosh to grab a slice of the fortified cocoa-drinks (beverage) market between the wars. The previous attempt - called Fortak - had failed against Bornville's Bornvita and Fry's Malted Milk around 1933 and was withdrawn. Rowntree came back with Vita-Cup (quickly losing the hyphen) to fight a new battle with Ovaltine and Horlicks in the mid-to-late 30's.

This must have had some success as it seems to have hung around until fairly recently as the Australian arm; Robinson's (of the Barley Water), applied for a new trademark in 1985 (application no. 423440 R & C Products - Ricket & Coleman?) although it was never taken-up and has now lapsed.

In the UK it was marketed under the Coleman's (mustard)/Wincarnis label as Rowntree were advised they should retain their affiliation to gums and jellies, and not hot beverages by their advertising/marketing advisor; J. Walter Thompson. There is one more name involved...Bryden & Evelyn were the agents, who organised the day to day adverts in newspapers and magazines and handled distribution.

Thomson are now JWT, one of the biggest branding firms in the business, Bryden & Evelyn have disappeared (along with the Wincarnis works) and Unilever seem to own everything else!

They seem to have been issued in two sets, woodland and domestic animals, in blue and white matchbox type boxes titled 'Vitacup Ivorene Animals' - presumably found in the jar or tin of Vitacup - of which the above are all samples.

They are not Ivorene, they are a polystyrene in an ivory shade of white which can look pink, cream or grey depending on the light as can be seen above. Ivorene was actually trademarked to someone else and was a thermo-set plastic along the lines of Bakelite, although like Hoover, it became a generic noun which is still in use by the costume jewellery trade to this day for various polymers.

A second series was issued; the new 'Wildlife' series, again examples are above, the pelican below was from this series as well as an Impala with vicious looking horns which I have yet to track down.

Several of these animals bear a striking resemblance to Siku animal premiums, but others are completely different, I used to think they were Siku supplied but know I'm wondering if they weren't a UK produced product?

 

The rest of my sample, there is a 3rd much larger horse still to find, a prone sheep and another lamb. Whether the dogs were part of a third series I don't know, and I think I've seen a hen/chicken type. And while I've photographed all the birds together the Pelican was from the Wildlife series and I suspect the stork is too.

Google also seemed to suggest that a second issue of both series came at some point with airbrushed brown as a sort of 'antiqued' effect/staining. The bulldog always seems to have a collar painted in that pale cream yellow, being the only one to get paint otherwise.

When you Google vitacup animals as an image search , something funny happens; as you scroll down the page you keep seeing...

...the three wise monkeys, now I couldn't find out any more than I've covered above, which was - admittedly - less than an hours work! But I wonder if the myriad algorithms of Google know something I don't. namely; that the monkeys were some sort of brand logo at some point, and maybe after these 'Ivorene' sets, they issued more 3-monkey items as premiums? The three moneys above were definitely part of the blue and white boxed series, yet don't really fir in with the domestic and woodland animals that made-up that series, so...? It may - of course - just be that Google's algorithms are confusing threewise for vitacup?

Finally a scaler, some of them must have rattled around in the box a bit! There are two distinct sculpting styles; a realistic look, which is most of them, and a stylised 'carved' effect, most noticeable on the two fawns/deer, the two elephants and the missing lamb, also - to a lesser extent - on the lioness, cat and rhino. It's also showing on the flanks of the bison which was described as a wisent or European bison.

Then there is the flat in legs as oposed to fully-round legs, it would seem that at least two or possibly three sculptors were employed on this small range (33 known items, one too big for the boxes; missing horse). Does anyone know who they were?

We also need to know when Vitacup was available, or at least when these promotions ran? What other animals were there in these series'? What other premiums were there? Were they available in Europe? Did they ever get to Australia? Are they Siku's? How have we lost so much in the 'information' age?!...Doh!

News, Views Etc...All Sorts

Since I've been diagnosed with Asperger's I am able to be both more critical of myself and more self-depreciating...while remaining arrogantly self-assured underneath!

One of my foibles is....I like order...and it was my intention to continue with the Hong Kong small scales until I'd finished the British from Britains and Crescent sculpts, then after a week or so - once everyone had seen them - was going to use the new time-of-posting change feature to stack them up in reverse order so 'Type 1' was at the top of the page with the others in numerical order below them! In the past I would have loaded them in the right order and published them all at once!

However the need to pop a panicked message up here last night re. the hacking of my eMail means that that plan is now untidy, it's not going to look right (in my head - you can only ever see one or two posts on the screen!), so I will publish a few other thing that are stuck in the queue, and return to HK Brits next week or so after I've taken a few more photographs. Having mentioned Giant at the end of the last post I know a few of the incurables will be twitching, but they'll just have to sit on their proverbial for a day or few!

In the meantime there are a few bits and bobs to clear so we'll have a quick News,Views etc...



One Inch Warrior Magazine

Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior dropped me a line the other day pointing out that there are still a few back issues of the old small scale sister magazine; 1W.

Limited numbers of issues 3-11 are still to be had of what was (and remains) the only magazine dedicated to small scale figures. This author contributed a certain amount to the publication and I have published an index for it on here somewhere.

Anyone looking to fill their missing numbers should eMail Paul directly at; pw.editor@ntlworld.com



Plastic Warrior Magazine

I also popped round to see Paul the other day and drop off the Doctor Who kit figures I'd grabbed for him and mentioned the website wasn't working before Christmas and he pointed out it was a temporary measure in the Autumn and is now up and running again, but will eventually be dropped in favour of the combined new Facebook/Blogger platforms.

I've checked it and it is up and running again! Link is to the top right of this page.



Horrible Histories

Paul also mentioned that Peter Evans (PW's roving reporter) had dropped into the UK Toy Fair in January (I used to go and aught to start doing so again?!!) where he had seen the second tranche of HH blind Bag figures, these were said to be due to have an April release date I believe.

Yet I also believe it won't happen - The entire range was heavily discounted in the run-up to Christmas as I reported at the time in my attempts to track down the last few figures. And they were HEAVILY discounted - sets that were previously around 12-odd quid were going for £3 in Toys'R'Us as well as the Entertainer chain, while on-line everybody - including the traders on Amazon - was shifting all sets and figures for next to nothing.

Now it may be that the profit target had been met and they just wanted to clear the selves, but they were discounting the core and starter-sets as well, so I think it was 'claerance'. Equally, while they may have taken them to the show for real, I suspect it had more to do with saving face (they won an award at a previous Toy Fair) or because they had designed the stands and had nothing else to fill the gaps?

I hope they do appear; as you know, I've done what I can to promote them, they are a lovely bunch of figures, but I've heard nothing from the PR company since the late summer of last year and there's nothing happened on the website for the longest time?

What it does mean is that the new figures have been down the production line of some vast factory in China and - even if they don't see the light of day under the current marketer - will turn-up as clearance somewhere in the next two or three years for sure...lorry-loads of them.



Help Needed - I

Can anyone help identify/put a name to this company, it's a Hong Kong producer, copying German and Italian figures, tin-plate toys and animals.

Shown is my vague attempt at the logo litho-printed (tin-plate) or raised (plastic) on the toys/items produced by them...

Star Wars Names

This was passing round Facebook the other day....take the first three letters of you last name [Wal]ter and add the first two letters of your first name [Hu]gh to get your Star Wars first name.

Then take the first two letters of your mothers maiden name [Ha]ll and add the first three letters of the town or city where you were born [Ald]ershot to get you Star wars second name.

Walhu Haald is mine, what's yours?



Some Links of Interest

Jean Pierre Seguin This is a bit old hat now, and while some of the previous artists we've seen have used their imagination, this guy seems to have jumped on the bandwagon with a pixellation programme in tow...or am I being unkind?

Sd.Kfz. 8/DB 10 Rare as rocking-horse shit armoured half-track recovery and restoration.

Haribo - again! Where will the stupidity end!!



New Pages

The pages I've added so far have been up for a while now and had a few hundred hits each but little feedback - I take that as a good sign! If anybody would like me to produce other pages let me know and I will see what I can do, likewise corrections or additions are welcome and will be credidted.

Pages coming soon include; Gauge/Ratio/Scale/Size, Polymers, Other Materials, Manufacturing Terminology, Marks and Markings, Abbreviations and a 'general glossary', can anyone suggest other subjects they might like to see?



Help Needed II

Can anyone identify these....I know they were early premiums in - probably - breakfast cereal over here (UK) and always assumed they were Siku mouldings, but now I'm not so sure, can anyone tell us who made/supplied them and where else/with what else they were given away...margarine? Soap powder? There were wild animals as well and domestic/woodland types and they are a dense hard polystyrene 'Ivorene'

That's it for now, thanks for visiting, following etc...H

Animals now identified as Coleman's (the mustard people) 'Vitacup', they were also issued in Europe as Vitacup and it would seem there might have been an airbrushed 'stained' issue as well.