N is for Novelty Animals

I can't remember if someone mentioned these in a comment on an 'H is for How They Come In' post, or if it was in an email, but a conversation was had, to the effect that I would blog them more fully another day, and it turns-out I have more here than I think I have in storage, so here they are!

These cats, are the ones my collection started with, not these specifically, who have only recently build-up here, and I do have a better sample in storage, they are also, along with the frogs, the commonest, or at least that's my experience, I'm sure different animals prove more or less popular in different countries/sales territories and would have been ordered-in accordingly.

I'm equally sure any similarity with the Marx Minikins 'Figaro' from Pinocchio, is purely coincidental, as there were - between 1900 and the 1970's several similar short, fat cats in popular fiction or the arts/entertainment, including two Felix's (I think), Penelope Pussycat, [Babbitt &] Catstello, Muff (from Tom & Jerry's Fluff, Muff & Puff kittens), Corky, Fritz, Lucifer, Pussyfoot and others, so these were aiming at a well-worn constituency!

 

I thought I had a card in the archive with them all on it, as a 'rack-toy', but I can't find it - although I found other things to enhance the post - so I can't tell you if it was an adult with six kittens, or all six as small or large mouldings. The smaller mouldings are commoner, as they were chosen for gum-ball machine capsule-prizes, among other things.

Pigs are also popular, and the Hippo's seem to turn-up with more regularity than some of the others in the range. I don't know, but suspect they may have got themselves into Christmas Crackers at some point, or maybe only the larger ones? They don't all seem to have larger versions, though.

 

The frogs, with a gum-ball machine's insert card below, I have seven poses here, maybe more in storage and there seems to be an eighth on the card, which also has a duplicate for a five count.

 

Other examples, again; there may be more in storage, but you can see it's all the things people tend to collect - puppies, owls, moo-cows, chicks etc. . . I think there were small elephants? The kitten doing a hand-stand (like one of the pigs), is from a later set, not connected with the (1960's?) black ones. While, I didn't realise I'd hidden the tortoise!

 

The tortoise and the rodent (far left) may be from a line of Netsuke look-alikes, their decoration is finer, and they are more realistic sculpts, indeed the rodent may be an Asian water-rat or vole of some kind?
 

The hole in the underside is the unifying factor with all these, although as you can see here, some don't have one! The smaller kitten has the standard hole, while the whole set of pigs (with the exception of 'hand-stand') have one which is large enough to make them pencil-tops?

 

The prone kitten has an oblong hole, and smaller base area figures tend to get smaller holes, and the frog to the far-right has a medium-small one. While typically the large-sized ones have a larger hole, the pair of frogs here have a small and medium-small hole, just to be different!

There is a tendency within the hobby to call all this type of feature mould-release pin-marks, but I suspect that's not the case here, and it's more about minimising material-used, and/or preventing heat-shrinkage on tools with a fast cycle-rate?

I think these have both been on the blog before, but they turned-up while I was looking for the other bits, so here they are again! These three cats are in storage, but probably not yet with the 'master' sample, so you can see there will be quite a few in total.  The bear is later, and probably from a different company, but more on that in a mo'.

 

Just a quick-one on all these, they are similar to Kinder's 'hard plastics' and Kinder followed the concept of cartoony 'styrene animals, but the Hong Kong ones mostly predate Kinder by a decade or more, and while some of the above were claimed in early Kinder collector manuals from Germany, I think they've mostly been excised from current edits as there just wasn't the empirical evidence.

A set of clowns are within the oeuvre, usually sold as cake decorations, as were these Santa Claus figures mucking about, again, slightly newer and contemporary with the bears, we saw them here, with a Model Power iteration and links to Tobar (Hawkin's Bazaar) in the comments! Note the Greensward Leprechaun!

 

I also noticed, while sorting this stuff the other night, that those garden gnomes (hollow plastic, wheel barrow and garden-tools lot, and musician lot), have a smaller, solid iteration, which may be part of this extended range? Six clowns are also sold as cake-decorations.

I've tried not to lecture or pontificate this Rack Toy Month, but I often come back to one message in RTM, with this cheapo', novelty type stuff, you can only pin them down to a brand if you have the packaging with them, otherwise they are any one of several brands AND several anonymous/generic issues, and I'm sure a quick search of evilBay will pull Unique, Carousel and/or Grandmother Stovers into the fold!

To which end Wilton carried families of larger animals, glossy airbrushed; pigs, lambs, squirrels, poodles, pandas, rabbits, chicks &ect. Typically, they were two or three babies and one adult, Culpitt had a set of chicks, but they are larger, and mostly in storage (if I have more than one or two?), so can wait for another day!

V is for Variations on a Theme - Keep-Fit Santa's

This is the held-back and enhanced tail of a post from the summer on the Model Power sets Ed Burg sent me ages ago, as the more I dug-out, the more it looked like a whole other post, but first back to the obverse of the Model Power card;

The reverse of the card gives a hint at the range of sets available in this scale/size and the most interesting one is the Santa Land one, clearly designed to do seasonal front lawn or garden (front yard over there) displays in O-gauge/O-027, of the 'full Griswold' type! But they look familiar . . .

. . . not least than because I have Blogged one here years ago; under Culpitt or Anniversary House branding I think, might have been a smaller cake decoration supplier? We've also seen some of the second set (see below) under the Doric label before now.

You may have them as Wilton or Carrousel, but in 1986 two Hong Kong factories (from Bill B's catalogue) were both advertising them as 'new'! The truth is probably that Argeal made them and Greensward shipped them but a third contract manufacturer could have made them, with both Greensward and Argeal then taking them to load their novelty lines for wholesaling to Culpitt or Wilton . . . and now Model Power have them!

I only seem to have one (on shelf), I thought I'd got all of them, but they may be in with the Kinder stuff? A second, more modern set also exists, clearly influenced by the mid-80's set (possibly from the same source - decoration is spot-on - yet smaller belt-buckles), but six new poses, also doing things you;d expect to see in a gym, not from Santa Clause! We see three above . . .

. . . and the other three, with their icing-spike (pick)'ed twins. Whether the spike came first or second I can't tell you, but the spikeless set show no signs of the removal in the moulding (lump or scaring), and they may have been two sets?

The spikeless set are the ones we've seen before, I got them in a Christmas pop-up store in Basingrad a couple of years ago, probably as old stock, but not that old, so . . . last ten years? The Snowmen who accompany them have a large (almost but not quite pencil-top size) hole in them and each gets a crude'ish fir tree and a motto/sign for the cake.

A seller was offering them with sleds (sledges?) this time last year, but as 'assortments of three - six designs'. Looking at the sledges (sleds?) they are drilled for a string or wire (to a reindeer?) and might be the seller's marriage of two bulk purchases, rather than an original commercial offering?

A third set of six Santa's is out there, slightly smaller and probably another source, they either started life as gnomes, or where designed to be both gnomes and Santa's, having all the boot and hem trimming one associates with cake decoration Santa's, but clearly engaged in a spot of more gnome-like gardening . . . or mining - the chap with a lantern; is there a seventh pose somewhere?

Cheers again to Ed for the Model Powersets.