F is for Follow-up - Fantastic Flying Fancies!

So, as promised, I fired-off the recently found (and seen here) Tom Smith novelty artifact, the 'Surprise Space Rocket' at our Christmas Breakfast (more of a brunch) meet, and we can now look at the contents and finish studying this delightful example of how Austerity Britain cheered itself up in the 1950's! Actually, probably the 1960's!

 

This has a video of the launch in the middle, but also has all the images from both posts as an accompanying slide show, and I didn't know whether to put it at the start or the end, but the whole point of the thing (post and event) is to see what happens, so it should go first!

 

So, the contents were a bit disappointing, in that I had hoped they might be space-related, astronauts, spacemen, little UFO's or something, but actually they were pretty standard budget-end novelties, classics in fact, with two whistles, one a novelty face, a 'magic' fortune-telling fish, plastic 'tangram' puzzle and small red balloon. In fact, it's all a bit red!

 

Not a game - see video - there was also a very simple card rocket kit to cut out, and glue, the only real nod to the theme of the container, I will scan and print it, laminate it to some stiff card, and make up the duplicate, as a future follow-up, to this follow-up!

 

The six pieces are one-sided (colour/print-wise) as I may be able to build it on a card tube or wooden dowel of the correct diameter, and reinforce the landing legs with tooth-picks or coffee stirrers?

 

The party hats were the bulk of the 'shot', being the sort you see in old TV sitcoms, soaps or drama's from the 1960's or early 1970's, so it may not be the 1950's item I thought it might be?

 

Much taller than modern Christmas Cracker hats, and manufactured in crepe-paper, they have tissue frills around their tops in the same pinky-orange paper as their restricting-for-packing, paper 'vest' wraps, and one is decorated.

 

The decoration is more Easter-themed, with rabbits, bears and little flowery things (it looks like), than Christmassy, but of the same mawkishly sentimental style as wrapping papers of the era, I can still, well remember. So these 'poppers' were clearly aimed at the birthday and other celebratory market, to take up some of the slack of the quiet period between Christmas cracker seasons!

 

Construction was a loosely overlapped card tube, held together with the decorated rocket paper, with chip-board discs sandwiching the spring, and lighter fibreboard or hardboard discs holding the toys in another sandwich above the hats. A gap of about 10-mil, helps the spring generate acceleration, before the contents meet the lid.

 

Turns out the top just slides out, and I'm hoping to carefully feed this back behind the outer wrapper, eventually. For now, I've folded it down to preserve the folds and prevent the loss of the hardboard piece!

 

You will notice from the video, the toys go one way and the hats another, one suspects that if the quite substantial, bed-spring type wire-helix, hadn't been in compression for 50 or 60-years, everything would have flown further! There was no pyrotechnics though, I thought there may be a snap, as with crackers, but nothing of the sort!

N is for Nearly the Nativity!

It's the 20th! I don't know where that month went in such a hurry, but it did! I haven't shot any Nativity sets this year, nor have we had a chance to clear any of the unused stuff from last year, or the years before, all sitting down the bottom of Picasa at 1968! But, to prevent anything else joining them, there are still a few bits from this year to get up here, and this is Brian's Nativity finds in a store in New York.

 

The Archangel Gabriel getting busy with Satan! Two sizes.

 

The family shot, then they were off to Egypt as asylum-seeking refugee migrants!

 

OK, got it!

 

But did they pay?

 

13 pieces is a fair count, and beautifully presented in gold silk!

 

Quite a few styles, from the super realistic miniatures through to the mawkishly sentimental cartoonish baby-faced stuff, but nice that you can 'pick and mix' off the shelf, or slowly add items, year to year. Mostly resin, but it looks like some may be china? Many thanks to Brian as always, for sending these into the Blog.

U is for Umteenth Crimbo Post

. . . and there's more to come, but here's a few bauble loose-ends to put away. Some going on the tree, some viewed in passing as it were!

 

I actually bought this back in March, it was . . . is, technically, an Easter bauble, presumably to be hung on some silver-sprayed twigs, or another 100% consumerist, modern, non-traditional, 'interior-decor' shite! But I thought, well, it's a blown-glass bauble, it can go on the Christmas tree! It'll probably lose the bow, though! Very much in the style of the set of four (with the dodgy elephant) I found late last year.

 

I always try to add at least one cone, they are all over the tree in every size, and this Decoris one was big, but the first I saw, a while back now, and a nice colour, so it's gone in the box awaiting a tree!

 

Not baubles, but rather nice, I thought, slightly stylised Magi, as candleholders, sent to the Blog by Brian Berke, you can see other colourways behind the facing trio, so you can have quite a caravan, if you so wish!

 

And I love their headdresses, which have the look of non-Disney Aladdin/1001 Nights stuff from illustrated fairy-story 'comics' of the 1960's, like Pixi Tales, or Once Upon a Time. Turkish or Gourd turbans, now - of course - there's a specie of gourd called a Turk's Turban!

 

Brian also spotted this figural pair, I think the one on the left is Ms Vogue, the po-faced Meryl Streep character from the movie, you know, wasername, just retired, Crewella something-or-other? I'm not sure on the other one, is it supposed to be Ellen DeGeneres? She's not known for colour, or glasses? Fun, but too much appliqué stuff for my tree!

 

Adrian had this vintage one on his stall, last month, and I was tempted, but the flat-paint face and white beard & fur put me off, I like my vintage ornaments to be spirit painted, so the mirrored interior surface shines through the colour.

As mentioned above, I'm no fan of 'stuff' glued-on, there are a few in the family collection, but only a few, and Mum found them all! Now, Mum would have loved this, but, because it's pink, and she didn't have pink on her tree, she would have given it to me, for the 'gay tree', and because it would have been a present, I would have accepted it with the love intended, therefore, I bought it, if that makes sense?

 

I bought these three, unbranded, from the new/old (they moved to bigger premises and changed their name) hardware store in Fleet the other day, pretty sure I recognised them, but I primarily grabbed them because they are quite small, and the smaller ones bring a bit of interest to the higher portion of the tree.

 

And damn me if they (inner pair) aren't the better quality originals of the ones I got from TKMaxx (outer pair) back in November! It's not just in Toy Soldiers' that the Chinese copy each-other!

C is for Cardology

Cardology are a firm I encountered for the first time at the Birmingham Spring Fair, and they couldn't have arrived soon enough, with the recent demise of Clinton's, where I've been buying nice fold-up cards for a few years now (we saw the Morris Traveller with cats one year, but I've given more away, as Christmas cards), the shots I fired off aren't the best, but the link at the end has all of them.

They are a tenner each, which looks a bit steep, but you are buying a crafted keepsake, which, with care, can be got out and displayed again, year after year, and, dare I suggest - become a collection of novelties!

Cardology website: https://cardology.co.uk/collections/christmas-pop-up-cards

N is for No Goldilocks . . .

. . . and there's four of them! This year's bears; I tried to be careful, but in the end I found there were four more waiting to be hung, next time the tree comes out. Actually I've seen a lot of bears this year, so I have been quite restrained, they are making a comeback, although the big trend this year has been mushrooms. I have seen dozens upon dozens of mushrooms, in all styles and materials, everywhere I've been. There are no mushrooms on the family tree, and I'm not about to start adding them!

 

I got this one a couple of months ago, so long ago, in fact, he got shot twice! If you remember we had a plain'ish, gold'ish bear with tartan scarf last year (or the year before?), so I thought they' balance each other, on opposite sides of the tree! Pretty sure it was Gisela Graham?

 

But the tree gets turned twice each cycle, and is actually dressed in thirds, so this makes far more sense! Or at least that's the justification . . . TK Maxx for this chap, and he's a proper blown-glass, a bit on the larger side.

 

Then I found these smaller ones from Decoris in the Haskins garden centre near Forest Lodge, and couldn't leave them on the hook, although I guess, as a respectable couple, they will have to be hung close-together!

That's the Bears, this year! And I forgot the drummer we've already seen, so that's another five!

T is for Two - Christmas Plastics

A couple of plastic sets turned-up in The Works back at the start of September, which was a bit too early for crimbo' posts, but it's not often you see new, plastic cake decorations these days, so here they are now!

 

Two different sets, each providing for a typical vignette for the cake, only a vignette from a 1970's cake! I don't think people do cakes like that any more, or if they do, they use the 'family' decorations, to do the same traditional cake each year?

 

Looks to be a mix of polystyrene mouldings (the two figures), poured resin (tree) and air-dried-clay - the candy-cane, so ancient and modern in the one teeny bag!

 

Penguin delivering Christmas prezzies!

E is for East of India

Another non-toy company whose products had a bit of a Christmassy vibe, also shot at the Birmingham gift fair, but crafty fun, and no polymer in sight, bar a few rabbit-sized, dungaree-buttons!

 

There's something of the primative votive about these.

 

Cake decorations?

 

Felt tree-hangers.

 

There were several displays of 'The Boos'

 

Nativity figures, so generic, you can't tell which is Mary or Joseph?

 

Boos . . .

 

Animals . . .

 

. . . and more Boos!

CBC is for Church Bought Chochkes

It's stretching it a bit, but there you go! Shot back in February at Birmingham, here's an outfit who's own website make it quite clear they only supply gift shops and the ecclesiastical community, wholesale, rather than having any kind of ambitions to retail enterprise, and as they've been going since 1950, it's obviously worked for them.

 

Mostly Advent stuff, so relevant now, there are a few more general religious themes in among them, like the smaller metal items near the end of the post.

 

Wooden sets for kids.

 

Matt-painted bisque.

 

Fuller sets.

 

Stables.

 

Nativity trios!

 

Other religious iconography, including Easter.

 

Mary's and Jesus's, and some priests/monks - St. Peter?

 

That's it really - CBC Distribution; box ticked, and in the tag list!

 

Company webpage; https://www.cbcdistributors.co.uk/