Vintage Gumball Machine Charms & Toys

Ooooh, look what I just found: a huge bag of vintage gumball machine prizes, still in their capsules! I lost count at 90 something. Here are a few of my favorite pieces. They all date circa the 1960s - early 1970s, and measure a mere 1 inch tall or less.

First up is this great and rare movable charm: a tiny church that is hinged and opens to reveal itty bitty people inside:

The detail that went into this tiny item, which likely sold for a nickel, is amazing, and the survival of such a small and fragile item over so many years is even more remarkable.

Next, a fun piece: a charm that's a play on words, featuring a "hot dog" (dachshund) on a bun:

Keeping with the dog theme, the little Scotty below is actually from my own childhood. He originally had a charm loop on his back, but I remember I broke it off because I thought it looked strange. The grown up toy collector in me wishes I could go back and stop my 7 year old self before I did such damage, but at least I still have him. He and his cheesy companion are also movable prizes: the dog's tongue sticks out when you push his tail down, while a mouse slides out of the cheese when it is tipped forward.

A couple of long lost childhood favorites were spotted in these two capsules. The fuzzy yellow character (probably inspired by the '60s troll craze) has a safety pin glued to his back, so you could attach him wherever you liked. I remember wearing mine on a jean jacket.

The little pink blobby guy had been one of my treasured tiny toys: I can still vividly recall spotting him in the window of a grocery store vending machine, and feeding dimes into the slot until I finally got one. I kept and carried him around in a pocket for years, until he was, we believe, lost to the vacuum cleaner after being dropped. That was a tragic day indeed, but I was thrilled to find him again in this bag o' treasures.


The Smiling Pink Blobby Guy Returns!

Tiny frying pan charms were some of the most common gumball machine prizes in the '60s and '70s, but that doesn't diminish their appeal. There were two varieties: one had stickered food items and the other had molded versions. The difference is apparent in these egg pans:

The stickered varieties included the aforementioned eggs, along with bacon and fish.

On the theme of eggs, here is another movable charm. This one is a cracked egg, from which a tiny chick emerges:

Looking at the very small and easily broken parts of these toys, one is reminded of the toy safety campaigns of the late 1970s. These efforts resulted in the removal from the market of not only such items as these from vending machines and Cracker Jack boxes, but also the demise of the original Fisher Price Little People and Weebles.

This next batch of prizes reflects not only the difference between safety standards now and then, but also ideas of content appropriateness. I call these next items Gumball Prizes of the Crime Syndicate. They include a roulette wheel, a teeny tiny squirt gun, and a fully functional, 1 inch long folding knife with a metal blade (the point is blunted, but still, I think if you were determined enough, you could cause some damage with it.) They're everything the aspiring 7 year old criminal needed to start his own illegal gambling operation or enforcement racket.

This ends our tour of the giant bag 'o gumball machine prizes for now. Hope you enjoyed it!

Antique Cracker Jack Prizes

At a recent antique show, one of the dealers had a little box full of tiny charms and Cracker Jack prizes dating from the late 1900s through the early 1930s. I selected several, including a teeny tiny cup and saucer, a wee little frozen charlotte doll, a miniature horse pulling a wagon, and a little figure of a comical photographer. Whenever I find things like this, I'm always amazed at their survival. Imagine how many similar items were lost over the past 100 years to vacuums or cracks in the floorboards!

The tiny cup is just .5 inches across, and the doll is 1 inch tall.

This funny photographer was my favorite prize in the bunch.

A little soldier on horseback still retained some of his original color.

R and L Premiums

At a weekend toy show recently, I found a whole heap of...well, very odd things. These little plastic characters, between 1 and 1 1/2 inches tall, were cereal premiums (and sometimes Cracker Jack prizes) made in the late 1960s and 1970s by an Australian company called R & L. The tiny toys were found in packages of Kellogg's cereal worldwide, although there were some country exclusives. In the late '70s, the company was sold and the owners moved the plant to Mexico, where production continued in a range of new, brighter colors.

There were many different sets of odd and imaginative characters produced by R & L, often with spacey, alien themes, and each with individual names. Fanatical collectors strive to get them all, sometimes in every color combination possible.

These, the Crater Critters, are some of my favorites. The original cereal box promotion read: "Here are the cutest creatures you have ever collected -- Kellogg's 'Crater Critters." Normally they live way down in the deepest craters on a far off planet. They are shy little people, that's why we hardly ever see them."
Click here to see an original cereal box ad for the Crater Critters. 

My favorite so far is called Gloob; 

I have him (her?) in orange and purple:

Next are the AstroNits: "Round and round they go in lunar orbit, in their rockets and flying saucers, the mad, crazy Kellogg's 'Astro-Nits.' With retro rockets firing they zoom into Earth orbit to land on your breakfast table. So you can recognize them we have stamped a dotty name on every one of them." Some of the AstroNits shown below include Knot-Nit, Clown-Nit, Goof-Nit, and Yak-Nit.

My favorite is Goof-Nit:

Then there are the Funny Fringes: "Way out fun creatures from a make-believe land on the fringe of outer space." They all have names ending in "inge."

Here are some of my favorites:

Spinge and Fringe.

Sniffinge, Puddinge, and Nuttinge.

These are the far-out Toolie Birds: bird figures with tool-shaped beaks:

 

One of my favorite R & L lines comprises the Stretch Pets, funny animals with accordion bodies. These, and one of the Funny Fringes, I actually remember from childhood:

Collecting R & L premiums can be both a lot of fun (finding figures in cases full of unrelated items at shows) and a lot of frustration (trying to get that elusive last Crater Critter to complete your set), but regardless, they bring a smile to my face every time I look at them.

Collector Mike Speth has written a great guide to these toys, "Collecting Crazy Colored Plastic Weird-Things," that appeared in issue #12 of Freakie Magnet, a cereal collector's zine. It can also be read online, and is chock-full of photos and helpful info. The company history, figure identifications, cereal box quotations, and original ad linked above were all found at his site. Go check it out!

Vintage Dexterity Puzzles

I saw literally hundreds and hundreds of vintage dexterity puzzles at a toy show last weekend. Several dealers had entire display cases full of them, and I spent what seemed like hours (oh: my long-suffering toy shopping companion just told me it was hours...) picking through them. In the end, I selected these three.

A fortune teller "Jiggle" puzzle from 1957:

A tiny Cracker Jack prize puzzle just 1 3/4 inches tall, from the late 1960s-early 1970s, made of paper and fragile plastic, with a fantastic character design:

And a wonderful space-themed, dome-shaped puzzle, from the 1950s, with great mid-century space race graphics:

1950s Felt Beanie Hat With Vintage Charms

At a toy show this past weekend, I found a long-sought item: a vintage felt beanie hat from the 1950s, loaded with Cracker Jack and gumball machine charms. These hats were very popular from the late 1940s - early 1960s; the character of Jughead was never without his in the Archie comics. I've occasionally seen similar hats, but never one that was "just right" until I spotted this one:

The hat is festooned with all sorts of vintage charms collected by its original young owner: tiny skulls, little footballs and baseballs, a Snoopy-esque dog, even a Heinz pickle advertising pin:

 

One of my favorite pieces is this tiny 1950s microphone:

Here's the hat modelled by my 24 inch antique American bear, who wears it tilted at a rakish angle:

Antique Cracker Jack Bears Postcard

I've collected antique and vintage Cracker Jack prizes for several years, but I didn't have one of their iconic pieces, a Cracker Jack Bears postcard, until we found one this weekend at an antique show, buried deep within a tray of old postcards and photographs.

The Cracker Jack Bears were a couple of characters, probably inspired by the contemporary Roosevelt Bears and the concurrent teddy bear fad, used to promote the company's product back at the turn of the 20th century. They appeared in a series of 16 beautifully lithographed full-size postcards, and children were urged to collect them all.

This is number 14, with a copyright date of 1907, measuring 3 by 5 1/2 inches:

The back of the card reads:

"Sixteen Beautiful Post Cards, No Two Alike, (without this printing), sent Free to anyone who will mail us ten sides from Cracker Jack packages, reading, 'The more you eat, the more you want,' or mail us 10 c in silver or stamps and the side of one package. A 2 c stamp is enough to mail ten sides. Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein, Chicago, U.S.A."

Vintage Cracker Jack Prize: Sideshow Panorama

I was fortunate to grow up in the 1970s, the last decade of really good Cracker Jack prizes, before those pesky "safety regulations" took effect. The best Cracker Jack prizes, though, are even older, like this one which dates from around the 1950s. The tiny paper booklet, about the size of a matchbox, separates into individual pictures, which, when connected via tabs and slots, create an astounding carnival sideshow panorama.

The assembled panorama looks like this:



Here are some closeups of the pictures. Each has a description of the performer and some interesting historical information on the back:

All in all, a pretty amazing "free" prize!

1930s G-Man Premium Ring

From the 1930s comes this small Cracker Jack premium G-Man ring.

In 1934, FBI Agent Melvin Purvis, with the help of other officers, aka "government men", killed notorious gangsters John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. He wrote and spoke widely about his adventures in law enforcement, and Post cereals began a promotional campaign advertising his "Junior G-Man Corps and Law and Order Patrol." Kids across the country sent in for all sorts of premiums, including rings, badges, flashlights, fingerprint kits, and penknives.

Other companies, including Cracker Jack, jumped on the G-Man bandwagon and released their own items as well, since Post was unable to copyright the phrase. This ring was a Cracker Jack prize, and was clearly well-loved by the little boy who pulled it out of the box some 70+ years ago...

Antique Cracker Jack Prize

I loved Cracker Jack as a kid. Back in the 1970s, they still put cool prizes in the boxes: tiny pinball games that actually worked, cute little plastic figures that we carried in our pockets and traded with friends, tattoos and glow-in-the-dark stickers, and punch-out scenes to build. But by the late 1980s, new safety standards had been applied and the prizes were hardly fit to be called such.

I still buy a box every once in a while, hoping against reason to find something fabulous inside, but I'm always disappointed. As an adult, my love of Cracker Jack prizes was rekindled when I discovered how much better even older prizes were: toy trains, tiny china dolls, itty bitty pieces of furniture, and this, one of the most longed-for antique Cracker Jack prizes on my wish list.

Dating from the 1920s, this "Breakfast Set" consists of teeny tiny real glass dishes (a plate, bowl, and cup) along with a metal spoon, all housed in a fragile matchbox. (Talk about safety hazards!) I don't know how excited some small child was to pull this fantastic prize out of her box of Cracker Jack 80 years ago, but I sure was to find it a few months ago!

Tiny Toy Assortment

, This antique printer's tray full of small old toys sits on my coffee table. Everyone who visits tends to gravitate toward it: its pull is seemingly irresistable. The tiny compartments are filled with vintage Cracker Jack and gumball machine prizes, antique china dolls, miniature figures, toy trains and playsets, miniscule books, and lots more.