Flagg Family Dollhouse Dolls in Original Box

It's funny how antiquing is sometimes: you can look for something for years without finding it, and then when you do finally find one, you seem to find them all over.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a family of vintage dollhouse dolls made by the Flagg Company that I found at an outdoor antique show, buried in a box of junque. At the time, I had never come across any of these highly-sought Flagg dolls in all my years of collecting. Then, a couple of weeks later, I found two more (which I haven't yet posted, sorry), and then, last week, I hit the jackpot with this unplayed-with set still in its original package!

The box, cleverly designed to look like a house with the dolls peeking out the windows, measures 11 by 7 inches. The parents are about 4 inches tall, while the kids are 2 3/4 inches and the itty bitty baby (it's a boy!) is only 1 1/2 inches long.

The naively styled dolls are molded of a flexible vinyl and dressed in clothing made mostly of felt. The simply painted eyes give them a rather stunned expression, but that's part of their charm, I think. These date from the 1950s.

From the packaging:

Vintage Rocking Horse

This rocking horse was the first toy I found at an antique show last weekend. Although its design is quite simple (just a flat wooden cut-out horse, like those used on shoofly rockers), it has a certain primitive charm, and it's in amazing condition with all of its printed detail still intact.

The horse measures 35 inches long, including the rockers, and was made in the 1930s by Mengel Playthings of Louisville, Kentucky. The company was originally a manufacturer of playground equipment, but they became famous for a Lone Ranger's Silver rocking horse they produced in the late 1930s. 

Vintage Dollhouse Groceries

I have a large collection of antique and vintage dollhouse shops, so I'm always on the lookout for products to stock them with. At an antique show last weekend, I spotted these 1940s-50s American-made groceries. Constructed of paper-wrapped wooden blocks, the tallest is 1 1/2 inches tall.

Here they are on the shelves of a 10 inch tall dollhouse grocery store from the same period:

Vintage "King Pin" Bowling Games

At an antique show last weekend, a toy dealer had three fantastic vintage bowling games on display in his booth. I relieved him of two.

Made in the 1930s-40s by the Baldwin Mfg. Co. of Brooklyn, New York, "King Pin" and its smaller sibling, "King Pin Jr." bring all the fun of bowling to your table top, minus the stinky shoes.

King Pin is a whopping 37 inches long, with a tin litho lane, wooden pins, and a cast iron, spring loaded bowler, 4 inches tall. He really bowls, although not terribly well, as the long lane has suffered some dents and warping which tend to throw the ball off its course. This only makes it more challenging, I feel.

To play, you pull the bowler's freakishly ginormous hand back, place the ball in front of him, and let it go!

From this angle, he looks rather as if he's late for work and running for a bus...

Here's what he's aiming for: a set of wooden pins (and yes, there are a few missing. If you saw how these things go flying across the room when the ball whacks them, you'd be amazed there are any left):

King Pin Jr. is a bit more manageable, at 19 inches long. Completely made of tin litho, it features a very dapper bowler, just 3 inches tall.

Isn't he cute? I love his vintage bowling shoes...

Vintage Carousel Photo

I found this wonderful vintage photograph at an antique show last weekend. Stamped "July 30 1940" on the back, it shows several women in their "Sunday best" gleefully riding an American traveling carousel at a fair.

What a joyful moment this photographer captured, during what were difficult and fearful times for so many.

1950s Halloween Photograph

Here's hoping you have a Halloween as happily exhausting 

as this little boy's!

Original b&w photo, 1958: found at an antique yard sale.

Vintage Jack O' Lantern Decoration

One of my favorite vintage Halloween die-cut decorations is this jack o' lantern, made of embossed cardboard circa the 1940s by H. E. Luhrs. 12 inches wide, it sports a fantastic, toothy grin.

Hi! I'm Jack!

Vintage Halloween Cupcake Picks

Circa the 1940s-50s, these pulp paper cupcake picks, 2 3/4 inches tall, include two jack 'o lanterns, a black cat, and a grinning skull. It always amazes me to find such fragile, tiny pieces of ephemera have survived for so long...

King Kong Board Game

From my collection of vintage monster-themed board games comes "King Kong," made by Ideal in 1976. This was a tie-in product released in collaboration with the King Kong film remake that came out the same year. The film was not well-received; critic Leonard Maltin didn't mince his words when he said: "it dispels all the mythic, larger-than-life qualities of the original with idiotic characters and campy approach." Ouch. Still, the game is cool!

The box features fantastic promotional art from the movie poster, of Kong standing atop the World Trade Center towers (a change from the original film's climatic setting at the Empire State Building).

The game board is huge (appropriate for a story about a gigantic ape climbing gigantic buildings), measuring 32 inches long when fully opened.

The board represents the World Trade Center, and your mission as a player is to successfully attack Kong before he reaches the top. He, however, can spin about and knock you off the building, which is not a good thing.

Cards pulled can help ("take a helicopter ride!") or hinder you on your mission.

The spinner is totally cool, a tiny King Kong:

Vintage monster games generally command high prices, but Ideal's "King Kong" is still rather readily available and pretty reasonably priced, perhaps because of the remake film's unpopularity. See if you can find one, and play it this Halloween!

King Kong Carnival Chalkware Figure

If you visited the gaming tents of a traveling carnival in the 1930s, and fortune favored you that evening, you could have won this glorious chalkware prize: a 14 inch tall statue of King Kong.

If I'd been at a carnival back then, you can bet I would have been begging my date for one of these. It always amazes me to find such old chalkware pieces in such great condition today, as they are notoriously fragile.

 Grrrowrrr!

Dexterity Puzzles from Outer Space

I love vintage hand-held dexterity puzzles. These three space themed versions are some of my favorites. Made in 1957 by Comon Tatar of New York, they feature some fantastic mid-century space-age illustrations.

"Stop the Martians!" has a classic 1950s flying saucer 

menacing a cityscape.

"Trip to the Moon" sports a sleek rocket 

and a smiling man-in-the-moon.

And "Space Gallery" offers you the chance to unapologetically 

blast away at alien invaders.

Dig the Flash Gordon style space helmet and ray gun!

Men Into Space Game

I love vintage board games and space toys, so this 1960 Milton Bradley "Men Into Space" game was an exciting find.

Based on a contemporary CBS television program, it features fantastic illlustrations and a captivating storyline:

"Colonel McCauley, an expert in moon rocketry in outer space, must send supplies in a hurry to a station on the moon. The countdown has progressed to 'X minus 10' seconds. The player astronauts man their ships and, with rockets ready to be fired, await Zero hour at the launching pads. Which fleet of Space Vehicles will be the first to conquer the perils of outer space and accomplish the mission? The excitement of this adventure, the dangers faced in clashes with meteors and comets, makes Men Into Space a thrilling game."

Check out the dashing Colonel McCauley on the cover:









Inside, the board is dazzling, featuring Sputnik-era satellites and rockets, along with atom-age design elements:

And there's Colonel McCauley again,
gazing up into space
in a confident posture,
helmet at the ready:

The spinner determines your fate at liftoff. Will your ship blast into orbit or suffer a malfunction? The tension is unbearable as you await your destiny...

Many more bad things can happen to you once you're in space, courtesy of these cards you must choose:

The playing pieces are
itty bitty plastic rockets:










 I've played this several times since I found it, and it is actually quite fun: the perfect pastime for the armchair astronaut. Just watch out for those Space Particles, and be sure to check your Oxidizer fuel line before liftoff...

Vintage Space Man Robot

One of my favorite vintage robots is this, the "Space Man" made in Japan by Horikawa in the 1960s.

The 11 1/2 inch metal robot is unusual for its lithographed face, apparently representing an astronaut inside a mechanized robot suit.

I think he looks kind of like Robert Mitchum....

The Amazing Magic Robot Game

One of the coolest robot-related items in my toy collection is this, "The Amazing Magic Robot" game, made in England by Merit in 1953.

Look how excited those kids are! That's because it's AMAZING!

The game contains several sheets colorfully printed with trivia questions and their answers. The Amazing Magic Robot, 2 1/2 inches tall, is placed in a circle on the question side of the board, and turned to the position of the query you would like to have answered. When picked up and placed on the answer side, he Amazingly! and Magically! spins and points to the correct answer. (It's done with magnets, somehow.)

The Magic Robot himself appears to be made from a smaller version of the Archer Space Men's robot mold. He's a cutie.

The Amazing Magic Robot is not only amazing, he's also 

Ingenious, Mystical, and Infallible!

And judging from this illustration, he's intent on world domination...

Vintage Russian Key-Wind Robot

Mechanical robot toys have been made for a long time, and the best examples are the fantastically lithographed tin varieties from Japan, circa the 1950s and '60s.
This much simpler robot, made of red plastic with a key-wind mechanism, hails from 1970s-'80s Russia. Standing about 7 1/2 inches tall, he sports a metal chest plate with cut-out circles. As he walks, a multi hued panel behind the chest plate spins, causing the colors within the circles to change.
I guess that's his super robot power: color-changing circles. His designers must have been all out of laser beam eyes and ray guns.

"Beware my color-changing circles! Flee before me, puny human!"

Vintage Invisible Man Weeble

Back in the 1970s, Scotch brand tape released a series of very creative television commercials featuring the Invisible Man, who promoted their product's high-quality "invisibility" when used for repairs.
Scotch also worked with the Hasbro toy company to create a promotional Weeble of the Invisible Man: a solid black Weeble with glow-in-the-dark hands, feet, and hat.
I didn't know anyone who had one of these back when we were kids: they were scarce back then, and are consequently even rarer today. Thank goodness for eBay...

Steiff Gnome

This month's gnome-a-thon wraps up with a character from Steiff: "Pucki," one of their small gnome figures, made in Germany in the late 1940s-early '50s.

Pucki is 5 inches tall to the top of his hat, and is made of a rubbery composition material over a wire frame, with felt clothing and a mohair beard. The rubber compo material tends to deteriorate over time, resulting in drying, stiffening, cracking, and breaking. Steiff made many similar gnomes around this time period, and even with their condition issues, they're still charming little guys.

The Eugene Gnome Family

One of my favorite vintage gnome items is also the only one with links to my childhood. I can remember seeing this family of gnome dolls advertised in the big Sears Christmas Wish Book back in the 1970s. I believe I actually tore the page out, circled the gnomes in thick, red marker, and included it with my letter to Santa, just to be sure he knew exactly what I wanted.

I can still remember going to bed every night that December, anxiously worrying about the gnomes: did Santa get my letter? Would he have enough of the gnome dolls in stock for all the children who would undoubtedly be asking for them that year? Would I pass muster on Santa's list, and be deemed worthy of said gnomes? Well, I must have had a pretty good year, because Santa dutifully brought them, and I played with them incessantly. My childhood gnomes didn't survive, unfortunately, but thanks to eBay, I have them back today.

Designed by the Eugene Doll Company of Brookyln, New York in 1979 and manufactured in "The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong," the 5-7 inch tall jointed gnomes are made of plastic with clothes of rather cheap synthetic materials. The clothes were embellished with stickers (a mushroom on the mom, a strawberry on the girl) that quickly fell off and were invariably lost (one of my eBay sets miraculously retains them). The Eugene Gnome Family was definitely not a high-end toy, but there was, and remains, something very captivating about these dolls. As a little girl, I absolutely treasured them, and I still do today.

The Eugene Gnomes were packaged in two different ways, a fact I was unaware of until I began hunting for them as an adult. The first variation is this display box, which is how the gnomes were sold in stores. It has some gnome folklore on the back, and suggests: "Keep them with you to lend a hand, to talk to, to pretend with, to have as friends. Invite the whole Gnome family -- they'd love to come."

The second packaging variant is this much smaller mailing box, which is how I remember my gnomes coming on Christmas Day as a child. There was no display box inside: the dolls were simply packed, loose, into this carton. This is how the gnomes were packaged for catalog sales, which is how the bulk of midwestern American Christmas toy shopping was done back in the 1970s. This dual packaging, one for stores, one for catalogs, was typical of many toys back then, but it can be puzzling if you're not aware of it, as I wasn't when I began my gnome hunt.

 It was like Christmas 1979 all over again the day this came.
Thank you, eBay!

Heissner Gnome

Another vintage German gnome, this one is a bit later than those previously posted, made in West Germany in the 1950s or '60s. Manufactured in high quality vinyl by Heissner, one of the oldest German gnome makers, this reading gnome measures 13 inches tall to the tip of his hat.

This closeup shows the detail of his sculpted face:

He's very appropriately reading a gardening book.