Silly Billy: Vintage Mr. Potato Head Knock-Off

Vintage Mr. Potato Head toys are some of my favorite collectibles. Besides Mr. P-head himself, there are lots of related items to search for, including many knock-offs made during the early years of the craze. This set, Silly Billy, was particularly bold, even including the manufacturer's name and address on the box.

The contents appear to have been molded right from the originals, and the illustrations are virtually identical. Naughty, naughty. I can't imagine they got away with this for very long.

You can see lots more Mr. Potato Head knock-offs (and rare vintage Potato Head stuff) at www.mrpotatohead.net.

Fisher Price Coaster Boy

The Coaster Boy, made for only one year, 1941, is one of Fisher Price's rarest and most sought-after lithographed wooden pull toys. 15 inches long, the coaster features an attached, jointed wooden boy. As the wagon is pulled, the boy pushes it along, then he hops up onto the wagon, and coasts! After a bit, he hops off and pushes it again. All the while, a bell rings, so you know he's coming. You can imagine the kind of hard play these would have gotten outside, which, combined with their brief production run, makes them so rare. Just an amazing and beautiful toy.

 Pushing.

 Coasting!

Fisher Price Donald Duck Toys

Fisher Price made an incredible variety of lithographed paper and wood pull toys in its first few decades, and Donald Duck was one of its most popular licensed characters.

My earliest such toy was made between 1936 and 1938: Dapper Donald Duck. Eight inches tall, it features "flapping" wings held in place by a piece of rubber. Dapper Donald was one of Fisher Price's earliest bestsellers, and it's easy to see why.

One in a series of character driven train engines, 1940-1942's Donald Choo Choo was a fun entry in the line, measuring 9 1/2 inches long.

Next, from 1946-1948 comes Donald Duck Drum Major, 10 inches tall. The baton spins as the toy is pulled.

The Donald Duck Xylophone from 1946-1953 is one of my favorites. At a whopping 13 inches tall, this was a big pull toy. As it is pulled, Donald actually plays the xylophone.

 Lastly, from 1949-1951, the 8 inch Donald Duck Drummer cheerfully pounds away on his tin drum as he's pulled along. What a difference in style between this and the 1936 Dapper Donald, with his long bill and manic expression!

Vintage Gumby

Ooooooh: just found a vintage, MIP 1970s Gumby. I feel a compulsion to free him from his plastic prison...poor guy, he's probably so tired of holding his arm up for the past 30 years.

Spy's-A-Poppin

The spy craze of the 1960s turned out tons of related toys, and one of the best was Transogram's 1966 Spy's-a-Poppin, a target game/playset with fantastic design and tons of action features. The huge, 27 inch tall set enabled the player to enter the world of spy films, complete with exploding bombs, damsels in distress, sinister cloaked spy masters, secret hideouts, and, of course, a really cool (dart) gun. Sadly, the gun is almost always missing from this rare set when found (although mine does still have the "Magi-scope"): kids would, naturally, have used the gun in all sorts of other play. Even without a gun, though, the set is a precious find. Its fragility and size led to most being thrown away by spring-cleaning parents.

Box detail, with directions for play.

Here's how it worked: you, the good spy, are in pursuit of a bad spy. You've tracked him to his secret lair, tucked into a dilapidated brownstone next to a pawnbroker's. See your shadow on the steps? You're even wearing a trenchcoat and fedora!

Now, you have to get into the hideout. You decide to blast your way in. Subtle, you are not. The instructions tell you: "First you must get into the house. How can you do this? Well, the only way is to 'blow up' the front...and that's just what you'll do." On the top right of the building is a giant red plastic bomb. The instructions say: "Take careful aim at the bomb with your gun and shoot! Hit the bomb on top of the chimney and the front of the house falls down!" And it does!

The whole front panel of the building falls forward, revealing a tense situation: a beautiful blonde girl tied to a box of TNT. The instructions make sure you realize the gravity of the situation: "Holy Fallen Arches! You must watch your step because there is evil afoot inside!"

Next, you are told to "slowly study the situation. Look through the infra-red scope on your gun to see what danger lurks behind those innocent looking pictures on the wall." And danger does indeed lurk: the red filter on the gun's "scope" reveals a spy hiding behind the picture. If you look very closely, you may be just able to see his outline here: 


"Behold! There are two sinister looking characters watching your every move!" continue the directions. "You must erase them from the scene."

Shooting the pictures with the dart gun knocks them clean out of their frames, along with their hidden spies, presumably. But what's this? Apparently one of the spies was "only wounded," and has given "a signal to the Master Spy hidden at the top of the stairs! THE JIG IS UP! OH, WOE, WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW?"  The instructions are just as fabulous as the game itself, really. I'm guessing an unemployed screenwriter or English Lit. grad wrote them. But incidentally, wouldn't the "jig is up" moment have been when you blew the front of the hideout off? A logical misstep, there.

Anyway: as the top picture is knocked from its frame by your dart, it releases a catch holding the Master Spy in place behind the curtains. He begins clacking his way down the staircase, "hurrying to the bottom to 'do in' that poor, innocent girl tied to the TNT box..."

This is when the tension really ratchets up: the Master Spy descends alarmingly quickly on his way to the detonator, and as usual, the instructions convey the seriousness of the situation: "Take aim...steady now...mustn't bungle it! You must hit him before he reaches bottom. If you don't, he'll push the lever and...ZOWIE! But...if you're quick and have a sharp eye, you can save the girl...you're a HERO!"

The Master Spy and the girl who needs saving. 

Looks she's done for this time...

You can see more pictures of this set, and read the complete, fabulous original instructions, at Sam's Toy Box.

Display Case of Fisher Price Toys

I couldn't decide what to post this week, so I just took a few pictures of my vintage Fisher Price display case. Let me know if there's anything in there you'd like to see!

Vintage Batman Board Game, Puzzle, and Colorforms

I was besotted with Batman as a child in the 1970s, and really, I guess, it hasn't abated much. Some recent Batman finds:

Batman puzzle, made by Watkins Strathmore and printed by Western Printing and Lithography Company, USA, 1966. Features the Batmobile, Batplane, and an unusual view of the Batcave:

Batman Colorforms, 1966, complete with original booklet. Although the box is pretty tatty, the contents were minty:

Batman board game, 1966:

Comes with itty bitty Batmobiles and villians: 
















The cover art is fantastic on the Batman game:

1972 Walk Lively Barbie

My sweetie found this Barbie for me recently at an antique shop, well-spotted in a case full of dolls. He thought this was "the most beautiful one," and indeed she is lovely, with her flower-child looks and fantastic Mod Era dress. From 1972, Walk Lively Barbie originally came with a platform which made her walk, swing her arms, and turn her head when the platform was pushed. The Mod Era dress from 1970 is called "Loop Scoop," and is one of my favorites from the time period.

 Groovy girl!

Vintage Gumby Costumes

I loved Gumby as a child in the 1970s, and can still remember going to the toy store with my mother to buy a "replacement Gumby" when mine would invariably wear out. The bendable 6 inch character was created in the 1950s by Art Clokey, and had his own television show, toy figure, and board game. In 1965, a series of costumes were released for Gumby, which allowed him to take on various exciting personas: knight, astronaut, cowboy, etc. Recently I found a few, and my latest Gumby has been trying them out.

 Gumbynaut makes radio contact from deep space:

Police officer Gumby holds back the rampaging robots:

Easter Weebles

Hoppy Easter from Tracy & her Toys

Hasbro Easter Weebles, 1970s

Vintage Playtown Meat Market

Dollhouse grocery shops are some of my favorite miniatures to collect. The tiny accessories (cans, boxes, packages, fruits, veggies, cheeses) are fun to find and stock the shelves with. This particular shop has a more limited product range, and it's one that will definitely not appeal to vegetarian readers.

The Playtown Meat Market was made in the 1940s -50s by Playtown Products Co. of New York. Playtown sold a whole range of these little shops, averaging 7 inches tall, including a bakery, general store, grocery shop, supermarket, and a fabulous luncheonette. (Click here to visit a great website featuring many of the Playtown Shops.)

The shops came filled with tiny items.
This one still has most of its original stock,
plaster meats housed behind sliding doors.













The market is just the right size for the contemporary Flagg Family Dollhouse Dolls, who are stocking up their freezer.

Vintage Charlie's Angels Doll

Rooting around in a box full of manky 1990s Barbies a few weeks ago, I found this treasure: a vintage Charlie's Angels doll, made by Hasbro in 1977, in its complete original outfit, and priced at just $5.99! This particular Angel is Kelly, originally played in the TV show by Jaclyn Smith, and the likeness is quite remarkable, I think (although I don't expect Jaclyn's head was quite this disproportionately large in real life...)

When I got her home, a happy discovery was made: she's just about the same scale as my vintage Mego Batman doll!

Batman was clearly happy about it, too: he's callously tossed Robin aside for Kelly. Poor Robin...I hope those menacing robots don't get him. He may be okay, though, as they appear to be looking the other way.

The Weirdest Board Game Ever Made: Remco's Pinhead

One of the oddest board games ever made must be Pinhead, released by Remco in 1959.

The first inkling of strangeness comes right away, as you peruse the cover. Why is a "game of hide and seek" called "Pinhead"? What does a deforming neurodevelopmental disorder have to do with a classic children's playtime activity? Why is the one boy so much bigger than the other children? Is it also about dwarfism and/or gigantism?

You might expect some answers to these baffling questions once you open the box, but no: the oddness just intensifies. There is, in fact, a pinhead on the house shaped game board, and he is "hiding" out in the open, in the middle of what appears to be a hallway. So...not hiding, then. I mean, wouldn't it have been more like hiding if he was tucked away in the attic clutter, or stuck behind one of the basement appliances??

The pinhead in question: 











Remco games were notable for: 1. being strange, and 2. having unusual methods of rolling the dice. Remco's "Tumblebum Dice Games" included an hourglass shaped device with dice inside. Tipping the device over essentially rolled the dice. Pinhead features a different mechanism: a dice box, in which the dice are shaken while the lid is closed. These elaborate dice rolling devices seem to have been Remco's attempt to enliven games that were otherwise rather simple, straightforward "tracks", wherein players simply moved their markers along a course. Remco games are relatively scarce, and strange though they may be, are worth snapping up when found.

Antique Show Report: Tons of Tiny Treasures

The first antique show of the season arrived this past weekend with the stormy spring weather. I gathered up my pocket change and went to see what treasures I could find. My budget was very limited this time, due to an upcoming vacation, so I tried to look only at very small things. Fortunately, there were a lot of very small things! I found:

Some antique dollhouse "tobacco felt" rugs. These 5 inch rugs were given away as premiums with cigarettes and cigars in the early 1900s. In the same booth, I also got a nice old dollhouse plate rack, complete with its plates.

Next, I got a bunch of dollhouse grocery items, all made of wood with paper labels. The largest can is 1 1/4 inches tall, and they all date from the 1920s-30s.

Pigs in Clover, an absolutely impossible hand-held dexterity puzzle from the 1950s, was next:

And my favorite find of all was a little vintage 1960s troll, 3 1/2 inches high, wearing his original outfit and shoes, with very unusual rooted, variegated hair:

Hi!