Vintage Playground Spring Horse Ride

When I visited playgrounds as a child, I always raced to the spring animals before anything else. The slides, the swings, the monkey bars...I passed them all by in my mad dash to claim a spot on my favorite animal ride. I've no idea why they appealed to me so much, other than perhaps the imaginative possibilities they offered, as I can remember pretending I was riding them to some far-off adventure. I do recall desperately wishing I had one at home, and now, a few decades later, I do!

This vintage spring horse by Playworld Systems of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania is made of cast aluminum with a steel base, and measures 36 inches tall. In his original paint, he is a very cheerful palomino pony.



The playground pony in his new habitat, the living room library.

A small herd of spring animals has been slowly forming at my place. To see the first one I acquired  (a duck), click here. Another is currently in restoration, and I'll post him once he's finished.

Mr. Potato Head Picnic Pals

We're just about to head out for our Fourth of July picnic, so it's the perfect time to post one of my favorite vintage Mr. Potato Head sets: his friends the Picnic Pals, created in 1966.

The Picnic Pals were some of the most unusual items ever released in the Potato Head line. There were 6 characters, all featuring plastic heads with separate bodies: Frenchy Fry, Mr. Ketchup Head,  Frankie Frank, Mr. Mustard Head, Willy Burger, and, to wash it all down, Mr. Soda Pop Head.

From left to right: Frenchy Fry, Mrs. Ketchup Head, Mr. Mustard Head,
Frankie Frank, Mr. Soda Pop Head, and Willy Burger.

The Picnic Pals came with specialized accessory pieces made just for them: onion slice ears, pickle noses, and eyes the color of ketchup or mustard.

The Pals were sold in two ways: the first was the rare complete set box, shown below, which contained all the characters plus their original Potato friend.

A rather sinister looking Willy Burger and his henchman, Frankie Frank,
appear to threaten a trembling Frenchy Fry in this box art.
Not sure what that's all about.

The second variation was a tall, slim box with colorful art work, which included one main character, a condiment or beverage buddy, and a Mr. Potato Head.

For some unknown reason, Willy Burger is the hardest to find of the Picnic Pals, although they are all much more scarce than the regular Potato Heads.

We're off to our picnic to eat some of these.
Hopefully ours won't be staring at us.

R and L Camel Train Cereal Premiums

I've posted before about a big pile of R &L Company cereal premiums I found at a toy show a couple of years ago. Since then, I've added quite a few more R & L pieces to my collection. Here's one of my favorite sets.

In the late 1960s, an artist named Harry Hargreaves was asked to come up with an idea for a cereal premium set to be distributed through Kellogg's and manufactured by the R & L plastics company in Australia.  Hargreaves recalled the camel caravans he had seen while stationed in Egypt during WWII, long lines of laden camels walking in single file, commonly called "camel trains." Taking the phrase literally, Hargreaves crafted a beautifully designed set of tiny toys comprised of camel train cars with monkey passengers.

Made of a brittle plastic with delicate connector hooks, the toys are very fragile, and this fact, coupled with their very small size (the seated monkeys are a wee .5 inches tall, and the cars average 1.5 inches long) meant many were broken and lost over the past 40 years. The R &L Camel Trains are now some of the company's most sought premiums.



Each camel came separately in a box of cereal, and so did two accessory sets of the bed, canopy and some of the monkeys, which made collecting the whole series even more challenging. I can just imagine the frustration of children who got the sleeping car camel or first class camel, but never managed to find the bed or canopy to complete those cars. What a dastardly yet brilliant marketing campaign!

The engine is one of the most fanciful of the car designs:

Next is the guard van, atop which a monkey holding a blunderbuss watches over a treasure chest:

Behind this car comes the economy class camel, carrying a couple of monkey passengers seated in the open air:

It's no-frills service on the economy camel, but things are very different on the next car, the first class camel, complete with its canopy and top-hatted monkey rider:

And last but not least is the sleeper car camel, in which a tiny monkey rests in a bed borne on the back of a kneeling camel. A tiny bed pan (usually missing) hangs from the end of the bed.

Another camel was necessary to complete this set: the signal camel, along with a couple of flag waving monkeys. Without this set, your camel train would be sure to run into difficulties along its route. The ladder is detachable, making this another difficult set to find complete.

The tiny monkeys are worth a close-up of their own. The detail on such small toys, meant as mere cereal box giveaways, is quite remarkable. The flag monkey even has the stub of a cigar clenched in his teeth: 

Stay tooned: lots more R & L to come!

1970s British Mr. Potato Head

Part of a collection of vintage German and British Potato Heads I recently purchased, this boxed version was made in England by Peter Pan Toys in 1974. Licensed by Hasbro, it is nonetheless strikingly different from the American original. The plastic potato is a different shade of brown, and most of the accessory pieces are also differently colored and shaped. There was also a licensed character unique to England at this time: Mr. Egg Bodd, a hard-boiled egg man with an egg cup outfit he could wear. Sadly, I've yet to find one, but I remain hopeful.

Even though Mr. Potato Head came with a plastic potato by this time, this box depicts his friends made from real fruit and veggies. The art design of this box is quite crude compared to the richly illustrated German examples posted yesterday, but it has its own naive appeal.

Here's the British Mr. Potato Head inside his box,

surrounded by his simply drawn but charming friends.

West German Mr. Potato Head Sets

I recently acquired several vintage 1950s-60s West German and English Mr. Potato Head sets. Some are knock-offs, some were licensed by Hasbro, but they're all fascinatingly different from their American counterparts.

First up: three 1950s knock-off sets made in West Germany. They are all housed in flat cardboard boxes, the same size and shape as those a paper doll set would come in, or a tiddlywinks game. They were released at the time Mr. Potato Head still used real potatoes; the toy sets were comprised solely of accessory and limb parts, and it would be several years before the plastic potato was introduced.

"Mr. and Mrs. Funny Face" features intriguing illustrations of some rather sinister looking potatoes.

Inside, the parts are inserted into holes in the liner, and an illustration of an anxious-looking potato head with a Salvador Dali mustache serves as an example of a completed toy.

If Dali were a potato...

The next West German set features marvelous illustrations of fruit and veggie people on the cover.

The caption reads:

"MANY AMUSING CHARACTERS CAN BE MADE UP WITH THE AID OF

FRUIT OR VEGETABLES."

The interior is similar to that of the previous set:

Kinda creepy Mrs. Potato Head, no?

The last German set is more colorful and friendly seeming,

with bright colors and a happier looking Mr. P-Head.

Inside the "Mr. and Mrs. Funny Face" box.

This one's a jolly potato head, with a prominent pipe.

Coming up tomorrow: a licensed Mr. Potato Head made in England in the 1970s.

Gnome Bowling Game

Vintage games are some of my favorite toys to collect. This one, circa the 1950s, features a 16 inch wide tin litho playing board with wooden balls. The object is to roll the balls into the corresponding colored cups. (It is much harder than it looks!) Delightful little gnomes point the way to high scores.

The little gnomes are adorable:

The Marvelous Mobo Horse

One of the most wonderful horse ride-on toys of all time came out of a factory in Kent, England, from the 1940s through the '60s. The Mobo Bronco was made by D. Sebel & Co., which began as a metalworking firm in the 1920s, making wheels, carts, architectural elements, tank parts, steel furniture, and assorted other things.

The Mobo logo.

In the 1940s they turned their talent to toys and created the pressed metal Mobo Bronco, a new sort of rocking horse that could actually move along. As the child astride the horse pushed down and then released the flat metal "stirrup" pedals, the horse bounced up and down, and wheels hidden under the hooves propelled it forward. In the 1950s, a steering mechanism was added, and by pushing down on just one pedal, the horse could be turned in that direction. This Mobo is the steerable version, and measures 30 inches tall.

Mobo in the foreground, and an Allan Herschell coin-op horse ride in the back.

Mobo's cheery red and yellow color scheme was reportedly decided upon by children at a school near the factory. He is a very friendly looking horse!

Playtown

I've posted about the line of Playtown toys before, but I recently found some more items. This line of miniature shops and accessories was made by the Playtown Products Co. of New York from the late 1940s-1950s. Sets in the range included a bakery, general store, grocery, supermarket, luncheonette, and meat market. Each little shop averaged about 7 inches tall, just the right size for dollhouse dolls of the time. Besides the shops themselves, Playtown also sold accessory packs of goodies to stock the shelves. Here are three: one for the bakery, one for the butcher shop, and one for a dollhouse. Each little card is about 4 5/8 inches long, and the tiny items are made of painted plaster.

A braided bread loaf, cake, and donuts in the bakery package.

Hot dogs, a roast chicken, and a steak in the butcher shop.

Jello, cabbage, and eggs in the dollhouse kitchen set.

Here's the complete Playtown Meat Market, with a couple of Flagg dollhouse dolls doing their shopping:

1972 Milton Bradley Ice Cube Game

Recently acquired: the holy grail of vintage board games! The now oh-so-rare-and-insanely-pricey Ice Cube was made by Milton Bradley in 1972, and is one of the most sought and most expensive vintage board games in existence. How expensive? Well, a mint example recently sold for as much as a brand-new iPad...so if you spot one at a yard sale, snap it up!

Inside the box.

Here's what happens: basically, players take turns torturing ice cube men (made of real ice) with devices like "The Salt Mine," "Warm Shower," "Hot Head," and "Bucket of Warm Water." The last ice cube man to melt wins the game, although this is a short-lived victory at best.

The game has elaborate prep: first, the tray of specially molded ice men (called "Meltin' Miltons") has to be filled with water and put into the freezer. It takes a couple of hours for the ice men to solidify, and, speaking from experience, you'll be sorry if you try to rush it. If the player's interest hasn't waned by the time the ice men are ready, they are popped out of their tray and...oh, look! They have cute little faces! They're even smiling at us! How adorable! Of course, the cheery, trusting faces of the ice men make their ensuing tortures even more horrible to behold.

Turns out taking a photograph of an ice cube's facial features isn't easy. If you look very closely, you may be able to make out an ear on each side, a big nose, 2 eyes, and a smiling mouth. It's a little clearer in the box illustration:

The newly molded ice men are inserted into little stands, which enable the players to move them around the board. The stands consist of a pair of plastic feet and a dapper little hat with a bow. A spike attached to the feet slides through a hole in the center of each ice man and sticks out the top of the hat, holding the assembly together and providing a handle for each player to grasp.

Each ice man is placed at his starting position on the board, then it's just a matter of spinning the wheel o' tortures to see which fate will befall each one. Will he have to stand under the hot shower? Take a bath in a tub of warm water? Be doused with a sprinkling of salt? Have a bucket of water dumped upon him? Or perhaps the most dreaded fate awaits him: the "Hot Head," in which a heated metal washer is placed atop the ice man! The game instructions cheerily call these possible spin outcomes "mission events."

The wheel o' tortures with icicle spinner.

The Salt Mine sprinkling.

 

 

The Hot Shower.

The infamous Hot Head torture. Poor ice cube man...he's melting fast!

Whichever he spins, the ice man remains there, slowly melting away, until either his next turn or until another player spins that fate. If he's very lucky, he'll spin "enter Deep Freeze," which gives him a brief respite in a chamber of comforting crushed ice. The tortures continue until only one ice man is left standing.

Ice Cube is, as you may imagine, an incredibly messy game. Melted water, crusty salt, and flaky rust from the heated metal washer eventually coat everything if not carefully cleaned off after each game, and, if not dried thoroughly before packing away, the result is stinky mold. Countless spring-cleaning mothers tossed these games out in disgust. Consequently, Ice Cube is hard to find today, especially in good, complete condition, and when found, it commands high prices. Sure, you could buy an iPad for what you'll pay for an Ice Cube game...but would you have as much fun? I don't think so.