Folk Art Rocking Horse

Found another old rocking horse: a small stable is taking shape in my living room! This one is not quite as old as my other one. He's probably from around the 1920s, and is American-made. He measures 37 inches wide by 30 inches tall, has a "galloping" movement, and is quite the colorful pinto pony. I need to replace his mane and tail, but that could take awhile, and I couldn't wait to show him:

Antique American Teddy Bear

Found this guy at a toy show last weekend: an early American teddy bear made around 1908. He's in need of a good cleaning and a little restoration (proper ear reattachment, paw pad patching) but his enchanting expression makes him worth it!

People have a tendency to classify all "cute" early American teddies as made by Ideal, and that's exactly how the seller labelled this one, but this bear has 2 very distinctive traits that help identify it: a wooly coat, as opposed to mohair, and chopped cork stuffing as opposed to wood shavings, straw, or excelsior. These features are seen in only two manufacturers that I'm aware of: Hahn & Amberg and the Miller Manufacturing Company, who made what they referred to as a "Hygienic Bear".  They are both much rarer than Ideals, so it's good to be aware when you're "on the hunt." At first, I thought this one was a Hahn, which was the firm primarily known for the use of cork stuffing,  but after comparing him to my other, confirmed Hahn & Amberg and finding a bit more info. on Miller, I'm reclassifying him as the latter.

Dick Tracy Tin Litho Car & Cap Gun

Character toys are an extremely popular subset of toy collecting. Competition for such toys is fierce, as many of them have cross-category appeal, for example, to collectors of comics or radio show premiums.

The famous cartoon detective Dick Tracy featured in a great tin-litho character toy made by the Marx Company in the late 1940s and early 1950s: the Dick Tracy Squad Car. It was offered in several sizes and varying degrees of deluxe-ness, from a simple palm-sized friction car to this 11 inch model with a wailing siren, working spotlight, and "gun sparks" created by a concealed flint. Mine is missing its spotlight and has a lot of play wear, but the lithography of Dick and his sidekicks is still bright and colorful.

I love the design of this toy. The characters are visible from all angles in the windows: head-on in the windshield, in profile on both sides of the car, and from the rear in the back window.

 

  

I found the Squad Car just a few years ago at an antique shop; my other Dick Tracy item has a much more interesting  provenance. I was home from college one summer, helping my mom with some gardening. All of a sudden there was a "clunk" as my shovel hit something metallic in the earth. I was an anthropology/museums major, with a special interest in archaelogy, and I began excitedly yelling, "hey, we found something! Could be a treasure!" And indeed it was: my mother unearthed this Dick Tracy cap gun, made by Hubley in the late 1940s, and said: "huh. I wondered where that went to. I missed it one day little Robbie and I played cops and robbers in the yard." So...this toy was buried in my grandmother's garden for several decades. It now resides in a place of honor in my toy collection (I didn't give it back to my mom. Finders keepers, you know...).

Big Box Full O' Archer Space Men

*THUD* That's the sound of me fainting to the floor after finding one of the toys of my dreams: not only are they my much obsessed over 1950s Archer Space Men (so named because they were made by Archer Plastics), they are 1950s Archer Space Men IN THEIR ORIGINAL DIMESTORE BOX! Wheeeeee!

Just a big box of joy, that's what this is...

Trade-In Barbie with Original Box

Here's something wonderful I just got (technically, though, she's a Christmas present, because she's been on layaway since then...)

By the mid 1960s, the Barbie doll, which had formerly been the height of couture, was now looking matronly and dated in her tailored "Jackie O" ensembles and pillbox hats. The Mod era had begun, and Barbie evolved along with it. In 1967, Mattel Toys offered a remarkable promotion: by sending in $1.50 and your old Barbie, you could get the new version, complete with "bendable legs", a  patented "twist n' turn waist", and "real eyelashes". Little girls unsentimentally dispatched their original Barbies in droves, and what they received is pictured below: the "NEW Barbie", with her original box. Mine is in minty, unplayed with condition: it appears her box took the worst of the wear over the past 40 years.

 

The new more poseable Barbie offers increased 
photo opportunities 

for the robots: