Fisher Price Nifty Station Wagon: Updated with Original Advertisement

If I were forced to choose a favorite from the hundreds of pull toys Fisher Price has made over the years, this would be it: the Nifty Station Wagon from 1960, a miniature version of America's beloved family road trip vehicle.

This 13 inch long kitsch classic sports a removeable roof, lovely fake wood side panels, stylish white wall tires, moving headlight "eyes", and a little wooden family (mom, dad, child of indeterminate gender, and dog) who were precursors to the classic Little People.

 Dig the funky tweed interior! I think my little sister and I had matching pants in this pattern back in the '70s.

Mom has her eyes closed. Maybe Dad is a crazy driver, and she can't bear to watch...

 Besides the headlight eyes, the front grill also has a "smiley mouth" bumper.

A simple mechanism causes the kid and dog in the back seat to spin wildly to the accompaniment of a raucous noise as the car moves, just like in real life. Those Fisher Price toy engineers were geniuses.


Updated August 11: 
Several people commented that they had never seen this vintage Fisher Price toy before, so I thought you might enjoy seeing the original advertisement, from the April 1960 issue of Playthings magazine (a trade journal). I have a small collection of vintage toy ads, catalogs, and brochures, and this is one of its highlights. Click on the pic to see it bigger and read the text.

Vintage Car Travel Game

I love the fantastic period art on this 1958 Milton Bradly Travel board game. An aqua green station wagon (with fins!) carries dad, mom, and the requisite two children away on a vacation. Everyone is so nattily dressed, like they just stepped out of a "Leave It To Beaver" episode: dad in a suit and tie, mom in a smart hat, the children in starched and pressed "play clothes"...what a difference from today's standard vacation ensemble of t shirts, shorts, and flip flops!

The game play is pretty simple (just spin, move, and follow the directions on each space that can help or hinder your trip) and typically '50s moralistic (one space reads: "children behaving --- driver speeds ahead 2").

I played this on my trip last week and sadly must report it's rather dull. But it still has great kitschy art value!

Been on a Road Trip...

We went on a little road trip last week, and spent a couple of nights relaxing in this teeny tiny beach house:

which had this beautiful cupola and weather vane:

It may look from these photos as if we were on the ocean, but no: this is the shore of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes. Scientists often refer to the Great Lakes as "inland seas", and you can see why. They are vast, and deep, and this coastline is littered with dozens of shipwrecks, dating back to the 1800s.

That's fascinating, but what does it have to do with toys? Well, my road trip has inspired me to post some summer vacation themed playthings! Keep an eye on this horizon, and see what coasts in...

Tiny Toy Treasures

Lots going on in my "real world" this week, so I won't get to do any blogging. I thought I'd post something to occupy everyone's time until I get caught up.

Here are some pictures of:

1. My kitchen "junk drawer", where I stash small toys. (People are always pulling it open, looking for spoons or such like, and they find this instead.) Some old things, some new, some childhood treasures I've saved since I was little...have fun rooting around!

2. An antique printer's tray that rests on my coffee table, filled with tiny toys and treasures. It started out as a sorting and display area for my vintage Cracker Jack and gumball machine prizes, but it's expanded beyond those categories. Click, zoom, and see what you can find!

Teddy Bear Mystery Solved

A while back, I posted an entry about an antique teddy bear that I had tentatively identified as American, from the early 1920s. Well, was I ever wrong! But I wouldn't have known without a recent teddy bear purchase and a tip from its helpful eBay seller.

Here are the two bears in question, side by side. The gold bear is the first one, which we guessed was American based on the inset cloth nose and happy expression. But it remained a puzzling bruin, with a very odd body structure, and I remained rather uncertain about it. A couple of weeks ago, I found the second bear, the white one on the right, and after studying it, realized they're both by the same maker. The wear present on the first bear makes them not as obviously identical as one might hope, but the type of eyes, size and placement of ears (which contain tiny squeakers!), inset cloth nose, crooked grins, tubby body shape, and the unusual limbs all match.

What really clinched the ID was the claw stitching, some of the most unusual I've ever seen. The feet feature odd, linked up stitches, while the paws have very long, thick claws.

The seller of the white bear suggested the British maker, Peacock, as the source, with a date of 1914, and using that information I finally found a reference to this bear in a guide book. Turns out it's a pretty rare bear, so I feel doubly lucky to now have two!