Flaming Heart Spinner Valentine

This itty bitty German valentine, just 3 1/4 inches tall and circa the late 'teens or early '20s, features a "spinner" that gives the effect of a flaming heart in the background. For some reason, the little boy appears to be dressed as a wizard.

Topsy Turvy Valentine

"He loves  me, he loves me not," says this circa 1920 German made Valentine, 5 inches tall. A topsy turvy, the character's facial expression changes when the card is flipped over.

Coming Up in February...

-14 days of vintage valentines  

-a 1925 Tootsie Toy dollhouse with original furnishings   

-and our latest restoration project: a fancy 1890s German dollhouse pastry shop...sneak peek below!

Before...





                                 
                                                        and after...

Vintage Space Toy Display in a Gumball Machine

I've accumulated a lot of vintage space toys lately, and was looking for a new way to display them that wouldn't take up so much room. I also had an old gumball machine that I'd been trying to find a use for, and one day, as I looked at it, I thought it might actually make an interesting sort of display case.

It had a prominent metal mechanism in the center, which originally turned to push the toy capsules out when a quarter was inserted, and it also had a wire arch that spanned the front window, used to hold the machine's original advertising card in place. They had a machiney, space-agey, electrical look to them, like props from the set of Metropolis, I thought...so I installed some 1950s children's space print fabric as a backdrop, then arranged a scene using vintage Archer Space Men and robots, along with some 1950s space-themed dexterity puzzles.

A closer-up view:

It hasn't really helped alleviate the crowded display area, 

(which is supposed to be my kitchen table)

but it came out pretty cool:

R and L Premiums

At a weekend toy show recently, I found a whole heap of...well, very odd things. These little plastic characters, between 1 and 1 1/2 inches tall, were cereal premiums (and sometimes Cracker Jack prizes) made in the late 1960s and 1970s by an Australian company called R & L. The tiny toys were found in packages of Kellogg's cereal worldwide, although there were some country exclusives. In the late '70s, the company was sold and the owners moved the plant to Mexico, where production continued in a range of new, brighter colors.

There were many different sets of odd and imaginative characters produced by R & L, often with spacey, alien themes, and each with individual names. Fanatical collectors strive to get them all, sometimes in every color combination possible.

These, the Crater Critters, are some of my favorites. The original cereal box promotion read: "Here are the cutest creatures you have ever collected -- Kellogg's 'Crater Critters." Normally they live way down in the deepest craters on a far off planet. They are shy little people, that's why we hardly ever see them."
Click here to see an original cereal box ad for the Crater Critters. 

My favorite so far is called Gloob; 

I have him (her?) in orange and purple:

Next are the AstroNits: "Round and round they go in lunar orbit, in their rockets and flying saucers, the mad, crazy Kellogg's 'Astro-Nits.' With retro rockets firing they zoom into Earth orbit to land on your breakfast table. So you can recognize them we have stamped a dotty name on every one of them." Some of the AstroNits shown below include Knot-Nit, Clown-Nit, Goof-Nit, and Yak-Nit.

My favorite is Goof-Nit:

Then there are the Funny Fringes: "Way out fun creatures from a make-believe land on the fringe of outer space." They all have names ending in "inge."

Here are some of my favorites:

Spinge and Fringe.

Sniffinge, Puddinge, and Nuttinge.

These are the far-out Toolie Birds: bird figures with tool-shaped beaks:

 

One of my favorite R & L lines comprises the Stretch Pets, funny animals with accordion bodies. These, and one of the Funny Fringes, I actually remember from childhood:

Collecting R & L premiums can be both a lot of fun (finding figures in cases full of unrelated items at shows) and a lot of frustration (trying to get that elusive last Crater Critter to complete your set), but regardless, they bring a smile to my face every time I look at them.

Collector Mike Speth has written a great guide to these toys, "Collecting Crazy Colored Plastic Weird-Things," that appeared in issue #12 of Freakie Magnet, a cereal collector's zine. It can also be read online, and is chock-full of photos and helpful info. The company history, figure identifications, cereal box quotations, and original ad linked above were all found at his site. Go check it out!