Yard Sale Finds: Vintage Toys

This year's Yard Sale Trail, a 200+ mile route along the shoreline of eastern Michigan, turned up some nice finds (although nothing can really top last year's discovery of a vintage playground spring rider).


First find: a 1972 Come Home Snoopy! Colorforms set. I adore Colorforms, and Snoopy stuff is pretty cool too, but what really made this a great score was the fact that its original owner wrote her name and the date she received it inside the box lid. If only all old toys came with such provenance...

Janice Blackburn, I've got your Snoopy Colorforms! 

(Also, thank you for taking such good care of your toys.)

The next find was also a character toy: a 1962 Barney Rubble doll (of Flintstones fame) made by Knickerbocker. 11 1/2 inches tall, the odd doll retains its original clothes. I don't know why they made his hair green, but that is also original. A few sales down the road, I got this little 5 1/2 inch vintage plastic Fred Flintstone, and happily reunited the two best friends. 

Spotted from the road was this 22 inch vintage tin dollhouse still full of its original plastic furniture, made by Wolverine. It's the epitome of suburban living, circa the 1950s-60s.

Coming up tomorrow: a long-lost childhood toy found again on the Yard Sale Trail!

1950s Funny Faces Puzzle

This Funny Faces puzzle from the 1950s features great characters, and is actually a lot of fun to play around with. Each character is die cut into sections that can be switched and rearranged to make "more than 1000 different faces!" I haven't actually tested that claim, as I imagine it would require more time than I can realistically spend playing with my toys.

The original four characters:

The illustrations remind me of those on Changeable Charlie, another vintage make-a-face toy.

Troll House and Family

I already had a couple of these vintage 1960s troll cave houses, but when I saw this one still filled with its original owner's much-loved trolls, their extensive wardrobe, and even a pet elephant, I just had to have it. That's a lot of vintage troll awesomeness in there.

The trolls are a Dam wearing a wonderful felt dress with flower applique; a Scandia House with beautiful green eyes and a charming outfit; and a tiny gumball machine prize troll in her original wrap and hair bow.

Dam troll with baby.

Gumball prize troll. She has a cool '60s bouffant!

Scandia House troll with bright green eyes, 

wearing a lovely pink and yellow ensemble. And shoes!

The troll sisters also had a pet: a blue troll elephant 

from a Japanese knock-off line called the Lovable Uglies. 

Uglie, and yet so Lovable.

Bandersnatch Game

 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

 The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

                                          - Lewis Carroll 

No one but Lewis Carroll himself really knows what a Bandersnatch looks like, but Mattel's toy designers gave it a go in 1969 with their game of the same name. Players chose cards and spun trying to get all the parts needed to build a 4 1/2 inch tall Bandersnatch figure. This odd game is rarely found today, rather like the Bandersnatch himself.

The game box and components are all in bright, psychedelic '60s colors, and the spinner is a tiny little Bandersnatch. 

The giggling Bandersnatch spinner.

The completed figure is like a bizarre, nightmare version of Mr. Potato Head. Beware the Bandersnatch, indeed.

Funny Old Bear

This quirky antique teddy bear is 12 inches tall, made from an unusual cotton batting type fabric. His features include a very strange nose, tiny eyes, and one foot pad which appears to have been put on upside down. He's odd, but adorable.

I've never seen another like him, so I can only guess as to his age and nationality...maybe American or English circa one of the World Wars? I've seen the octagonal nose once on an old English bear, and (much smaller) upward stitches also on English teds, while the side-placed ears are found on American and English varieties. This type of fabric was typically used during wartime shortages of wool, which was being used for soldiers' uniforms and so couldn't be made into mohair for bears. If anyone has a similar ted, I'd love to see him (or her) and compare notes!

This is his original nose and mouth stitching. 

It gives him rather a distinctive look and funny expression, 

especially combined with the beady little eyes.