Mrs. Potato Head, Housespud, in the Biggest All-New Combination Pack

My latest vintage Potato Head set is one of the rarest, and also the largest, with the box measuring in at 18 inches wide by 12.5 tall. That's a pretty big box for a toy that, in the years before plastic potatoes were added, usually consisted of little more than a handful of tiny face pieces.

But the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Biggest All-New Combination Pack contains much more than the typical set. In fact, it has everything including the kitchen sink!

 

Produced for a brief period in the early 1960s, the Biggest All-New Combination Pack was an attempt to accessorize the Potato Heads in a way that would appeal to both boys and girls, and the large box made it appear to be especially deluxe. In reality, the set's accessories were cheaper than cheap, but the cover art really sold it.

The package included not just one vehicle for Mr. Potato Head, and not just a car, like some of his other sets. This one came with a plane, a train, and a boat.

For Mrs. Potato Head, there was a set of gleaming new kitchen appliances, and a baby in a stroller. (More about that baby in a minute...)

Inside, the accessories were tucked into cardboard backers, while fragile styrofoam display heads held the Mr. & Mrs. face pieces. Both the cardboard backers and the styrofoam heads are very easily damaged while trying to remove the pieces, which is probably one reason the set is so scarce today.

Here is Mr. Potato Head's garage. The vehicles are made of a brittle plastic, and the wheels had a tendency to snap off. These are now rarely found intact.

 

  

This is Mrs. Potato Head's kitchen set. The items are each molded from a single piece of flimsy plastic. They don't have any moving parts, so, for instance, the doors can't open. They are identical to the items found furnishing the metal dollhouses so common in this time period.

 

 

And here is the much advertised new baby, in his stroller. He must have been adopted, as he is clearly a human baby, and not a potato. Or perhaps Hasbro didn't want to go to the expense of designing and molding a new potato character, and they just tossed in these cheap dollhouse babies, apparently thinking kids wouldn't notice.

 

 

 

The set comes with instruction booklets for both Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (and look: there's the human baby right on the cover!) The inside of Mrs. P's gives us a telling glimpse into societal expectations for women at this time:

 

 

Yep, that's right: Mr. Potato Head gets to go gallivanting about in his boat, train, or airplane, but Mrs. P. is expected to stay home with her non-functioning kitchen appliances and the freaky baby.

 

 

 

Toy Show Finds

Just got home from one of my favorite vintage toy shows. It's an annual event that happens each January, which really seems like a lousy month for a toy show, coming as it does right after Christmas. This year I planned strategically: when my family asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said "money for the toy show please!" Here's what I spent it on:

There were all kinds of toy treasures, including a tin litho grocery store playset made in the 1950s by Wolverine; a scarce (and creepy) Hugo, Man of 1,000 Faces from the 1970s; a two-headed Doublenik troll from 1965 along with a tiny vending machine troll; a Weinermobile whistle; a bunch of 1950s space guys; Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon newspaper comics from the 1930s-1940s; a 1960s Batman puzzle; Barbie's original convertible; and a 1950s tin wind-up robot. I'll post properly about them later, but here are some quick pics and sneak peeks.

The robot has some rust, but he also has lots of character.

1950s space guys.

A Doublenik two-headed troll from 1965,
with its gumball prize friend.

Hugo, Man of 1,000 Faces, was a bizarre toy made in the 1970s. It's essentially a creepy looking guy's torso and head, along with a package of "disguise" accessories, including false chins, fake scars and warts, various noses, glasses, an eye patch, and hair pieces. I'm guessing it was inspired by spy films, but who knows. It's weird and now rather rare.

Hugo, Man of 1,000 Faces with some of his original accessory pieces.

Barbie's convertible, made by Irwin in the 1960s, was her first car.

The two shelf units on either side of this tin litho grocery store fold inward to close up the playset. Originally it would also have had a separate counter with accessories like a scale, but these are usually missing. The center span features great imagery of a 1950s supermarket.

The iconic weenie whistle.

The 1930s Buck Rogers newspaper comic above is complete, while the Flash Gordon strips below are only portions (but they feature a fantastic alien giant squiddy monster) :

These two mechanical bears were made in Japan in the 1950s. When wound, the bear on the left turns the pages of his book, while the one on the right wipes his glasses before holding them up to his eyes.

Antique Photographs of Children and Toys

Like many toy collectors, I'm always on the lookout for old photographs of children with toys. Such photos add character and life to a toy collection; they remind us that the toys were originally made for and owned by real children, who played with them, loved them, and eventually grew up, leaving their toys behind for us to find and treasure.

I found two such photos just before Christmas. The first is this posed studio portrait of a little girl with her doll. The doll looks like she might be an Alabama Baby, a cloth doll with a painted face in a primitive style.

The little girl and her doll share strangely similar expressions. Are they anxious? Alarmed? Needing to use the bathroom? If only they could tell us...

While this photo has a homely charm, the second photograph I found is very different, capturing the image of a wealthy Victorian child surrounded by expensive toys, including a platform horse, a train, blocks, a musical push toy, bowling pins, a horn, and a small horse drawn cart.

The skin covered horse on its wheeled platform would have been a German import and a pricey toy. In the foreground is a cast iron train.

It's a bit difficult to see, but in the right foreground is a little horse drawn cart, with an alphabet block in the open seat.

Here's a closeup of the lithographed tin musical push toy. What a lot of beautiful toys! This child must have been very good all year.

Children's Antique Sleigh

This year's most extravagant Christmas present was something that turned up in a local antique shop, a picker's rescue from an old, old house. It took my breath away when I saw it, and so after some budgetary soul-searching, it lived in layaway for a few months, making it out just in time to go under the tree (and just before our big snowfall came.)

This children's sleigh dates circa the 1870s. 30 inches long, the little sleigh is all-original, with much of its beautiful stenciling still intact. What makes it really special is its shape. Nineteenth century children's sleighs sometimes came in novelty shapes, most frequently a swan; this, however, is the only one I've ever seen in the shape of a lady's shoe.

See the shoe? It forms the side of the sleigh, white with yellow and red outlining:

The sleigh has seen heavy use and was coated in coal dust from decades of cellar storage, but many beautiful details remain:

I've loaded the sleigh up with antique doll and teddy bear passengers, all ready for a ride:

German Miniature Wooden Toy Village

One of my favorite presents this Christmas came from an antique shop in northern Michigan, where it was found stashed in an old stationery box.

This wooden playset represents some 400 years of toymaking history. Little villages like this one have been made in Germany for centuries, turned out originally in cottage industries that flourished during the long cold winters in the Erzgebirge and Groden Valley regions.

Wonderfully naive and delightfully out of scale with itself, this particular village was probably made in the 1920s, with a few older and slightly newer pieces mixed in. The smallest item is a chicken, just 3/4 inches tall, while the biggest is a windmill at 3 inches.

This village has houses, churches, town halls, a windmill, fences, trees, animals, people, and a horse drawn wagon. Many of the pieces have traces of candle wax atop them, suggesting the village was displayed for many years in the Putz tradition under a tree lit with real candles, or perhaps on a Christmas candle pyramid or carousel.

Let's tour the town, starting with the front gate:

Beyond the town, farm animals rest in the pasture, while a family of deer graze in the forest:

For futher reading, an interesting history of wooden toymaking in this region of Germany can be found in the chapter "Adventures in Toy Valley" in the book Toys Through the Ages, by Dan Foley.