Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: This post is the tail end of a bunch of Felix posts that were pent up for awhile, awaiting their turn at publication. While last, he is by no means least, and although his mechanism is a familiar one (from the virtually archetypal cymbal playing monkey, who can be seen doing his thing on Youtube here), I have never seen this model of Felix before.

He has an almost homemade look to him, although ultimately we know he is not. The design screams off-model however and really, he barely passes for a Felix. I purchased him from a US seller on eBay.

For me, it is a bit of a surprise that there are not a few more Felix toys with wind-up mechanisms in general, mostly a few variations on walking ones – trying to capitalize on Felix’s specific animated motion. I show a few of mine below, although none walk much these days. I also have the remnants of this scooter Felix, although my example is sans mechanics. Still, given the popularity of Felix – I would have thought they might have proliferated further.

In my mind, the wind-up is to toys what animation is to drawings – I love when things come to life. In that regard might have been quite happy with a career in animation – or tinkering with wind-up toys, making things move. (Instead I watch cartoons and purchase and play with toys which is a nice option too.)

This Felix fellow has no markings aside from his key (permanently affixed to his back) which is the giveaway as it is marked Schuco. His motion is not as enthused as some I have seen (I show my own bad film of this below.

He appears to have received a certain amount of hard, loving use. I don’t remember having these solid sorts of wind-up toys as a child and perhaps that explains my fascination in part.

I have made up for lost time by purchasing numerous Schuco wind-up toys in the past few years however. A relatively recent purchase was this wind-up pig which was featured in a 2018 birthday post. (It can be found here.)

I am frankly a bit surprised that Schuco is his maker as I hadn’t realized they made the cymbal playing monkey. I cannot find a single other example of this model by searching for wind-up Schuco Felix the cat and wonder if there is a war-time production, unlicensed explanation. However, given how prolific Schuco was it is surprising more of these aren’t still knocking around.

I wrote a little bit about Schuco, a German company founded originally in 1912, it found its groove with this Pick Pick Bird toy, one of my own first wind-up acquisitions and which I wrote about back in 2016. (You can find that post here.) These are such solidly built toys – they have great heft – and their movement is expert. I am a sucker for them when I see them move.

This post was written several weeks ago for posting while I was working in South Africa. I apologize for any unedited mistakes. More from the US soon!