Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: As it turns out, this birthday was a very Mickey one. I start today with one today I bought myself shortly after my birthday. A Dean’s Mickey I have wanted and lost on more than one occasion. I believe that I have bid on both larger and smaller versions of same, this one measuring in at about 30 inches for the record. There is a puppet version which I am also quite gone on, but have been unable to acquire.

For the record googly eyes seems to be the accepted technical term here and is searchable as such. No one was readily able to tell me when Dean’s switched from the beady eyed Mickey to the googly one, but this celluloid style of eye roughly seems to have been introduced in the 1930’s, the latter period for them.

It is the toothy grin of the Dean’s Mickey that made me a fan in the first place. A very early post about Mickey Jazzer’s in my collection can be found here and they were, as such, my gateway drug to Mickey. As a cat collector, I have pointed out, it makes some sense to invest in mice and even dogs by extension and these Mickeys are an actual tributary in my collecting.

Therefore, after checking out my cat/Felix options thoroughly at an auction I stroll through the Mickeys among other things. To be clear, my Mickey collecting is very nascent compared to a real collector. (If we are talking about what qualifies as serious collecting I would reluctantly enter my Felix collection, but might feel compelled to argue that only my Felix photo collection is truly top drawer.) Still, I have some nice select little guys and they generally always put a smile on my face.

There is a rather wonderful online auction via Facebook on an account known as 200 Years of Childhood and they have an online auction late in the year. I believe it started during the pandemic when of course the in-person shows were on lockdown. I am grateful that it continues as an online venue as it gives me access to British vendors I would never see otherwise – as much as I would love to be there in person. It runs heavily to teddy bears and dolls, but I tend to find a gem or two tucked away via earnest searching.

It was via this auction that I bought my rather prized (by me anyway) Popeye Jeep toy, but it also lead me down a wonderful rabbit hole to a dealer who was selling some of his own Felix collection and from whom I purchased two wonderful Felix dolls which sit beside me even as I write. (The Jeep’s post can be found here.)

This year I made an inquiry about a nice looking Mickey toy, reminiscent of a Steiff one Kim bought me for my birthday a few years ago. (That post is here.) He was well out of my budget for the moment, however the seller, a fellow named Andrew Greetham, asked if I might be interested in a large-ish Deans one he had. He sent a photo and yes, I now had my fairly large (I think there is an enormous one out there somewhere) googly eyed Mickey.

Aside from his velveteen trousers being a bit shredded and a crack in one googly eye, our man is in good shape. No moth nibbles to his felt hands or damage to the soles of his feet – these are typically vulnerable points. He seems to be sans the usual Dean’s label marking which would be applied directly onto the bottoms of his feet on other items and instead bears a number on the lower right side of his face. It appears to read Reg No 750611.

If I type this number and Deans into the internet I find that it appears on other Dean’s Mickey’s so it was a broadly utilized copyright rather than for a particular style; their licensing number. Deans products, for all their decidedly and charmily off-model appearances, were licensed products under the auspices of Disney – I guess at the time it was more the money than the likeness.

The googly eyed Mickey has a more affable look (slightly charmingly dufus-y, pleasantly so) than the more beady eyed, slightly feral earlier versions. I like both myself but they are different in spirit and expression. This is a hale and cheerful chap, the others look a bit ratty and like they may be plotting against us – in the most interestingly possible way.

Remarkably, this fellow maintains his tail, which looking at former auction listings, is usually a casualty. It is wire and no longer stands at attention as it might have early on.

Included with Mickey as a bit of a treat was a rather splendid book of the same period (copyright 1931 by Walt Disney) which is in French which I hope to explore further with you in the near future. I will be limited to looking at the pictures for the most part as I do not read French – but really, it’s all about the pictures anyway, right?