toy collection

A Surprising Tiny Felix

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tiny Felix

Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: In my collecting experience this little gem is about as weird as it gets. A Facebook friend, Chuck Sycamore, emailed the photo below as a response to an unrelated post, announcing that a friend of his had “found these in his house” and was selling them. Well, wow. Who could resist that?

tiny felix line-up

So, the friend (who lives in Chicago) was contacted and after a bit of to and fro I purchased one – the fellow on the far left end. My size ration dysmorphia (see yesterday’s post Surprise – It’s Felix Again) kicked in and I was stunned to find this guy no more than four inches high! The scooter is fully functional and the Felix is completely articulated. I have never seen these any place else for sale. The small articulated Felix dolls seem to be a size smaller or a size bigger than any version I know. The scooter seems loosely based on this toy I own (mine is a no-name, not Felix variation – I like it, but for some reason the one that is marked Felix sells for about ten times more) – or perhaps that is entirely in my own mind.

tin Felix on scooter

Whether these were somehow one of a kind pieces made in a small quantity, or for some reason have just eluded me in my years of Felix collecting I do not know. There is no maker’s mark and the execution is very thoughtful. If anyone knows more than I do on the subject please weigh in. I am very curious to know more! And a big shout out to Chuck for giving us the heads up. And what kind of whacky house did the friend move into anyway? What else was in that house?

Surprise – it’s Felix Again!

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Big new Felix

Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post:  I really wasn’t in the market for another Felix, especially not such a large one. Finding a spot for them in our tiny apartment is becoming difficult. Yet when this one failed to sell and was re-listed at a much lower purchase price, I could not ignore the opportunity to purchase it. At the time I was thinking that it was an upgrade for one in my collection, but when it showed up I realized that it is actually a different model. Just as well, I have not yet begun to see myself in the role of seller – I am still accumulating. I gather from the eBay seller that she bought it on a recent Morphy’s auction for considerably more (I do remember it being listed there) and she didn’t have room for it once it arrived!

In terms of size I admit to a certain dysmorphia on occasion when it comes to purchasing toys. It isn’t that I don’t pay attention to the sizes, virtually always listed nicely in inches, feet or centimeters. However, things frequently arrive much smaller than I envisioned. However, on occasion, at least one notable one, I completely misjudge a very large toy. There is a Dean’s Rag Company Mickey Mouse that was a store display which I won in a Hake’s auction several years back – Kim bought it for me as a Christmas gift. It arrived in what can only be described as a small refrigerator box! I was a bit overwhelmed. It took some doing but Mickey resides, hulking in a corner of the bedroom, at the foot of our bed, the size of a small child, watching over us as we sleep.

Below, new Felix with the one I thought he was the same as. Silly me! What was I thinking?

Two Felix Dolls

Two of a Kind

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: As we continue on with our Halloween theme, I present two splendid kitties from my collection. The first of these cats was among my very first purchases in the world of black cat toy collecting, and it is still among my very favorites. He, along with another excellent, much earlier cat (a future post) were scored in an antique store in Red Bank, New Jersey – near my ancestral home, while on a weekend junket to visit my parents. The second was purchased on eBay. That seller told me that it had been a prize his or her grandmother had won on a push pin board game in a store, and that it was from the 1930’s, which seems about right. This seemingly appropriate example of one of these prize boards is below, grabbed off of the internet.

punch board

There was great excitement from Blackie and Cookie when I took these cats down to be photographed! The arched back, tail and ears is enough for them to read angry feline and react in-kind. In addition, these cats in particular, still carry the irresistible smell of attic and mysterious old things. The combination really wound these guys up this morning.

Both toys are in pretty superb condition – one maintains his bow – and sport magnificent fluffy tails, and virtually no bald spots on their plushy fur. The eBay one has a few condition issues – he does not really stand on his own any longer and his tail lists permanently to one side. Pretty good for a couple of elderly fellows though. They are the cheerful guardians of my cat shelf. I admit, I couldn’t pass one up and would contentedly buy additional ones if I found them. I mean, who wouldn’t?

black cat w/ bowebay cat

A New Felix for Pam!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post:  I don’t actually buy Felix dolls very often these days. There aren’t all that many that I do not have, and those I don’t own I frequently can’t quite afford on eBay – where the competition gets mighty hot. However, once in a while one shows up that wins for sheer quirky spirit, and this was one of those Felix-es. Something about the cock-eyed confidence of this little fellow caught my eye. Frankly, upon arrival he’s a bit more fragile than I would have bargained for, but these whacky toys all seem to have individual living expressions and I love his whacky appeal. On the face of it he doesn’t look like he comes from the East London Toy Factory, as featured in the previous post of that name. Still, he does belong to a category of Felix which appears singular and somewhat handmade.

His blue ribbon is most likely not original – I think some did bear a white bow at the time – but it is jaunty and I like it. It adds to his appeal. He maintains his whiskers, which frequently are among the first things to go. They are stiff and stand up on their own, curling a bit. His tail is designed to help him stand, but he barely does these days, and has a bit of help here. He will live on a high shelf because Cookie has already discovered him and decided that his smell is fascinating. Clearly she would enjoy making him a very expensive cat toy. Not on my watch, Cookie old girl.

A Small Gift for Kim

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: A few weeks ago, right before my foot surgery, I was in East Hampton as described in my post Operculum about some seashell collecting that went on out there. Before heading back to Manhattan we stopped at a sale, held some sort of a town hall building. It was generally pretty upscale (no surprise there) and consisted largely of antique furniture, silver and some high-end vintage jewelry. (I just barely contained myself on that score – it is another weakness.) However, low and behold, for no particular reason someone was selling a whole jar of these. There were numerous giant insects one could choose from, but somehow this big, gorgeously colored beetle struck me as a perfect gift for Kim.

It is encased in a plastic material and if you look carefully you can see a little stand that came with it. Cookie was very interested in making it her own – she is a cat that enjoys balls and will bat them around by herself, making up cat games. However, we have decided that this one is ours and we’d like to keep it pristine.

For no discernible reason that I can explain, I have been buying Kim variations on this for years. I guess it is my own fascination – things encased in plastic and interesting bouncing balls – but he seems to admire them as well. Generally, I find ones that are really meant for bouncing – there were a number of different ones that light up when you bounce them – we all enjoyed those and I buy them whenever I see them. In turn, Kim purchased a ring that lights up for me which I enjoyed tremendously.

Another, an anniversary gift that we have attempted to keep from Cookie, is the mermaid below. To be honest, she is stealing it from me even as I write this as I have it off a shelve to photograph it to show you. Bad kitty!

mermaid ball

Nippes Novelty

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I sometimes feel that, while glorious in many ways, the advent of online auctions has sadly really devastated flea markets. As a result, the ability to wander through acres of other people’s stuff, milling happily through it for hours on end, is not available as it once was – and this means the happy coincidence of finding something you never knew you needed is less likely to occur. I try to have open ended searches that will be inclusive of all items I might be interested in, but it is always a challenge to look for what you don’t know might exist. However, recently I was searching an online auction that seemed to have extremely varied items and somehow I stumbled happily on these. After some fun with the technicalities of signing up for the auction site, I more or less forgot about it for a month until I was notified, much to my extreme pleasure, that I had won them! They came from an auction house devoted to toy soldiers, Old Toy Soldier Auctions of Pittsburgh – once again proving that although we may not be coming across unexpected bits at flea markets any longer, we certainly have access to venues we would not otherwise. I guess it evens out in the end!

These extremely interesting pieces were listed as Souvenirs made by Heyde. While tons of images of toy soldiers and toy soldier sales come up if you google Heyde – it takes a while to find out about them and the non-soldier toys made by them. I owe the description of the company I do have to an eBay seller named Ascot who is auctioning some of the other novelty items (including an alligator who stands on hind legs bearing an umbrella) as I write this. According to Ascot the novelties sold by the company were called Nippes and included a number of variations on this umbrella-animal theme all of them made of a pot metal similar to these. There are no company markings – some of his are marked German, but I don’t see that on these either. Heyde was, as you may have guessed, a German company. It was founded in 1872 by George Carl Adolf Heyde and was completely destroyed in 1945 during the bombing of Dresden. A brief history of toy soldiers offers that the small lead ones were too expensive to be popular at first, but eventually caught on with the wealthy and became a status toy of choice at the turn of the century.

From what I can see looking at Heyde non-soldier Nippes – the quality is a bit all over the place. Some of the execution is much more slapdash and others, like these, finely executed. They had a line of instrument playing cat band nodders which I would be mad for if a bit more care had been taken in their making.

I have no way of knowing if these figures were sold together and meant as a set or if they just ended up that way. They have a nice heft to them which is one of the things I miss in similar objects made later. These were novelties made to withstand time – and they have.

Eva-Marie and Mickey

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Taking a break from my beloved Felix-es and other kitties, we choose today to embrace mice – or at least a mouse. Eva-Marie had this charming photo taken in Berlin with this splendid Mickey. Nothing but her name on the back, no date. The back of the card has a studio mark that says only A. Wertheim Berlin Leipzger Strasser, which appears to have been an early mall/department store. I like the jaunty bows in her hair and the way she’s holding Mickey’s hands – he reaches almost up to her waist!  Eva-Marie is clearly enjoying herself. Who wouldn’t?

I believe the wonderful outsized Mickey to be made by Britain’s Dean’s Rag Book Company – a toy company I have written about several times in the past. (Among those posts you can check out Pluto and Flip and Froggy.) I shared some of my small scale “Mickey Jazzers” below. These were featured in Starting Small With Mice, an early post and are tiny kissin’ cousins of the big fella here.

dean's mice

I am the proud owner of a store display Dean’s Mickey, which is about as tall as Eva-Marie here, but more about that in a future post. One great Mickey at a time!

A special shout out to my friend Zach Sigall who was the one who found this photo and gave me the nod on it. Thanks Zach!

Spooning with Felix

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Pam’s Pictorama: I have been giving these Felix spoons the sideways look on eBay for years now. Suddenly there was this one and no one was bidding on it and the next thing I know…I  own it! I am surprised to find that there is very little information available about the maker, or anything much at all about it at all. It is marked nickel silver, but no maker that I can see, and the smiling, dashing Felix is silver and black enamel. Someone selling one on a website claims that these spoons were made by Charles Horner of Halifax who was an Art Deco designer of jewelry. At first glance Mr. Horner seems a bit higher end than our friend Felix appears. Still, he seems to have produced a broad line of products so perhaps it is possible. It is a nicely made spoon. Like I said in my post, Living the Felix Life, when my ship comes in I plan to use Felix china for our everyday dishes and now I will make sure all the spoons are Felix as well!

When I informed Kim I had purchased the Felix spoon and showed it to him, he told me of his memory of owning an Ollie spoon as a child – part of a Kukla Fran and Ollie set of ice cream spoons with distinctly designed squared off shovel-like bowls at the end. Of course I immediately went to eBay and found a Kukla spoon – no Ollie spoon, except for one that had been made into a ring. It did make an attractive, if somewhat bizarre, ring and I briefly considered buying it – but really, where could I wear it?

Spoons are a surprisingly affordable collectible. The excellent design on some was a bit of a revelation – I saw a rather remarkably well designed W.C. Fields spoon for example – and the actual existence of others being the revelation, such as the Charlie McCarthy spoon or the Dionne quintuplets.  I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if there are some future spoon entries heading your way, dear reader, a future edition of Blame It on the Blog.

Cat Purse

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Pam’s Pictorama: This was very much an impulse buy on eBay a few months back. Perhaps because I had recently seen an exhibition of kimono at the Met with these fabulous fireman’s coats made with heavy woven fabric and this reminded me of them. (One is shown below – they had amazing designs on them. Images from this wonderful exhibition can still be found on the Met’s website at Kimono: A Modern History. Full disclosure for those who may not know – I work at the Met.) The cat image just made me laugh! It is the same image on both sides – the other side a bit faded.

Needless to say I would have loved this when I was a kid. I was trying to remember if I was especially enamored of a particular toy purse in childhood. There are a few vague memories that tug at the edges of my mind, but I don’t remember any special purses. I do remember that for a while I carried around a toy doctor’s bag. It was complete with fake pills (somehow I have trouble imagining that children today get fake pills in their doctor’s bags) and I am quite sure that the idea of being a doctor didn’t especially interest me, but carrying this case around did. I am not entirely sure what this says about me.

I also remember being pleased when it appeared that I had reached an age to carry a purse. Perhaps if you are a boy you have pockets in everything and therefore you don’t need a purse. However, it seemed very necessary to me – having a place to put the things I wanted to carry with me. In my twenties I graduated to very jolly vintage alligator bags that would sit on a table or bar like a proud little work of art. (Kim didn’t like them, felt bad for the alligators; I gave them up. He was right.) Shoulder injuries brought me to a world of lightweight bags recently – and last year’s foot surgery left me with a backpack in order to use a knee wheelie and then crutches – which I will need again in July, so I am hanging onto the backpack for now. Perhaps after I will find something a bit more interesting. Maybe I will just throw my phone and a credit card in this one!

Here is one of the fireman’s jackets from the Met’s exhibition, above:

From the exhibition,

From the exhibition, “Kimono: A Modern History” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Felix on an Outing

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Those of you who are regular readers (or among Kim’s Facebook friends) will know of my ongoing passion for photos of Felix as a prop for beach photos. It is pretty much the cornerstone of my photo collecting, and makes up the bulk of my collection. This is one of two recent acquisitions in this area and I especially like it because the Felix toy does not appear to be a prop just for the photo. Instead this seems to be a much beloved toy, taking a trip to the beach with this little boy who is grasping him firmly in his arms. (Understandable – Felix does have a tendency to run off. See my recent post, Felix on a Leash for more on this. Felix joins another family photo in Felix Family Photo.) Written on the back, Dear All – hope you are all well  having a nice time weather glorious – Best love to all Ronie. (Could also be signed Rorrie.) Oddly, there is no stamp or postmark so if it was mailed it was in an envelope. Therefore, no date either. We’ll have to assume that Ronie/Rorrie expected that everyone knew the little nipper on the front of the card and did not comment on him, or Felix, in particular.

It is of some interest to me that our parents seem to mostly take photos of us with beloved toys when the toys are new. You rarely see a photo of a child holding some really ratty old toy that he or she has been dragging around with them forever. Yet, in some ways that torn-up, faded toy with the food stains, is the one that lives on in memory. Although I guess in our mind’s eye we still see them shining and new. I offer a photo here of me with my stuffed dog, Squeaky, when he was freshly new and immediately adored. And, of course, a photo of Squeaky today. He lives a careful life on a bookshelf now, He now longer squeaks, but his long-lashed brown eyes still open and close. Squeaky saw a lot of miles early in life and we are glad that he is enjoying his retirement here in the apartment with us.

Pam w: SqueakySqueaky in 2015