Toy Cat

Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: This cat is the sort I imagine I would have very much loved to own as a small child. He is sturdy, neat and bold in his black and whiteness, with round edges and a friendly face. There is a cheerful durability to him, small and convenient for a child to carry. I think I would have been very pleased to wander around with this guy clutched in my arms as a toddler. I feel compelled to report (Mom and Dad please take note) that I never had a toy stuffed cat as a child. Clearly I have been making up for lost time.

It is strange the toys that we do end up fixating on as kids. I have written about a soft black and white dog named Squeaky who went everywhere with me (featured in Felix on an Outing), but I also had a hard kuala bear my father brought back from a news junket to Australia, which I carried around when I was a little bit older. The bear did not have a name, just kuala bear, and he was made of some sort of real fur. That is a bit shocking to me now, however I was only about 6 and only thought that it was very soft. While the fur was soft the bear itself was stuffed with something very hard and he had spiky plastic claw paws. I no longer have him and have no idea what happened to him, but he seemed to belong more or less to the same family as the toys shown below from the Google image file.

The question of the type of fur these bears sport seems to be open for debate online even now. The obvious guess is kangaroo fur since that country seems to have a surplus of kangaroos and no great love for them. I am sure that these days my mother (animal rights activist Butler) would never have approved it now. However, he was my constant companion for a very long time, eventually losing a claw or so and his ears and some other spots worn to baldness. We were inseparable.

This new toy cat has no maker tag for identification, but he came to me from Great Britain (a fine toy-making nation) and I assume it is his ancestral home. He does bear some resemblance to a small dog toy that came to me via Kim years ago, shown below. Perhaps not the same maker, but kissin’ cousins nevertheless. All of these are toys that have seen many miles and years, and much child love.

A Mystery Bonzo…and Questions

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Bonzo sideview

Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: We changing direction a bit today and I present for your consideration, this newly acquired Bonzo dog toy. I found this toy on eBay, made a mistake and didn’t bid – but fortunately for me he did not sell and I purchased him from the seller. I have photographed his wonderful, handwritten tag which seems very old as well. As far as I can tell it say, Bonzo and no 91 on one side and on the other Viola & Madeline Falkenthal 210-08 93rd Ave Bellaire Gardens, Cullens, Long Island. There is an online record of them living in Queens, Madeline Conlon nee Falkenthal 1902-1993 and Viola Albertina Connell, nee Falkenthal, 1906-1983. So strange what you can find on the internet. (I can only assume that they were very fond of their Bonzo toy, and I will of course keep the tag and their link to him.)

Bonzo is unusual in that he seems to only have one moveable arm, his left. There are no repairs so I assume this was intentional, but it does seem odd. He is in very good shape. His tongue seems to have been stitched back on but other than that he seems entirely original and intact. Bonzo also has a wide-eyed, open eyes which are found, but are less typical. That and the very black one ear left me wondering if instead of Bonzo, like Ooloo, he is another character in the Bonzo chronicle. I cannot find any evidence of this, but I am open to suggestions.

I assumed he was made by Chad Valley – the maker of most of the Bonzo dolls from this period seen today – as per my fairly long discourse on them in my posts Blame it on the Blog 2: Bonzo Dog Edition and the more recent Happy Ooloo to Me!. However, once in my possession, I realized he does not have the distinctive Chad Valley label on his foot, nor a Chad Valley pin. The eyes are glass, which is common for the period but not used on the Chad Valley Bonzo toys I have seen. There is, as shown below, a somewhat indistinct face as the only marker. My next thought was a company called Merrythought. They were evidently started in the thirties, in Great Britain, by some folks who left the larger Chad Valley toys. Although I have had trouble tracking down their early trademark, it seems to have been more distinctive label as well.

So folks, a mystery Bonzo! I am interested in hearing back with any thoughts or clues. Meanwhile I have also included a photo of my Chad Valley fellow for comparison. More on this as my toy sleuthing continues!

Chad Valley Bonzo

Toy Hospital

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: The toy posts continue, as does the work in our compact apartment; I write to you from a very dusty computer this morning. I snapped a few quick photos of toys as I cleaned them and packed them for the duration of the ceiling work. Last week I featured Felix-es that could use some work in my post, Felix…the Bad and the Ugly, and it reminded me of a toy hospital that used to reside on Lexington Avenue, near Bloomingdales. I worked in the neighborhood, my brief stint at the Central Park Conservancy, and was of course curious. As you walked by you could see toys piled up in a second story bay window in a old building – a large sign declaring Toy Hospital. Therefore one day, when to my great horror, the arms broke off this Felix I knew exactly where I was headed.

On my lunch hour I chugged up a couple of flights of old, steep stairs in one of those incredibly narrow, dark stairwells you find in very old New York City walk-up buildings of a certain vintage. A glass door opened into a room which pretty much had toys scattered and piled helter-skelter, waist high with no visible path through them to the window. The shop ran the length of the floor, with about a third off it closed off as what appeared to be a workshop at one end. The toys strewn around were not of any particular vintage – all in various states of repair and disrepair. I did not see other antique Felix dolls.

An elderly man greeted me and I showed him the patient. Felix is held together by a wire armature – his arms and legs are meant to move. The armature was so very old, and rusty, that it had broken. The man took Felix and told me he would have a look and he would let me know how he would proceed.

This Felix was one of my early indulgences. It was in the relatively early days of eBay (I was just congratulated on my 17th year on eBay by them – I was relieved that they didn’t show me how much I have spent in that time) and this was the first time I saw this model of Felix and I had to have him. I paid fairly dearly as a result, but had a very deep affection for his real weirdness. I believe he is a Chad Valley made toy – as is my recent Christmas gift from Kim featured in Felix as Cat written several months back. Years after purchasing him, when they had become a bit more ubiquitous on eBay, I was at a grand antique toy market in Atlantic City and saw someone selling an entire basket full of them! The El Dorado of a certain kind of Felix. She said that they were prizes at fairs in Britain. I have never really agreed with that, I believe the quality is too high and they were only purchased as toys, but more on that another time.

When I was summoned to discuss the nature of the repair, I brought Kim with me, figuring that he would appreciate the unusual nature of the enterprise. The elderly doll doc went through his plan for a meticulous rebuilding of the armature. The fee would be somewhat astronomical. I can’t remember what I suggested he might do that would be more simple – I suspect I pointed out that the arms no longer needed to move, as we don’t actually play with him much, and instead just re-attached. The toy doc looked at me and intoned, “No! I must do what is right for the doll!” Of course, in the end, I meekly agreed and Felix was restored to his original glory there. I paid more for the repair than I had for Felix, but of course it was worth it to have him back – the integrity of his moving pieces intact.

Looking back on it, I feel that the fee included the price of admission to one of those dying New York curiousities, ultimately a victim to the toy doc’s advanced age and ever-rising rents. Sadly it was gone a few years after that, a nail salon in it’s place.

Felix from the side – note his hump back!

Big Mickey

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: As many of you who follow our day-to-day on Facebook may already know, we are in the process of packing up our (tiny) apartment so that our ceiling can be ripped out and a new HVAC system installed for our building. In this case, the 15th and 16th floor, the top two, are taking a hit for the rest of the building for a more or less ten weeks. As I write this we are approximately halfway through the packing process. Kim packed books first, those boxes will go on the bottom while boxes of my toys will be piled on top. As a result these posts may cover some as yet not profiled toys as they get packed – and then eventually unpacked. We will be living amongst the boxes in the meanwhile.

This fellow, however, is too large to be packed in a box and will just be carefully wrapped up. He came to me via Hake’s auction as a splendid Christmas gift from Kim in 2011. I did the bidding and he came a bit less expensive than anticipated – perhaps because not everyone is willing to share their home with a Dean’s Rag Mickey Mouse the size of a toddler? In a way I have already examined here (see my recent post A Surprisingly Tiny Felix) I had a bit of dysmorphia when envisioning the size of things I bid on. I knew he was big – but I didn’t realize HOW big until a box the size of a refrigerator turned up in the apartment a few weeks before Christmas! While a tiny bit freaked out, I was far from disappointed when I opened him on Christmas morning. It was a jolly Christmas indeed.

Unfortunately, I do not know much about him and his history other than that he was some sort of store display. He is not all soft like a toy would be – his head is made of a harder substance. His snout may be paper mache or something similar to that and his feet are weighted to keep him standing.

I treasure my other Dean’s Rag Mickeys which were highlighted in my early post Starting Small with Mice, but my initial commitment to a small collection of mice (to satisfy the cat toys and give them something to do) would not seem to encompass this enormous, charming rodent. Nevertheless, shown below, he guards the foot of our bed and has since his arrival. He will be napping under some covers in the living room shortly however, and the bedroom just will not be the same without him for the duration.

Aesop Fable Doll – the Prize!

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Pam’s Pictorama: Flashing back to last November, you may remember I posted Just in – a New Aesop’s Fable Doll about an Aesop’s Fable toy I had managed to score for a bargain price on eBay under a poor listing. (For those of you who are uninitiated, these wonderful toys are like hen’s teeth to find. For background on my collection I suggest the former posts, Mine, all mine…at long last and Van Bueren’s Aesop Fables – the Toys, for background.) While researching the November post I turned up an interesting ad for an Aesop Fable doll contest being held in theaters. The ad featured a four foot version of the Countess doll. I offer a refresher of the image below.

So you can imagine my stunned delight when a version of The Countess turned up at a Hake’s auction a few weeks ago that claimed to be a theater prize! I have to assume that these were made special for this purpose as she is about 10% smaller than my other Aesop Fable dolls. She is what I call a blond version, instead of black velvet she is yellow. (It confuses me a bit, but I have come to accept that various doll parts seems to have been assembled in random order to make up the dolls. Perhaps this is how they designed the endless cartoon characters in the animation as well.) Her skirt is a fabric I love, with other Aesop Fable characters dancing across the gingham surface. Best of all, under her skirt, written carefully in ink is the following: I’m The Countess and Fox West Theatre – August 20, 1932 – Junior Reed – 1909 – Lucky Number. Can you imagine being the lucky winner on August 20, 1932?

With significant help from Kim, Deitch Studios (Toy Division!) made this magnificent acquisition, beating out several other determined bidders and adding her to my growing collection. Welcome home Countess!

Bugs

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: I found Bugs one day while doing a leisurely stroll through eBay of the kind I (perhaps luckily) rarely have the chance to do. While looking through the listings for vintage character toys I stumbled on him. No one was showing any interest in him which was surprising for such a nice toy and he was an excellent price. I figured what the heck, and put a more or less minimum bid on him. The next thing I knew, he was mine and he has a place of pride among the cat collection.

In no way was I disappointed – he is a splendid toy in excellent condition. He is made by the M&H Novelty Company, NY, NY and is a Warner Bros. toy. His carrot is detachable with a small hook and eye of which the eye on the carrot side is currently lost. It unfortunately also looks exactly like a variety of catnip carrots I purchase for the kits which is filled with a heady mixture that makes them just insane.

Of course, Bugs Bunny cartoons played an enormous role in my formative years. Whereas a young Kim Deitch was being treated to television runs of silent Aesop’s Fable cartoons, for me it was Bugs, Elmore Fudd and The Road Runner. In some ways this makes me and my generation somewhat deprived by comparison, but nonetheless I retain a deep affection for Bugs. Kim and I agree that Bugs was the first to introduce us to certain early tunes – who can forget him singing about The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady for example? A snatch of As Time Goes By? Warbling a passage from It Can’t Be Wrong. Or singing I dream of Genie with the light brown hare… Kim has pointed out that these are generally tunes used in Warner Bros. movies which does make some sense. Other notable examples, Ain’t We Got Fun, There is No Place Like Home (Be it every so crumbly, there’s no place like Rome…) and You Ought to be in Pictures to name a few.

Meanwhile, a quick internet search reminds me that while Bugs would memorably sing snatches of popular music, his roots in classical and opera run deep as well. Without drawing it to our attention, Bugs and company introduced us to everything from Wagner (The Flying Dutchman and Pilgrim’s Chorus featured in What’s Opera Doc?) to Strauss, Chopin (who can forget him singing I wish my brother George was here to the tune of the Minute Waltz in Hyde and Hare?) and Rossini.

Bugs thew off one-liners like a Borscht belt comedian, sang, danced and crossed-dressed his way across our televisions in an endless loop where we absorbed and memorized his vaudeville style lessons without realizing we had done so. Suddenly we found ourselves to be nascent adults, reciting whole passages of the cartoons during college drinking games or late-night first dates. There are whole websites devoted just to the music of Bugs Bunny – the lyrics of the popular songs (Looney Lyrics) and another which is devoted just to the classical tunes and opera (15 Pieces of Classical Music That Showed Up in Looney Tunes Cartoons.)

Is it any wonder that when I discovered popular music of the 20’s and 30’s I felt like I had come home? Nope – I was just following my nose down the road where Bugs lead me during my most formative years.

Scram!

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new

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This is a silly little photo and it came out of an album with several others taken in the same spot in this year – Mom, a little sister – them together. The others are just random family photos, but this one charmed me.

It speaks entirely for itself – the lawn animals are entertaining in their own right. However, the addition of the little boy, in that miniature, grown-up chair holding that splendid stuffed Scotty – that so perfectly matching the lawn ornament – is what makes it great. The fact that the lawn cat is a tuxedo does not hurt in my estimation either.

Although I collect toy cats, I am the first to say that there is a superior variety and selection of stuffed dogs in the world and sometimes I can hardly contain myself. However, there may be something a bit telling in the fact (ahem) that they also generally seem to sell for less. (While that is the cat collector in me speaking, it is an honest observation.) It must be said, and as devoted readers may remember, my own favorite toy as a child was a stuffed dog, Squeaky, who has featured in two prior posts. (For the curious, one of those can be found here at Felix on an Outing.) My only cat companions were living ones, as much as I wish I could share a photo of a tiny me with a stuffed cat toy.

I have been enticed by dog pull-toys, Bonzo (who I have given into collecting in a small way) and of course various just nice stuffed ones. And I remember being very tempted indeed by a Scotty dog much like this one, in splendid shape, being offered for a reasonable price at an antiques mall in Red Bank, NJ. Toy collectors who live in small studio apartments must be very thoughtful about expanding their sphere of collecting however. Perhaps buying this photo has satisfied that latent yen. On the other hand, much like mice, maybe the cat toys need a dog or two to keep them on their toes.

An Ode to the Toy Catalogue

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Pam’s Pictorama: The seasons of childhood were punctuated by the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. The spring one passed with little notice, the fall one was where we ordered our back-to-school clothes – but oh, that Christmas catalogue! It kicked off weeks of toy daydreams. Who doesn’t treasure their memories of the Christmas catalogue? The smell of fresh ink, the cheap paper (but full color and chock full of photos) which tended to stick together on first viewing. Oh, what would the next page reveal? Stuffed animals, Barbie’s latest home, vehicle and outfits. There would be stoves that cooked (yep, had the Easy Bake, loved it like mad), bikes, cars that could be driven. You name it and it was in that catalogue, or so it seemed. Your parents didn’t necessarily buy from Sears, but it was the child’s encyclopedia to what was new and interesting in toys and we studied it like some people study the Bible.

As an adult I assumed that it was a thrill that I would never really relive. I mean, I like say, the J. Crew catalogue well enough, but to say it is a thrill would be an exaggeration to say the least. Dozens of catalogues go in the recycling weekly, some without any notes.

And then, a number of years ago, several months after bidding on an online auction where I won my Mickey Jazzers (see my post Starting Small with Mice), the first Hake’s catalogue magically appeared. It is about the same heft and dimensions as the old Sears books I worshipped in the 1960’s and the paper even similar, same inky smell. Not since those halcyon days of prepubescence had I experienced the kind of thrill that this catalogue induced.

Unlike Sears and Roebuck whose history stretches back to 1893, Hake’s can only claim fifty or so years of business, evolving out of Ted Hake’s collecting and hawking business in the New York City of the late 1960’s. Here in my mailbox, utterly unsolicited no less, was something I had not even imagined – the grown-up toy collector’s version of the Sears Christmas catalogue! Much like the Christmas books, the Hake’s catalogue is likely to feature some items in the beloved areas I follow avidly – ancient Felix and Mickey toys for example – but just as interesting, one is likely to see things undreamt of – obscure but interesting political pins, every cereal premium from everyone’s childhood ever imagined and then some. Things you have always wondered about and here they are – photographed and explained in great detail. It shows up about twice a year. Amazing!

Since the Mickeys several of my most significant toy purchases have come from Hake’s auctions – my giant Dean’s Rag Mickey Mouse display model, one of my Aesop’s Fable dolls – but the catalogue itself brings great joy to the Butler-Deitch household when it arrives unannounced in our mailbox. I occasionally seem to fall off their list and need to check out the auctions online. There’s nothing more glorious than snuggling under the covers with the new Hake’s and interrupting Kim’s book reading, sharing the highlights with until eventually he gives up and looks at the catalogue with me. Who could ask for anything more?

A World of Toys

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo, a small early snapshot, hails from Hungary, or at least that is where I purchased it from. I couldn’t help but admire this fellow with his toy-proud pose, his treasure piled up in front of him. It was that pose that caught my eye – I can think of several photos where I am as toy proud and here below is an especially maniacal one of me holding Donald and an Aesop’s Fable doll.

In particular I like this kid’s elephant toy. (Although that alligator is sort of noteworthy too I think.) I am a sucker for elephants and it is amazing I have controlled myself for the most part. I am holding out for a Steiff elephant on wheels and always keep an eye out for one. However, years ago Kim found the elephant toy below, on a street where we were strolling. Kim very nicely painted eyes, tusks and toes on where there were none – although later we recognized traces of where the eyes were glued on previously. Now he, my only elephant toy to speak of, is a Kim Deitch special! Somewhat appropriately, here he is on Kim’s desk.

Stuffed elephant

Check out his tail!

Felix as Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: Oh Merry Christmas to me! This extraordinary Felix was a gift from Kim this Christmas. In truth, I picked him out on eBay months ago and Kim purchased him and tucked him away. Christmas morning was my first good look at him though – and wowza!

I have only ever seen one or two Felix dolls posed on all fours, but never this model. Felix walking (upright) was part of his whole appeal – and schtick. His humpbacked thinking manner is recreated in two and three dimensions – often with the hump in his back exaggerated, as he walks, pondering something, which his hand/paws behind his back. I have a plate which bears the much used motto Felix Keep on Walking which is a play on this. (See my prior post Living the Felix Life which features this item.) As Mickey Mouse and countless others would ape later, the anthropomorphic charm is all about being upright and therefore more human.

Christmas night Kim and I stumbled home after our annual trip to my folks in NJ and curled up on the couch to take a look at another of my Christmas gifts – the superb DVD Cartoon Roots. (I know, I am a very lucky woman!) This outstandingly curated DVD put together by Tom Stathes deserves a shout out. Instead of the usual entries in the early animation stakes, this disk manages to have the one or two outstanding examples of each that you’re pretty sure you have never seen. I have not yet viewed the whole thing (why rush?) but already have seen a few excellent Terry Aesop Fables, a strange and interesting Krazy Kat (where he seems to be trying to morph into Felix…) and Felix Comes Back, a splendid example from 1922.

I have been known to opine on how Felix started out drawn more squarely (pointier I like to say) and both more feline and a tad bit doggy. According to Kim, Bill Nolan was responsible for this subtle neutering of Felix which Messmer passively allowed. Anyway, I was reminded that back in ’22 Felix spent a good portion of his time on all fours – running away fast from things most frequently – but sportier and a bit wilder.

However, all this to say, Felix spent the majority of his career walking on two legs and virtually all the toys and merchandising reflect this. In all the many hours (days, years) I have spent combing through Felix toy offerings I have, as I said above, only seen him portrayed on all fours a few times so this toy is very unusual. I originally thought of the subject of another post, East London Toy Factory due to the almost hand-made, individual aspect of this and was going to attribute that company as his maker. I lean now instead toward thinking this was made by the folks at Chad Valley. I have not devoted much time writing about the company, they appear to have been the biggest makers of stuffed Felix toys, a company that still makes some toys today. I am, however, open and raring for discussion.

Cookie and Felix Christmas Morning

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For those of you who have an Amazon gift card burning a hole in your pocket post-Christmas, the DVD above can be found at: Cartoon Roots

The eBay seller who sold us Felix did not seem to know much about the origin, but she was lovely. She is Mme Regine Beghin of Belgium and this is a nod to her.