Rabbit, Rabbit!

Many generations of rabbits in the real world have come and gone since I sat down to write a blog here. So, rabbits it is. Timely because (a) springtime brings bunnies, (b) Easter Rabbits, and (c) an owl caught a rabbit in our yard last night outside our bedroom window. Poor bunny, but Owl has to eat, too.

Wagner's bunnies, as you know, multiplied like, well, rabbits. 

The first little rabbit shown here is the oldest one I have; he has the MC Original "monkey label," so he's probably more than seventy years old.

(Which far exceeds the average lifespan of a wild rabbit, which is typically two years, unless they evade the Great Horned Owl in my area, in which case they can make it to four or five years in age.)

His legs are stiff and straight as arrows, and his tail is like a chenille stem--a wire inside makes it moveable, and the outside feels like cotton.

Compare him to the next generation that bore the Wagner label instead (second rabbit on page). 

He suddenly has a winning trademark smile, and he also sports one extravagant poof of a furry tail, made out of (gulp) rabbit fur. 

He's also a little plumper and rounder.

(I just noticed that Wagner rabbits don't have whiskers. Can you picture the staff meeting at which such things were decided? "The cat and the badger will have whiskers, but not the rabbits. Make it so.")

The sitting-up posture is the most common stance I've seen in Wagner rabbits, but they also made running bunnies. 

The rabbit below is an early Wagner edition. Though with those stiff legs and portly body, I'm not sure how quickly he could run. Most of his tail is missing, so perhaps he wasn't exactly the Secretariat of rabbits.

The company appears to have remodeled the rabbit to a sitting-down position--these three rabbits below are all cheerfully crouched as if enjoying a nice luncheon of clover on a lawn. And a white rabbit has joined the crew.

 Some Wagner bunnies adopt a more upright sitting posture. This one surprised me because when I last took a close look at her in the cabinet, she was pure white, and now she's got brown and yellow spots. The best I can tell from a bit of research is that heat and/or UV rays can cause white flocking to discolor--this result mostly comes from online sites discussing how white flocking on flocked Christmas trees can turn brown over time.

Other white animals in the same cabinet didn't turn spotty, though, so I'm puzzled. Perhaps different glues were used by different crafters at different times. Cleaning her up will be a task for another time.

See? This white sitting-up-straight bunny didn't turn yellow and brown. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have said that. Perhaps I've jinxed this little critter.

It's kind of funny how the sitting-up-straight bunnies improved their posture compared to the first two rabbits on this page :) and they have such luxurious tails.

Of course, Wagner put fabric ribbons on rabbits, too. These ones adorn our Christmas tree and also make an appearance at Easter.

The two rabbits below are bigger than the other ones, about three inches long. I have not seen Wagner rabbits larger than these, though perhaps there are rare unicorns out there in Wagner-land that I've missed. I *think* I've seen the dark chocolate brown coloring on smaller rabbits (if so that one might be buried in the Easter decoration box), but I could be dreaming.

And then, of course, here's the best of all (below) the rabbit that best resembles the fierce Dutch rabbit I had as a child, so creatively named Thumper. Thumper growled like a dog and didn't hesitate to bite. Unlike my other rabbits later on: Tiffany, who turned out to be male; Pippin, a Siamese Satin rabbit; Wookie, a giant black rabbit; and Hobbit, half-Dutch half-cottontail.

This creature is a Wolpertinger, a mythical beast with a rabbit's head, a squirrel's body, a deer's antlers, and clawed, scaly feet as well as a pair of wings. And fangs. Don't forget the fangs. Keep your eyes open for them if you hike in a Bavarian forest. The Wagner version leaves out the wings, but goes absolutely berserk with the tail.

1967 F.A.O.Schwarz Wish Book Catalog

While doing some office cleaning recently, I came across a 1967 Christmas toy catalog published by F.A.O. Schwarz. This compendium of childhood dreams arrived every year and was pored over (and squabbled over) by my siblings and me. 

At some point, my mother managed to wrestle it from our hands and hide it away. Later, she'd sneak it out and circle items that she planned to order. I don't know how this particular catalog survived.

F.A.O. Schwarz, back in the day, was a quaint, Old World-style toy shop on Fifth Avenue. It sold lots of imported European toys. I only visited it once; I remember climbing an elegant staircase and spotting the Wagner Handwork trio of a Dalmatian and her two pups (and begging for it, a wish not granted that day). We also enjoyed ice cream around the corner at Rumpelmeyer's, a similarly quaint, Old World-style ice cream shop across the street from Central Park's southern edge. 

With these memories fixed in place, I was never fond of F.A.O. Schwarz in its later incarnations, and certainly never found Wagner animals at them. But never mind. Here's what was on offer in 1967.

First up was the Kitten Mobile:

As you can see, my mom marked this for ordering, and I still have this more than 50 years later. The yellow bumpers need to be glued back on, and the kittens' "Sunday best" is not quite as tidy as it once was, but the whole ensemble is still well loved. (Wagner made the cats; F.A.O. Schwarz provided the car.)

The next Wagner item in the catalog is the lovely Stable With Horses--not circled in that catalog, but I did receive it as a gift within the next year or two:

The catalog says that the stable houses "three horses and two ponies," but nobody told us that, so we cast the ponies as foals and paired them up with the matching horses. That left the black horse as the stallion, and that's been the family dynamic ever since. 

(I am sorry to say that, impressed by the fullness and luxuriousness of the white horse's tail, I fell for a TV ad's blandishment about how a product called Tame could make your tresses extra beautiful. Surely, then, that meant the white mare's lovely tail could be made even lovelier? Perhaps it worked on human hair, but it didn't do wonders for a Wagner horse: her tail fell off, and her rump was permanently stained bright pink.)

The inside back cover boasted the Mouse Playground--"six fuzzy little mice...having the time of their young lives on their own fenced-in playground." Mom circled this one, too. Thanks, Mom :)

Most of the little wooden toys are missing bits now, and the fence needs regluing, and somebody colored on the green grass...and a mouse or two has lost a tail...but five decades later they are still gamely playing in their playground.

The toy store devoted its back cover to two wooden structures of their own creation, one of which features Wagner's cute dachshunds. It's the Hound Hotel, billed as "a neat little vacation hideaway for these lucky dogs!" 

Per the copy, "Mr. and  Mrs. R. U. Canine are being greeted at the door by the host of Hound  Hotel, the chef, and his maitre d', Baskerville." Lift the roof, and you'll find Mimi the Maid serving drinks to a guest. 

The car has four bears in it, but they're plush, not flockies, and look similar to Steiff-type bears. Not that they wouldn't be welcome to drop by the Hound Hotel for some gluhwein.

My family was not wealthy--we were a happy suburban middle-class family--so it's not as if we were showered with expensive imported toys. 

But my mom's mother was an Irish immigrant who had grown up in poverty, and though my grandmother enjoyed a better life in the United States with my grandad (also an Irish immigrant, who had a good job driving subway trains in the city), she never relaxed her vigilance regarding money. 

My mother, with her love of dolls and dollhouses and dislike of flashy plastic toys, relished buying fewer toys for us overall but choosing solid, classic toys with lots of scope for imaginative play. I'm so glad she did.

The catalog featured other toys I loved, too--all imports, such as Britains plastic animals and Steiff plush animals. I'll leave you with their beautiful selection of Steiff animals, all at enviable 1967 prices!

Tusks and Trunks, Wagner Style: Elephants

 In my last post, I mentioned that as it's election season it seemed to be a good time to write about Wagner donkeys and elephants. I wrote about the donkeys in that post, so as promised, here are the pachyderms.

The Wagner workshop didn't produce as endless a variety of elephants as they did donkeys, but the elephant took pride of place as one of the six animals featured in the basic wild-animal gift box (what I think of as the starter kit!). They must have produced elephants in huge numbers, because you can still find elephants frequently offered on eBay, Etsy, and the like.

The basic elephant in the standard size is this guy,
who comes in shades of gray from a very pale dove gray to a
very dark charcoal gray. This fellow is one of the darker ones. 
He has a plastic body covered with flocking, plastic tusks, and a fur-
tipped tail. I assume his ears are made of tabs of plastic--they 
don't feel like leather. He has painted-on toenails and a red felt tongue.

This elephant is lighter in color and sports all the same features
as the darker version above. Except, as you'll note, the tusks.
He DID have tusks originally. They are now inside his plastic
body. I can hear them rattling around in there. Poor fellow! 
This particular one is my own childhood toy and came in the
six-pack of animals mentioned above. I don't know why, when 
the glue deterioriated, his tusks fell into him instead of simply
off. Mystery abounds. Sadly, no tooth fairy rewards for him.

These petite pachyderms are early M.C. Original versions. 
They are slightly shorter and stubbier than the later Wagner
ones, with shorter trunks and smaller ears. Their eyes are
orange instead of black. They're also made of composition
instead of plastic and feel heavy for their size. (Unlike a 
real elephant, which is heavy at any size.)

Wagner also made jumbo-sized elephants. They're about 5 or 6
inches from trunk tip to tail and taller as well. Their faces have
more detail because the crafters simply had more room to work
with. They feel as if they are made of composition, not plastic. 
This example is solid gray all over, with some painted-on details
(trunk tip, mouth, toenails.). He's got the most recent Wagner 
label, so he's pretty young as these animals go.

There's no way of knowing when differences in a species are
due to a crafter's artistry, a change in design, or the need
to speed up the work, but this older elephant has more detail
than his younger sibling. His toenails are edged in black, and
muscles and ear details are sketched out, too. The trunk, 
interestingly, has much more of a bend to it.

Wagner also created mastodons (or mammoths, hard to tell!),
the extinct prehistoric cousins of elephants. Awfully cute.
Like the standard elephant, they appear to have a plastic body.

Alas, my inch-tall tiny Wagner elephant appears to have wandered off, so I'll have to add him later. Wagner also produced a donkey and an elephant, each standing on its hind legs and wearing a big grin--ads for these state that they were produced for conventions, but it's hard to know if they were, or if they were retrofitted for this purpose. At any rate, I don't have those, so can't provide photos, but I'm sure you can find them online somewhere.

However, other companies produced pint-sized pachyderms. Somewhere, I have an exact duplicate of the standard Wagner elephant, but covered in fur (apparently he's sneaked off with the mini elephant as he cannot be found either). In the meantime, how about a fur-covered Original Fur Toys elephant?

Then there's this little dude, who doesn't have a label, has tiny plastic tusks that look like grains of rice, and is toting a little log--he's very cute but resembles a puppy more than he does an elephant.

Finally, there's this absolutely manic, happy-go-lucky elephant with a pink label that simply says "Made in Western Germany," with floppy felt ears. He certainly makes the other ones appear pretty lowkey! 

Long-Ears, Wagner Style: Donkeys

It being election season, I thought it might be a nice time to write about Wagner donkeys and elephants. This one will be about the donkeys, with elephants to follow later in a separate post.

The German word for "donkey" is Esel and shares its roots with the word easel. Easel was borrowed from the Dutch ezel, "donkey," and traces back through time to older Germanic words such as asil and even older Latin asinus (and now you see why we live with all the asinine puns that we do when it comes to donkeys).

I remember being fascinated when I learned the connection between easel and donkeys (and recall sharing my glee with co-workers, who were also editors but completely uninterested in this observation, alas). I liked the link between the foursquare stance of a sturdy easel bearing its load and a plucky donkey likewise bracing itself under its burden.

At any rate, the artists tasked with creating donkeys at the Wagner Handwork craft shop appear to have had a bit of fun linking art with donkeys. I think the donkeys are among the most winsome animals in their menagerie. They also provide a chronicle of how collecting madness can enable one to buy yet another donkey because, look! This one is just a little different!

Let's start with the littlest guy (below) This fellow is about an inch tall. He's glued to a cardboard poinsettia, because he used to live in a whisper-thin glass ball and was a Christmas ornament. The glass ball shattered long ago, but I don't think Donkey cares. He's got the trademark Wagner smile and head tilt to the left, as well as vinyl and felt tack held in place with a silver pin.

Next up size-wise is the standard-size Wagner Kunstlerschutz donkey, shown below in his earliest form as an M.C. Original (he's older than the pint-sized donkey on the poinsettia). As is typical of the M.C.'s, he's skinny with very thin legs and wild orange eyes; instead of a cute smile, he's got red nostrils and a red grin. Kinda phoukah-like and very Roman-nosed. But he does sport handsome white tack and a red saddle.

Ah, now here's the classic Wagner we're all familiar with (below). Cute smile, check; black bead eyes, check; leftward head tilt, check. Still has super-thin M.C.-style legs and a fine build, but pretty darn cute. His label is now Kunstlerschutz instead of M.C. Original.

Sometime after that, the slender donkey was replaced by a fuzzier, stockier, and just as cute version (below). He's also lost the breastplate and has just a red felt saddle and vinyl girth.

Interestingly, donkeys also appeared that seem to be laughing, with the head tossed back and mouth open--and with even bigger ears (below). They often also had back stripes, just like real donkeys. This one lacks a saddle, but wears a bit made of silver pins and a vinyl bridle with reins.

And then, to further entice us crazed collectors, along comes old Long-Ears, but this time he's pulling a cart (below). The cuteness never stops. Because now you can put other Wagner animals in the cart....

And just to be on the safe side, better add that donkey who's a rocking "horse."

And just when you thought it was safe and you could start saving money instead of buying little flocked animals, ZAM. Along comes a larger version of the cute donkey (below, posed with standard donkey). She's twice as big and, well, not twice as cute, because they're all cute, but, you know, you've got to buy another donkey.

OK. That's IT. No more donkeys. But...but wait. Along comes another large donkey, this time wearing a blue saddle. OK, there's room in the stable for just one more. But that's IT...

...except, see, there's this large donkey who doesn't just have a saddle, he also has a bridle (below). Gotta add him to the gang. And then, really, truly, that's it. How many donkeys does a person need?

Well, when the donkey not only has a saddle and a bridle but STIRRUPS, too, clearly one more is needed.

That's that, then, right? It would be, except Wagner also made an even larger donkey, one who's braying joyfully. Clearly she must be ushered into the herd, no question about it.

And when you find her vintage ancestor for a song, with broken wooden legs and those wild M.C. orange eyes, and a label that only says "Germany," it would be pennywise and pound-foolish not to add that one, too. Amiright?

As far as I know, there are no other Wagner burros, donkeys, mules, jennies, jennets, jackasses, onagers, hinnies, or zeedonks clip-clopping around out there, but you never know.

Here are a few other representatives of Equus asinus that you might run into--not Wagners, but nice to add to a collection to represent the ancestors of the Wagner animals as well as possible contemporaries.

This little guy predates the M.C. Originals, I think. 
He's got matchstick-thin legs, leather ears, and his
silver tack-pins are tarnished.

This donkey doesn't have a label, either, but I'm
guessing he is one of the German "Original Fur
Toy" animals. He's made out of fur over a
composite body, with leather ears and
wooden legs. 

No label on this donkey, either; there are letters
on his girth that I can't quite make out. I don't 
know what his body is made out of--he could be 
all wood; certianly his legs are. His hide is gray 
felt that is carefully glued down to minimize
the seams. His ears are felt, and he has very
tiny beads for eyes. The saddle is leather, the 
saddle pad is felt, and I think his bridle and
reins are leather.

Another donkey without a label. Feels as if she's
made of plastic with flocking glued on, but she
retains old-world features such as a fur mane,
leather ears, and beads for eyes. 

Every now and then you'll run across this wild-eyed
creature billed as a Wagner. He's not, but he's kind
of weird and fun. My mom tucked this one into
my Christmas stocking when I was a kid. Plastic 
with glued-on flocking, plastic eyes, felt saddle.

This one isn't a flocked donkey at all, but she was
made by M.C. Originals, who made many kinds of
wind-up animals. The key sticks out from her
other side. She twirls her tail and bobs her head.

Wagner Animal Lookalikes

Sorry, it's been more than a year since my last post. When you spend your day on the computer for work, and you write using Word for your spare-time pursuits, it's kind of hard to get motivated to hop back online to write a blog, too...

OK, I'm done excuse-making. Now, I'm sure you've been tossing and turning at night wondering about Those Wagner Animal Lookalikes. Certainly on eBay, there are many sellers who think any flocked animal that exists was made by Wagner, but of course flocking is used for oodles of purposes on oodles of products. If you collect these little animals, you know at a glance which ones are Wagners and which aren't.

But there are some vintage flocked animals that bear more than a striking resemblance to the menagerie produced by the Wagner workshop. Some of these animals were made by a company called B. Shackman & Co.

I got to thinking about Shackman's on a visit to New York City a year and a half ago, when I spotted this sign on a building at 5th Avenue and East 16th Street:

Shackman's isn't there anymore--the site is currently occupied by an Anthropologie store--but was at this location from 1971 all the way until 1998. (I grew up in New York and worked there until 1989, so now I am kicking myself for never going to this shop back then.)

As you can see by the sign, Shackman's specialized in "Wholesale, Retail and Mail Order Sale of Toys, Dolls, Decorations, Bric-A-Brac and Novelties." The company got its start in 1898. (Poor Bertha Shackman, who started the company, died in 1925 at the age of 76 after being struck by a car in Manhattan.)

After Googling to take a look at Shackman products over the decades, it looks to me as if they produced lots of paper products (including paper dolls), metal toys (such as jumping frogs), games, dollhouse furnishings, and loads of other fun items.

At some point Shackman's began selling flocked animals made in Hong Kong. These animals strongly resemble the Wagner animals (which was designing animals in the late 1930s and started up as the Wagner workshop proper in 1948). Their "Wild Animals" set (labeled as "old-fashioned, miniature wild animals" that were "Hand-Flocked, Safe, Non-Toxic") were probably sold starting in the 1970s (if not a bit earlier), as the box includes a zip code for Shackman's of 10003, which correlates to the address of the sign pictured above.

The 6-animal set even includes the exact same animals as the Wagner set I received as a gift in the 1960s: a bear, an elephant, a giraffe, a zebra, a lion, and a camel. (The starter kit for this little-flocked-German-animal madness, if you will.) Plus, the box is bright green, like the Wagner box.

You'll immediately spot that they're not Wagner animals, though; they are hollow plastic, with thin flocking and furring; the slender-legged animals don't have the wood or rolled-paper legs of an actual Wagner; and they're pretty expressionless.  (I've seen some photos online, but due to copyright restrictions can't share. You can Google a bit yourself, though, and raise your eyebrows at the similarities.)

I do own one Shackman creature, which I found for only 50 cents at a Goodwill--namely, this little skunk:

He's actually quite unlike the Wagner skunk (below). They both have fur tails and two fur stripes applied to their backs, but the Shackman skunk is furry all over and has pipecleaner legs while the Wagner skunk has the typical composition body and rolled-paper legs. The Shackman skunk also boasts a white tip to his tail.

I am curious to know if perhaps Shackman had a deal with the Wagner company to make animals modeled on the German originals in Hong Kong.

I recall from my childhood that the Britains company of England made beautifully detailed plastic animals, which also appeared in less expensive, less detailed editions that were not labeled "Britains," so perhaps Wagner and Shackman had such a deal. The famous Steha horses of Germany were similarly molded using the same mold as the big Wagner horses, so it would seem likely that molds got swapped around.

At any rate, Shackman obviously knew that copyright was important, which makes me think they must've had a deal--check out the no-nonsense label on my Shackman skunk's tummy:

The skunk is now happy and well in my display cabinet, much happier than he was in a plastic bag at Goodwill. As for Shackman, the heirs of the Shackman family sold the company to employees in 1985, and the company relocated to Michigan. They appear to have still been in business as recently as 2018, but a visit to their website now leads to a defunct page.

Ghosts of Wagner Ornaments Past

Happy 2019, everyone! 2018 ended with Google grumbling at me about whether or not I wanted to keep this blog up and running, and lectured me about analytics and stuff, completely disregarding the fact that sometimes things like, oh, Jobs and Life and Weddings and stuff get in the way of pursuing one's hobbies. So while I'm in the spirit of making new year's resolutions and the like, I'll make a timid vow to breathe some life back into this site...

As I haven't yet packed away the Christmas ornaments, I thought I'd focus on an odd little discovery I made in recent years while noodling about online: I found some newly manufactured ornaments that appear to have been made using Wagner molds or at least were inspired by them.

Check out this squirrel, for example:

Sure looks a lot like Wagner's squirrel, which came in brown and gray and sometimes had a ribbon added to turn it into a Christmas ornament.

There was also a brown, glittered-with-snow version:

I found a reindeer, too, but failed to capture an image of it. However, I did order the squirrels, as well as this hedgehog, whose bristles are likewise bedizened with glitter:

The squirrels were quite nice, though the hedgehog lacked the charm of Wagner's mischievous version, and its legs were set in a 'walking' pattern rather than the solid foursquare stance of the original.

I bought them on the Lord & Taylor website a few years ago, and thought of them as I happened to walk past the flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City a few weeks ago, which was closing down as the building had been sold. The Hudson's Bay Company of Canada owns Lord & Taylor, and the ornaments were made by Gluckstein Home, with a tag that says they were manufactured in Germany.

I vaguely recall writing to them a while back but didn't get a reply. I imagine that the old Wagner workshop in Germany must surely have a huge supply of molds from throughout their history, and often wonder what will happen to them and if they'll ever be used again.