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!

The Reindeer...er, Caribou...um, Elk...OK, Carireindeerbou of Wagner!

The Wagner crafts workshop liked deer. Oh, my, did they like deer! The craftsmen and craftswomen produced deer in all the Wagner sizes from tiny one-inch critters that could fit inside a glass Christmas bulb to robust animals standing about 8 inches tall. They crafted standing deer, lying deer, running deer, and grazing deer.

Though they're often marketed as reindeer on eBay, most of these deer look more like your average white-tail. Many are peppered with white spots, and so would seem more likely to be fawns (though some species, such as sika deer, are spotted as adults, too).

Some Wagner deer clearly have a beefier look to them, with bigger antlers and thicker barrels; they appear to be elk (also called "wapiti" in North America). These animals can pass for reindeer in a pinch, particularly the gray and white variations.

I assume the latter are an example of the workshop's reuse of a mold with different flocking to produce a new species, just as the same mold was used to produce tigers, leopards, black panthers, and one version of the lioness.

But none of these Wagner deer are actually classic Christmas reindeer; they don't have the bulky bodies, big feet, or the rococo antlers of a reindeer or caribou.

What with Germany's treasure trove of Christmas lore and tradition, it does seem odd that Wagner didn't produce a really, truly reindeer for the American market.

Still, the Wagner deer are happy to pinch-hit for their Arctic cousins--and since most illustrated versions of the Santa story feature giant white-tail fawns as the "eight tiny reindeer," they won't look out of place in your Christmas village scene or on the mantelpiece hauling a sleigh.

And even though this red-nosed variant is decidedly not Rangifer tarandus, he reveals that Wagner did have the American market in mind because they went to great lengths to produce "the most famous reindeer of all"!