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.

Horses with Broken Legs...and Ears, Tails, and More

Oh, my.

If real live horses showed up in the stable with the damage that many old Wagner horses have suffered, well, you know what the verdict would be. (The Gary Larson cartoon in which "Doreen breezes through Chapter 9," equine medicine--because every antidote is "shoot"--comes to mind.)

If Wagner animals were truly originally created as playthings, I guess nobody expected toys to last almost forever unless they were made of metal, stone, or wood. 

An animal made of a composite material such as cardboard and clay, or even of plaster, is inherently prone to being crushed, growing moldy, or even disintegrating if exposed to water. Flocking rubs off or gets filthy. Rabbit-fur manes and tails get "trimmed" by scissor-happy kids. Tack is removed and clumsily put back on. 

And those legs! The wooden ones snap. The plastic ones break at the top and take an entire plaster hindquarter or forequarter with them. The paper-over-wire ones fare much better--they don't break, though they crack the flocking at the top and leave you with some severely bandy-legged ponies. 

But the nice thing about having a thoroughly wrecked Wagner horse is that you then get to have some fun with it by reconditioning it.

For example, Wagner horses typically come in either bay, white, or black (though ponies also come in pinto and palomino). I saw a rare chestnut horse once, on eBay, and now and then there's a palomino; and some very old pre-Wagner-label MC Original horses were produced in dapple gray. 

But if you've ever wanted an Appaloosa, a skewbald, or the like, you were out of luck.

So when you have a Wagner horse in pretty bad shape, you can turn it into the equine of your flocky dreams.

I have a small stable of wonky horses. Some of them are in good enough shape that it'd be rather a shame to totally redefine them; those ones just need a bit of fixing up and perhaps a mane or tail replacement. But others need reflocking--it's usually the formerly pure-white steeds that require this service.

Here's a horse I fixed up this weekend. She limped into the stable with a broken leg, a ratty mane and tail, and a blue saddle so timeworn and dusty that it couldn't be cleaned.

Her flocking was in good shape, though, and it was an unusual beautiful gold color, so I wasn't going to touch that.

I started her fix-up by gluing that wobbly leg. Her legs were plastic ones inset with a peg into a composite body, so a dab of E6000 soon set her right. You can still see the line of breakage, which could be concealed with flocking if I ever get some flocking in the right color.

After the glue dried, I considered her mane and tail. The tail, obviously, needed to go. The mane could've been glued down again, but I didn't have the right color fur scrap to make a complementary tail. She'd originally been bay, but the black of mane and tail had faded over time, and so it had a rusty color to it. A pure black tail would've looked weird with the mane.

So I decided to yank off both the mane and the tail. Check out how lovely the crest of a Wagner horse is, sans mane!

I decided, with that beautiful gold flocking, she'd make a gorgeous palomino, and I had plenty of white fur scraps for that job. A few more dabs of glue, and she was adorned with a billowing white mane and tail.

Then I carefully peeled off the sorry-looking saddle and used it as a template to cut a new one out of blue felt. A little more glue, and ta-da! The bob-tailed nag was now a proud parade horse.

Not too bad. She was an easy fix, however. In addition to her flocking being in fine shape, she had also never suffered the indignity of having her tack removed, and her ears were still in place. In a future post I'll share some of the truly knackered horses who are getting rehabbed.

Polar Bears, Polar Brrrrs!

It's freezing cold right now where I live, so there's no better time to write about those ursine neighbors of Santa Claus, the polar bears.

Wagner made a lot of variations on the polar bear, just as they crafted a wide array of brown bears. Many of the same molds were used for both groups, though the workshop did make some subtle adjustments for some versions of the Arctic bruin.

Here's your basic standard-issue Wagner bear, in the about-3-inches-or-so size that describes so many Wagner animals. This same mold was used to make brown and black bears--it's all in the flocking, after all!

Here's a sitting-down polar bear made from a mold also used to make brown, black, and panda sitting-down bears:

Wagner also made more teddy-bear-like bears and flocked them in white, brown, black, and a pale tan or champagne color. They are posed standing,  sitting up in a begging-dog sort of posture, and sitting down. Yeah, I know the fellow at the far left wearing a bow tie is not a polar bear, but I don't have the standing polar polar, so his cousin has shown up to represent him in this pose.

But the typical bears and the teddy bears were preceded by some early bears wearing the M.C. Originals label, such as the one below. They aren't quite as "sweet" as the later bears, but they have a bit more detail, which often seems to be the case with a variety of Wagner species. To my mind, it doesn't make either one better or worse--just interestingly different. This bear below, for example, has more contours in his body. It's not the same mold, either--you can see his legs are in a different position. The ears are also added separately.

Here's another MC Original polar bear, though this one looks as if it's made from a mold similar to the one used to make bears crafted from the 1960s up until the workshop closed. He's also rather dirty. White flocked animals usually get pretty grubby looking over time. They're an absolute mess if they've been played with, but even the dust seems seems to get deep into the flocking of ones that have been displayed on a shelf in the open. Shelved behind glass, they can stay nice and white--though some seem to yellow with age. I think this one's suffering from both yellowing and grime.

Back in the early to mid-1900s and most likely beyond, various German workshops also made little animals out of fur. These ones often suffer quite badly from decay--the leather dries up and curls, the glue gives way, the fur falls off. I've seen some poor little beasts that are really nothing more than a handful of wizened strips of leather and fur. This little polar bear, however, has survived rather well. His label names no maker, only that  he was made in Germany.

Wagner also made a very tiny version of the polar bear, seen below posed with the standard bear. The same mold was used to make brown and black bear cubs.

Wagner also made BIG versions of the polar bear. Here is the large sitting-down polar bear, posed with a standard one; the same mold was used to make--you guessed it--brown and panda bears, and probably black ones, though I've never seen one.

The biggest bear of all is a large standing polar bear. His flocking isn't as dense as the smaller bears' flocking, but his body is sculpted in great detail. You can even feel the ribs in his sides.

What I find particularly cool about this biggest polar bear is that the crafters took the time to give him the distinctive Roman-nose profile of a real polar bear--he looks quite different from the same-sized version of a brown bear made by Wagner.

OK, enough with the ice and the snow and the land of Arctic bears. I'm off to get another hot cup of coffee.

Stork Stories

In honor of Mother's Day (by which time I'd planned to publish this, but did not, so consider this post an overdue baby...I have postpartum expression, I guess), I give you the stork.

White storks are European birds long associated with fertility and the bringing of babies. Many elements of stork life probably inspired this association. The birds build enormous nests, for starters, and they exhibit strong site fidelity, returning to the same nest for years after spring migration.

The stork was the sacred bird of the Roman goddess Juno, who presided over homes and the family. In Christian mythology, storks symbolize peace, piety, and marital happiness.

The stork-bringing-the-baby originated in northern Germany in ancient times, and since then it's been carried (not by storks) worldwide.

A baby-toting stork even makes a brief appearance in a Sioux legend I found online. And supersized logger Paul Bunyan was apparently delivered to his parents by five burly storks.

Today, babies born with red marks on the nape of the neck are said to bear "stork bites." (My daughter had them, as well as a sweet "angel kiss" on her forehead.)

The stork tale's Germanic origins make Wagner's crafting of a stork very fitting. The stork shown above is the version produced in the company's last decade. It has plastic legs glued into two holes in the underside. Unfortunately, these legs have a tendency to pop out, leaving the poor bird rather helpless.

Fortunately, they're very easy to glue back in. They don't usually take any plaster away with them when they fall off, and the Wagner crafters glued them in to start with, so fixing them doesn't make you feel as if you've defiled a vintage item.

While we're on the topic of disembodied storks...the blob below is an interesting item that my friend W. brought back from a visit to the Wagner workshop. It's the raw body of a stork before it gets painted and flocked.

You can see the hole where the excess slip (wet composite material) was drained from the piece after the mold had set for a while.

Below is a much older version of the Wagner stork, from the early 1950s. It's an M.C. Original, an animal made by the Wagner workshop for Max Carl toys. It has legs made of painted lead instead of plastic, and unlike the one-piece plastic legs, which are joined at the feet, the metal legs are two separate limbs. (I am also thinking that some child  picked off the little orange beads that must once have formed this bird's eyes. I can't otherwise explain the white staring orbs he's got. He was like this when I bought him, so I don't know for sure.)

You can see many other differences between the 1950s bird and the 1980s/1990s one at a glance. The new stork, for example, is bigger and bulkier than its ancestor. Also noticeable is the attention to detail on the older stork. It has feather markings painted on its side that the newer version completely lacks. Interestingly, the mold has curves notched into it to indicate feathers and wings, but in the new stork these are just flocked over and not embellished with paint.

We'll end with your laugh for the day. The Wagner workshop, at some point, began selling the stork with a little plastic baby. This stork, however, did not carry the baby sweetly, all swaddled and cozy in a lovely silken bag. Oh, no. This stork had a horrible way of transporting youngsters...or was it preying upon them? What marketing genius came up with this delivery? I ask you.

Happy Year of the Horse, Wagner Style

The Year of the Horse, per the Chinese calendar, starts on January 31, 2014. What better time to take a look at some of Wagner Handwork's depictions of this marvelous creature?

Actually, if you're a horse lover, any given moment is a perfect time to think about/gaze upon/obsess about horses. And perhaps Fritz Wagner himself had a sweet spot for horses. (Indeed, the little brown and white pony depicted in the banner for this blog was chosen because it was his favorite among all his own creations.)

Wagner horses display perhaps the greatest variety in size of all the animals in the collection. There are tiny ponies scarcely an inch tall at one end, and 10-inch-tall horses nearly as big as a traditional Breyer toy horse. In between are standard horses about 2 1/2 inches high, bigger horses that handily step in to be their sires and dams at about 4 inches high, and, rarest of all, some beauties that are about 5 to 6 inches tall.

The horses also range from wild horses free of saddle and bridle to fully tacked-up horses with colorful felt saddles. Usually the tack is white or red, but horses with black tack turn up, too. The black horses are almost always kitted out in white tack, a very striking look. Some horses and ponies were given long reins because they were made to pull wooden carts--small, two- or four-wheeled ones for the ponies, a big blue-and-white wedding carriage for one pair of big white horses.

Colors span the equine rainbow, too. Most common colors are bay, white, and black for the standard-size, 4-inch, and 5-inch horses. The ponies are typically skewbald, chestnut, black, or Palomino. The biggest horses are bay and black.

The company made horses to order for toy sets made by other companies, so maybe that's why you'll sometimes find the odd horse flocked in a different color. The standard bay, for example, is usually a beautiful red-brown with black mane and tail, but I've seen Wagner horses flocked in a dark chocolate brown, too, in both the standard and the large size. Sometimes a Palomino turns up, too.

I once saw on eBay, but failed to win, a chestnut standard-size horse--it had a tan body with a matching, slightly golden mane and tail. To date I don't believe I've ever seen a spotted horse, only ponies. And though Wagner made a big gray horse in its early days, I haven't seen gray as a color among its later abundance of horses.

There are variations in the horses' stances, too. The ponies are always standing firmly foursquare, as if saying, "Nope, not gonna be caught in the paddock today, not falling for that oats-in-the-bucket lure!" The tiny horses, standard horses, and large horses typically do, too. The biggest ones, with plastic bodies under the flocking, have all four feet on the ground in a walking posture.

But sometimes you'll find horses that are posed in more of a running position, a gait achieved only by the Wagner horses that have paper-wrapped wire legs; the wooden-legged horses are always standing still. A few paper/wire-legged little horses are even caught rearing up.

I will put up more pictures of the great variety of Wagner horses in the future.