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.
Wagner Animals
All about those little flocked Kunstlerschutz critters
Thursday, December 29, 2022
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.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
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.
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 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. |
Monday, September 21, 2020
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.
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. |
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. |
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. |
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Wagner Animal Lookalikes
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.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Ghosts of Wagner Ornaments Past
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:
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.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Horses with Broken Legs...and Ears, Tails, and More
Oh, my.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Polar Bears, Polar Brrrrs!
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!
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.