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.