Outside the box...

Pour la version française, lire ici

Sometimes a collector is facing a real dilemma... 

Not only about scarce storage space... or how to best preserve these precious and numerous 60s cardboard from humidity... but... but... 

Top Off your Tree !

An Angel or a Fairy... ?

If you are looking for some idea for the top of your Christmas tree, look no further...

Here is a
Tilt-Top Magazine exclusive
on what 

Mrs Emma Peel
&
Mr John Steed,
none less... 

... chose to top their tree off with... in 1965 !
...

Made in Hong-Kong, but designed where ? Part II

Part II

(Read Part I here)

The kitchen is not the only piece that was copied from Marx by Blue-Box...

Minichou's false Return ? / Minichou, un faux Retour ?

I was lucky enough as a child to be offered one day the delightful Minichou/Pti'chou* doll by Gégé (in fact - I don't know why or even how - I got two of exactly the same one - Maybe both my grand-mothers had simultaneously the same idea ?... so I played with one a lot and as a result the other one is still in a very nice original condition...)
J'ai eu la chance, petite, de recevoir en cadeau l'adorable petite poupée Minichou/Pti'chou de Gégé (en fait j'ai même eu deux fois la même - je ne sais pas très bien ce qui s'est passé, peut-être mes deux grand-mères ont eu la même idée ?... Alors j'ai beaucoup joué avec l'une et l'autre est encore aujourd'hui dans un très bel état...)

1968 (My twins)

You'll guess easily...

Made in Hong-Kong, but designed where ? Part I

Part I

I have been interested in Blue-Box as a brand and a manufacturer for years now... Ever since I identified two of my childhood toys as being of that make (Made in Singapore)... I remember buying two sets myself in 1972 - I was 6 then - from a sweet and toy stall in a big park near Paris on a rainy sunday afternoon with a little money I was given for the occasion.

One, the bedroom, is still intact in the box...

Early 70s

Its near pristine state is the proof that...

Gégé set the Scene... !

Pour la version française, voir article suivant...

Everything has already been written on Mily, the 60s fashion doll by Gégé.. about her story, her amazing clothes, her marvelous life at the top (1964-1976... Dolls often have to retire early...).

So we have decided to have fun and focus on one aspect - maybe overlooked so far - which might have contributed to her image and perhaps her success : the furniture used in the leaflets and magazine ad photos to create contemporary surroundings and enhance Mily's modern image of hip girl... 

In short : How and with what did Gégé set the Scene ? 

Would you care for a cup of tea ? (English version)

Pour la version française, voir article suivant...

As a child, I played a lot with plastic tea-sets and dinner-sets... In 1968-69, I remember that my sister and I had two Gégé* teasets (they were the must !) that were exactly like this one in shape (with a different motif, and smaller flowers maybe) :

Gégé tea-set

Then in 1970,...

Mystery Miniature Milk Crates...

Horse cart with milk crates (and a milkwoman for a change !) -
Doris Hudson delivering milk for the Co-op Dairy in Disraeli Street, Middlesbrough(UK) in 1956

If you are a vintage toy car collector, 

you might know where these miniature milk crates belong...

Miniature lead milk crates (1.9 x 1.6 cm)

I got them in a lot of 1930s-1960s dollhouse items... They are very well made and pretty heavy (made of lead ?) and also tiny... The white paint has rubbed off in places... I would love to be able to remove and replace individually the little bottles of milk (Mind you, they could have gone missing)... Still they would look good as a prop in any scene of that scale and they have a real 50s feel to them...  

I am quite sure they were not originally meant for a dollhouse but rather, I imagine, belong to a vintage miniature milkman's van or float ? Could they originally be from a large 50s Lesney horse drawn milk cart (Made in England) ? Some of their small scale milk crates look like these...

© blue-gold-angel.de
http://www.dream-tintoys.de/index.php?page=lesney

Well certainly, you Reader and Mrs Peel are needed to help solve the milk crate riddle... 

Careful, coming off the milk float though...

The Avengers - The Hour that Never Was (Series 4 - 1965)

You have just read an article written by Ysé

An exclusivity Tilt-Top Magazine - © Peinture Fraîche

How to Re-string a Miniature Doll...

If the limbs of one of your articulated miniature dolls have come off and you want to repair it yourself, here is an original Ysé's tutorial and a simple way to do it...

First of all you will need : 

2 tiny elastic bands per doll - the tiny ones on sale at the hair department in supermarkets and stores - and 2 knitting metal crochet hooks (French size 3 & 1.5 - or for the second crochet hook, in fact whichever size fits in the tiny holes of the limbs...)

8.5 cm dolls & mini elastic hairbands

It is quite easy to do for limbs with joint hooks (you'll need smaller elastic bands than the one shown on the above photo, though), but it is another story for limbs with joint holes... Here is how it can be done...

Example of limbs with holes

Let's shed some light on...

I got this little lamp in a box of random dollhouse miniatures mostly from the early 50s...

It measures 10 cm

It is marked Made in England inside the base and "Not for mains use" on the outside of the base (here is a toy manufacturer taking security very seriously for the time). I think it also dates from the early 50s...

A thin metal fabric covered wire...

The lampshade and the base are both hard plastic, the bulb is screwed inside the top of the base and the lampshade is secured in place by two metal rings clipped around the bulb itself...

Later I saw the same lamp in a boxed set :

Multum Registered (Made in England)

As I wondered if Multum was a brand, I did a little research and I found that it is a line of miniature toys made by Ward & Goldstone, a big Lancashire electrical equipment company founded in 1892 which manufactured electrical accessories, cables and vehicle wiring looms and later plastics well into the 1970s ... This is the only example of a set for dollhouses I have found so far - their short lived 50s toy production seems to have been mainly aimed at boys (principally workshop models). 

On the box lid the illustration shows the family's father and brother grappling with the assembly, while the dollhouse owner is just watching... I bet that given the chance she could have set it up all by herself...

One of the many W&G Ltd factories (Frederick Rd, Salford, Manchester - Lancashire)

Another dollhouse lamp by the same company...

You have just read an article written by Ysé

An exclusivity Tilt-Top Magazine - © Peinture Fraîche

New Blog on the Block...

I have been building behind the scenes a whole website for the past two years now with all that it implies and I have finally decided that it should be just fine to carry on (or re-start and write new material) here on Blogger, so bear with me until I learn the ropes of this new tool... First of all transferring some of our website's original design features... And then writing my first post...

© Ysé & Stylb - Miss Twist (1963) and Miss Bonne Nuit (1957) by Peynet/Technigom

I don't know exactly where I am going with this blog yet... 

It should be all about vintage girl's toys with a twist but not only... Let us see...



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tous mes textes en bilingue...