Galt Wooden Tadpole fishing puzzle

A delightful find from last weeks car boot. A super 1960s wooden puzzle from Galt Toys. We think its designed by Fredun Shapur. We first encountered Shapurs Playsacks at the Bethnal Green toy museum in London. He produced lots of fabulous items for Galt including several other wooden puzzles. 

We found the puzzle board above without any pieces, but hunting through the sellers other detritus we were delighted to find nearly all the pieces.

As you can see, we are still missing the girls leg. Weve seen a similar puzzle by galt, but this appears to be a bit earlier. Below you can see the puzzle without the pieces in.

 You may be interested to know that a Fredun Shapur show is coming to London's Kemistry Gallery in October 2014, which should be very exciting. I understand Mr Shapur may even be there himself. Perhaps we'll be able to verify if this puzzle is actually by him. If you cant wait that long a 133 page booklet about Shapur was released a while back called playing with design, you can see it here.

Oh! and if you do happen to find the girls missing leg do drop me a line, and let me know!

BOAC CREW Luggage label

Nice vintage BOAC Crew Luggage label. We've shown the front and back.

Monkey Puppet with lenticular eyes

Another recent car boot find. This unusual monkey has a plastic head with lenticular eyes. They wink and open when you tilt him. His  body is made from anAfrican print towelling fabric and is  roughly stitched.

Vintage 1970s Sindy Food stuff

Small collection of Sindy drink bottles and food stuff. The bottles measure around 25mm high and have fabulous Seventies graphics on paper labels. All great fun!

1950s Woven badges

Once upon a time holiday makers would collect woven badges and sew them onto their rucksacks, in much the same way decals were collected and stuck into the back of car windscreens in America. Posted today are three delightful woven badges that remind us of that era. Enjoy!

Tootsie Toys plastic animals

I seem to have been away for a long time, it was never particularly intended to be like that, but it has somehow happened. One of the reasons is the growth of pinterest*. Which Ive been using quite a bit. A shame really as it doesnt seem to have the community aspect that perhaps a blog has, but it is fast and a good way of collating and storing online finds. One things for sure, is its certainly less labour intensive than the blog, but sadly much less personal! 

Anyhow, back today with some more plastic animals, in the shape of Tootsie toys. I know nothing about them, but have been picking them up over the last few years. The dinosaur series seems to be much more sought after than the animals, but these fellas have a charm of their own.

We have been finding some lovely things, so I do promise to come back soon.

* Should you want to follow me on pinterest you can do so here.

Rajasthan fort figures

On the way back from Norfolk last year we stopped off at Stow in the Wold, and stumbled on this series of Indian plaster figures at a small antique shop. Battered and bruised and missing limbs they werent too expensive. We were told they were Rajasthan fort figures. Despite a year long effort to find out more, we are still none the wiser. So here they are presented as is. Hope you like them!

1972 Kellogg's Olympic football plastic figure

 

Olympic football comes to Britain today. Todays post celebrates when Cereal packets used to do something special to commemorate those occasions. Back in 1972 to honour the Munich Olympics, Kellogg's Sugar Smacks gave away 8 different athletes to collect and cherish. The carefully balanced, character above was for Football. 

If you want to see the rest of the set, you should head over to Mokarex. A rather good site full of more fabulous cereal giveaways.

Marriage & Homemaking KTC

 

 I was reminded of this fabulous little booklet browsing Flickr last week, when I stumbled upon a lovely collection of images by maraid. If it wasnt good enough finding some more camping flags of Great Britain, she also had thirty two Know the Game booklets!

Now Ive been collecting the Know the Game (KTG) books for a while, but she had some real lovelies, including skating which Id never seen before. Above Ive posted the 1970 edition of Marriage and Homemaking from the KTC (Know the craft) series, which I guess was an off shoot of the KTG books. Lots of practical advice here, as the contents page below shows.

Its not really fair to tease you without letting you read some of the pearls of wisdom for yourself. Page six makes interesting reading.......

English family game counters

 

Another unknown conundrum Im looking for help with. This small set of seven tokens turned up last month at a favourite charity shop. I think they must be from a game and are used as counters. They dont appear to have much age to them, but they do have some charm. It looks as if they represent four generations of one family; Great grandparents, grandparents, mother and father, and one son. They only measure 35mm and have no markings, as far as I can see.

 Hopefully some bright spark will be able to help. I look forward to hearing from you.......