Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

Julip Model Horses had the rubber (or latex) model horse field pretty much to themselves in the 1950s, but by the 1960s competition began to spring up from rival firms Isis, Pegasus and Otway, and Julip appeared thoroughly spooked by the competition. Their advertisements took on a distinctly panicky tone: “Beware of imitations!” they begged. Pony Magazine, April 1963 Otway and Pegasus, as far as I can tell, only lasted a couple of years, but Isis Products provided more sustained competition in the early 1960s. The company’s founder, Margaret Hughes Hartmann (1929–2006) grew up in the docklands of Cardiff. She desperately wanted to be a vet, but money was short, and her older brother’s education ate up what money there was. He eventually became a paediatrician. Margaret trained as a teacher, and then married Cyril Hughes Hartmann, an historian and writer, and contemporary and friend of CS Lewis and Tolkein. Cyril and Margaret’s daughter Carola was born in 1956: she was one of twi...

Whilst rummaging around in the Gammages' Christmas catalogue for 1913, I came across these splendid creatures: Gammages generally went more for the value than the prestige end of the market, but on his travels to find new stock, Arthur Gammage soon realised the magnetic attraction the Steiff output had for children (and their parents), and the 1913 catalogue contains 4 pages of them.  "We have again secured the largest possible variety of STEIFF'S TOYS, anticipating a greater demand than ever," said the catalogue. If you bought a creature over 17 inches tall, it came with an automatic "animal" voice.   I heard one on the  Antiques Roadshow  a while back, though I think the animal was a bear rather than a horse.  The voice sounded more like a strangulated mouse squeak than a bear, but then when I am nearly 100 years old I don't suppose I shall sound particularly robust either.  Both these toys, I think, are glorious, and are considerably better than B...

I don't imagine for one second that Jake Posey ever had one of these driving toys, which look to have been the preserve of the tidily dressed middle classes rather than agricultural America, but who knows?  Maybe he did have one of these, the four horse model of which cost the equivalent of £145, and it fired his enthusiasm.  The advertisement below comes from Gamages' Christmas Catalogue from 1913. Gamages was a vast department store in Holborn, London.  Its boast was that it was the Peoples' Emporium, stocking absolutely everything you could possibly want; available at the store or via post (though not; thankfully, ammunition: you had to go to the store for that.)  Gamages catered to a different market from the like of Harrods and Whiteleys - more City worker than carriage trade.  The workers' families were not forgotten.  Gamages had an epic toy department:  looking through the catalogue today (the facsimile edition, published by David and Charle...

This post follows on from earlier blog posts I did which featured the Edith Reynolds model horses: Model horses in the 1950s Model ponies . Here are a few more advertisements for the Edith Reynolds model horses. These were expensive little toys. It's not easy to do a direct price comparison, but I'll have a go. Riding Magazine  was priced at 1/- in 1938, which is when these advertisements were published. Horse and Hound  now costs £2.40. If you assume an equivalence in price, that makes the huntsman, rider, tack and hounds come out at nearly £137.00. The 8 guinea setup comes out at around £400. Looking around, that's not too far off today's Equorum or Julip Originals models. I'm fascinated by the variation in size of the horses here. Perhaps the horses came in different scales. Many thanks too to Randi Risolio who sent me a photograph of an Edith Reynolds horse, rider and tack found at an estate sale. ~  0  ~

I've just bought some Pony Magazines from the early 1950s. Julip weren't exactly a prolific advertiser (but neither were any of the other model horse companies: I've seen no ads from them at all, and am intrigued about that. You'd have thought that Pony readers were absolutely their target market. Why not target it?) Here is Foxhunter and Lt-Col Llewellyn. I wonder if any examples of this still exist? This model, and the Arab below, both appear to have latex rather than mohair tails.

Read Susanna Forrest's brilliant piece here , and wonder at just whose minds are warped.

I have a feeling that heading might be promising a lot more than I can actually deliver: I've recently bought a collection of 1940s and 1950s Riding Magazines, and here are the three model horse advertisements I've found. Firstly, there's Edith Reynolds. The ad below appeared in the November 1949 edition. Here is Edith Reynolds two years later, in the November 1951 edition. After two years, she evidently had not sorted out her supply problems, which leads me to think the company was a one woman operation. Demand was obviously still high, despite the cost. These creatures were only stocked in expensive London shops. Julip have just one advertisement in the magazines I have. The company was just seven years old when this advertisement appeared in August 1953. These models must be among the earliest of the Julip originals. The models certainly looked quite different when the company was created in 1945. Ursula Hourihane wrote a book called The Tale of Julip ...

Just found this Pegasus Toys ad, which comes from Pony Magazine December 1961. I'm sorry about the yellow stripe. My scanner, which is pretty ancient, has now decided everything needs a yellow stripe, no matter what I do. I really like this Pegasus model: it's much more delicate than the Julips, which love them though I do, are on the clumpy side. The hound's rather gorgeous too. It's a pity Isis and Pegasus became defunct. It would be interesting to know if the moulds still exist, as I think they're much more attractive than Julips and surely there would be an opportunity there for someone prepared to make the investment. Just found this

I blogged a while back about model ponies in the mid 1960s , but have since bought a load of Pony and Riding magazines from the early 1960s, which are wonderful source material for so much that I would like to write about but have not had time. The magazines have adverts for a whole range of model horses most of whom were defunct by the mid 1960s. As I was born in 1962, none of these ever swum across my ken, none were dandled over my pram to amuse or even bought in by an enterprising parent for Jane to have later. Ah well. There was certainly a wider range of materials and styles than later on in the decade. Not all of the horses were made of rubber: Rowe Horses were made of silks. I wonder how many of them have survived. I guess very few, as the silk must surely have decayed. The horses were also pretty expensive: 60 shillings was £3 (around £50 in today's money), and Pegasus and Isis rubber models were around the £1.50 mark (around £26), which also included tack or...

Every time I read the old Pony Magazines I've acquired from the 1960s and 1980s (rather worryingly, I did get some from the 1970s but seem to have lost these somewhere in the chaos that is my office) I find more things I want to write about, but this is one I've had brimming in my head for ages. For many pony mad girls, if you didn't have a pony, you had a model pony. Preferably lots. I was definitely in the lots camp, having a fine collection of Britains model horses, riders and stables. The big advantage to Britains was that they were cheap: my 5/- (25p) pocket money would buy one in the early 1970s and leave me some money over for sweets. Here is the Britains showjumping set. I did actually have this, but I am utterly ashamed to admit that I lost nearly all of it over the years. The 35/- price (£3.25) was quite spectacularly reasonable when compared with the game Jump Jockey , which was produced by Minimodels-Triang Ltd, who also made Scalextri...

Vanessa of Fidra put this post on her blog about the shortlist for the Galaxy Book Awards 2008. The children's section is voted for by children at W H Smith shops, and the shortlist is: Michael Morpurgo's Born to Run, Jacqueline Wilson's Kiss , Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman and Fiona Watt's That's Not My Penguin . So, no surprises there: but there is another entry on the shortlist and that is Katie Price's Perfect Ponies - the guide to looking after ponies, rather than the stories. To me (and to Vanessa) that seems an odd inclusion, but I was thinking about it and actually I think it isn't. It's children that have voted for it, after all, and so I've been asking myself why they've gone for this title. The pony care books I know about (those you can get in mainstream book shops, rather than saddlers) tend to be the Dorling Kindersley style which is absolutely straight down the line realistic, illustrated with pho...