Vintage People
It's time for more Vintage People! Their collector value might not be much, because they aren't MIB ("mint in box"), but I like them anyway.
First up is this photo dated "February 1963" - so it might actually be from Christmas morning, 1962. We've got two young buckaroos (twins?) in identical, magnificent cowboy outfits that would make Roy Rogers proud. They each have wonderful toy firetrucks with the Texaco logo on the side. The days when toys like that were made of steel and could really take a beating! Behind them is an older boy who is looking for ships at sea - or something. I love the house with its yellow stucco and wide mid-century chimney.
From April, 1959 comes this photo (location unknown) of two men and a young boy (and their black dog) on a beautiful, snowy day. I shoveled snow off of our driveway and sidewalk many times when I was a kid, and it was hard work! Especially if there was a slick layer of ice under the snow, perfect for causing unexpected falls. All three fellows look happily resigned to their task, but the boy must be thinking about snowball fights and sledding.
And finally, we have this undated photo of three kids playing Monopoly. I was going to say "enjoying Monopoly", but then remembered that Monopoly is not an enjoyable game. There's a red toy piano for musical interludes ("...Like the fella once said, ain't that a kick in the head!"), and little sis holds a gun in case things get ugly. The furniture looks like it is covered in something that resembles the artificial turf that you might find at a miniature golf course, I'll bet it was scratchy and uncomfortable and that's why nobody is sitting on them!
And finally, Sue B (of "Lou and Sue" fame) sent me a photo that her friend found of her grandson (now an adult) as he enjoyed bath time with his extensive collection of dinosaur toys. I think I count 24 of them. I see at least one Tyrannosaur, and a few Apatosaurs/Brontosaurus, one Stegosaurus, a Hadrosaur, a Triceratops, and probably one or two Velociraptors. I can't quite tell what the others are.
I hope you have enjoyed today's Vintage People!
23 comments:
Major-
Love those twins in the first image. Those are wild-looking firemen's uniforms, I must say. Behind the lad peering-off into space is a 1959 Ford and a 1957 Mercury.
That Monopoly game looks like a massacre, based on the number of 'properties' owned by the red shirted fella. (And that looks like Sis' plastic headband sitting on top of the TV cabinet).
I thought dinosaurs were ill at ease around water...
Thanks, Major (& Sue).
I was also noticing how many railroads, properties, and monopolies that one kid had, versus the other kid's one single property and one single railroad!
Sue's friend's grandson just needed a train, and he could've recreated his own Primeval World.
In the first pic, do you think the neighbors on the next street over, have a TV antenna that is tall enough?
And in that second pic, there is a creepy ghost looking out of the window, on the second floor of that gray house!
A very inspired Dad shot that first pic. I hope those kids held on to their fire trucks.
So Sue's friend is named Sue/Susanne? Nice! Thanks, Major.
That 3rd photo resembles a Norman Rockwell painting, sort of. I like the muddy shoes in the back. Major, I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who doesn’t like Monopoly. To be honest, I hate Monopoly. When you’re losing, it’s such a long, slow, tortuous game. When you’re winning, you know how your opponent feels (that he’s sorry he agreed to play).
I'm confused. Do the hoses on the Texaco firetrucks spray water or gasoline? So many mixed messages.
"The days when toys like that were made of steel and could really take a beating!" In 1974, my parents' best friends (who lived a couple of streets over from us) had four or five families from their Air Force unit over for Thanksgiving dinner. There were a lot of kids there, all between the ages of 2 and 6, and the boys were all playing in the son's room and the girls were all playing in the daughter's room.
The son, Jeremy, had an amazing collection of big, steel and die cast vehicles. Most of them were of farm machinery (his grandparents were farmers in Iowa), but he also had some dump trucks and a big red fire truck. I remember Jeremy and I were playing up on the bed with a tractor and combine when a kid named Mark and another boy got into a tussle over the fire truck. Mark managed to wrest the fire truck out of the other kid's hands and then proceeded to beat him with it.
Of course there was screaming and crying and blood so the dads came running in to put a stop to it. My dad was the first one into the room, ended up getting blood all over his dress pants, and had to go home and change. It's a good thing we only lived a couple of streets over because it was already his second trip home to change after my sister's diaper had leaked all over him earlier in the day.
Ten years and three bases later we ended up having another huge Thanksgiving dinner at their house and had a good laugh about the "Bloody Thanksgiving of 1974."
And I last saw Jeremy's nephews playing with that fire truck in 2012. There wasn't a dent in it.
The kids in this post are today's 'vintage people'.
Oh those Tonka trucks. They could last forever. I had a road grader and dump truck and was constantly building roads and freeways in my back yard. Was told I'd be a civil engineer...but in real life went into regulatory finance. Go figure.
The only constants to this day are the Monopoly game and the snow shovel. KS
@ TM!-
Well - when a family must watch The Wonderful World of Color, and the closest transmitting tower of the station carrying it is many miles away, few options are available back in 1962/1963, than a large antenna mounted atop a very tall tower-!
Those lucky kids' dad must have bought a lot of gas at Texaco! Shell only gave us crappy drinking glasses and they all broke. I had a similar fire engine that would spray water from its master steam but I can't remember if it was Tonka.
I'd say the second photo must be a holdover from the Duluth collection, though the snow doesn't seem deep enough. Hey, that guy has a movie camera in his hand!
Notice the way the kid in the red shirt is distracting his siblings with his right hand while his left hand does something shifty. Obviously the kid on the left is more fond of his money than buying properties - or he's the Bank. Chutes & Ladders was much more fun anyway.
For some reason L&S's bath time pic makes me think of those kid's shampoo bottles with the character heads on them. By the time of this pic it would have been Transformers shampoo.
I'm going to add to the sentiment - I don't like Monopoly at all! It is slow and boring (unless you own everything!). I much preferred The Game of Life! I also disliked Scrabble mainly because I couldn't (and still can't) spell worth beans. Thank goodness for spell check these days!
Chuck - got a big kick out of the story of Bloody Thanksgiving of 1974 - you're poor Dad.
Nanook, maybe that’s how Firemen dress in Wyoming? I didn’t really pay attention to the Monopoly game, but man, my niece used to want to play that all the time. Even if I was winning I wasn’t enjoying it! And you know there were semiaquatic dinos! Like the Hadrosaurs, and possibly the Bronto/Apatosaurs.
TokyoMagic!, I guess the only good thing to say about that game of Monopoly is that it would soon be over. I have to wonder how many toy dinosaurs were in the bath water? Maybe some plesiosaurs? That antenna is impressive, I have to admit. And I think that’s a friendly ghost looking out that window!
Andrew, holy moly, some folks want over $400 for their fire engines. I guess if you want one that is truly mint, you have to pay for it.
Lou and Sue, I used to beg my niece to play “Sorry”, or “Hi-Ho-Cheerio”, or “Apples to Apples”… ANYTHING but “Monopoly”!
Chuck, yes, those firetrucks were based on a certain Ray Bradbury story. I love the story of the kids abusing their metal trucks by hitting each other. It’s what kids do! My best friend has told me that he used to have some metal Tonka toys, and that they beat the heck out of them until there was nothing left but the chassis and the wheels, at which point they would use them as makeshift skateboards! I don’t know why your dad didn’t just wear vinyl pants like everyone does these days. No muss, no fuss. Diaper leak? No problem! Blood or other fluids? Just wipe them away! I’m glad to hear that the firetruck is still around.
KS, funny, I had a Tonka toy in the ‘70s, but it was plastic. A rather large dune buggy, with blue “metal flake” plastic. I liked it, and certainly abused the poor thing. Not sure what ever happened to it - I suspect my mom and dad got rid of it during our next move. As for constants… don’t you wear cowboy outfits just like those kids?
Nanook, my mom’s neighbor has an antenna in his backyard that is easily 30 feet tall. Hasn’t he heard of cable? I’ve always wondered why he needed that thing.
Omnispace, I have a vague memory of owning a metal firetruck, but for some reason the toy that really made an impression was a logging truck, with actual “logs” in the truck bed. That’s the one I played with the most! Who knows why. I love the look of the kid’s face in the snow picture, he thinks snow is the greatest thing ever! To be honest, the two grown men don’t seem that bothered by it. Do you think red-shirt kid is cheating? I don’t think I ever played Chutes and Ladders, was that like “Mousetrap”? And those bottles with the character heads were “soakies”, some of them are really fun. The monster bottles (Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon) can go for hundreds of dollars apiece.
Irene, I used to like to play “Boggle” with my grandma, and we did crossword puzzles together a lot, so we were both good at word games. I still love a good game of Boggle!
For me, two-handed Monopoly isn't much of a game. The ideal is four players for optimal trash-talking and not-quite-Hoyle transactions.
I remember we had a Texaco fire chief helmet that had a little microphone and speaker built into it. At some point somebody (I have my suspicions) removed the mike and speaker.
Also a sturdy pickup truck with two different trailers, all painted to match U Haul rentals (no-nonsense orange and white with a discreet logo). That set wasn't Tonka, but my younger brother had a yellow Tonka dump truck with an automatic dumping mechanism. Every time I see the dump trunk gag in "Blockheads" (primo Laurel and Hardy feature) I think of it.
The Cowpoke Twins are trying to be the masks of Tragedy and Comedy, but they’re not quite there yet. Keep on pluggin’, kids! In addition to matching clothes, my sister and I also often had matching toys. I guess it’s harder to fight over things when nobody’s is “better” than the other’s!
...two men and a young boy (and their black dog)...
Makes me think of “One Man Went to Mow,” the British equivalent of “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”’
“One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow,
One man and his dog went to mow a meadow.
Two men went to mow, went to mow a meadow,
Two men, one man, and his dog went to mow a meadow, etc.”
OBVIOUSLY, “packing a gun” is the only sane way to play Monopoly. I don’t know why I never thought of it before!
Awesome Vintage People!
Oh, I guess it’s 99 bottles of beer, isn’t it? But who’s counting, har har.
Monopoly really is a love it or hate it sort of game. My wife and mother hate it.
My dad, kids and i love it. Like Risk, I think it's better with more people, and the dynamics become more complex and interesting. Which reminds me of a story that I hope I haven't told here before...
The British edition of Monopoly has different properties based on London locations instead of Atlantic City. When we lived over there, my wife's English cousin and I came up with a set of rules for "Tranatlantic Monopoly."
You set up a British and an American Monopoly set at two adjacent tables. The players are divided into two-person "Transatlantic corporations," with one player as CEO of the English subsidiary and the other in charge of the American branch of the company. Each member of each team plays on his own board against the corresponding members of the competing corporations using the same token on his board as his teammate does on the other board. For example, the members of one company might both be playing with the schnauzer tokens, while another might be using the battleships.
Money can be exchanged between teammates (we assume an exchange rate of 1 GBP = 1 USD). Holding enough properties to build houses and hotels and collect rent crosses boards, so if you have, say, Kentucky Avenue and Illinois Avenue on the US board and Trafalgar Square on the UK board (all red), then you can start construction and charging rent. Another team can do the same if they have Indiana Avenue, The Strand, and Fleet Street.
Rolling doubles twice in a row results in a "corporate reorganization," meaning the roller trades places with his/her team-mate on the other board. Rolling doubles three times in a row results in an "industry restructuring," which means everyone on the US board rotates clockwise into a new corporation and everyone on the UK board rotates anti-clockwise (British English for counterclockwise) into a new corporation (the roller also goes to Jail just like in the normal rules).
We felt the new rules would really make the game more interesting, create some new challenges and turn the tables on apparent winners at dramatic moments. You'd need probably six to eight people to make it work well, and while he has four kids, they were too young to grasp the additional complexity, so we just played the basic game with eight people. They still got a kick out of all of the unfamiliar place names on the US board.
I would like to try this out with my board game club once we get back to in-person meetings.
DBenson, maybe that’s the problem, I almost always play Monopoly with only one other person. The concept of the game doesn’t seem that fun to me, but again, maybe I’ve always played it the wrong way. I’ll bet that Texaco fire chief hat would be worth $$$ if it was complete and in good condition! I would have loved those U-Haul trailers, even back then I had a fondness for certain color combos, and orange & white would have been right up my alley. I also love turquoise and orange (Howard Johnson’s). I have never seen “Blockheads”, but I’ll bet a version is on YouTube.
Melissa, the kid in the foreground looks like a real stinker, he’s giving some sass to the photographer. It does seem like a good strategy to give both kids the same presents, though I could imagine that backfiring too. I have NEVER heard of “One Man Went to Mow” before, how can that be?
Melissa, if you start with 100 bottles, chaos ensues!
Chuck, I was just reading about the director of the famous 1956 featurette, “The Red Balloon” (Albert Lamorisse), which I’m sure you have seen. Besides making films, did you know he invented the game “Risk”? I didn’t until today! I think your “love it or hate it” assessment of Monopoly is accurate; while the British edition is interesting because it is different, it sure doesn’t make me want to play it any more than the regular U.S. version! Maybe I’m too dumb. I do like the mega version that you and your wife cooked up, with two different tables, but MAN, how long does a game take? Sounds like it would be hours and hours! Also, I rarely get together with more than two or three other people, because I don't bathe. I want a schnauzer token, by the way. Have you ever heard about the rare (British) WWII version of Monopoly sent to POW camps? Imagine having one of those! HERE’S an article about them.
Major, these are a fun break.
My wife has a pic of her Dad and Uncle in very similar cowboy garb. I had a fire truck much like that and several other Tonka toys, I recall a Jeep for sure.
I detest Monopoly also and most board games in general. Chess or checkers are fine though.
Chuck, what a wild story.
I’m glad I don’t have to shovel snow anymore.
JG
Major, I had a logging truck from the Cowell Redwoods but it had a single large log on it which means when scaled-up it must have been the largest log in the world!
Now that I look at the kid in the red shirt again he's probably not cheating. He must have his money and properties to his right, out of sight of the camera, so the game is probably more evenly matched.
If you haven't played Chutes & Ladders you seriously have to buy it. Nothing like Mousetrap, (which rarely worked properly), no strategy, strictly based on the chance of the dice, but still fun.
Most insane game we ever had as kids: Battling Tops.
JG, my older brother and I often reminisce about the wonderful toys that we had when we were kids. Many of them probably not the safest things in the world, but MAN, were they fun! I don't detest board games, but there are some that I truly don't like. "Trivial Pursuit" is fun!
Omnispace, mine had three or four small logs (that would have scaled up to Redwood sized behemoths, I sure couldn't tell you who made it though. And Battling Tops! That was a fun one. I wonder if my sister has Chutes and Ladders, so I don't have to buy it to try it!
Major, I saw The Red Balloon a couple of times on 16mm in grade school (like 1st through 3rd grade). I can't remember much about it, but I know I liked it. I also remembering realizing at the time I was watching a different kind of film (I didn't yet know the term "art film"). I need to see it again. I wonder if the local library has a Super 8 version I can check out? I really wish they'd invent an easier way to find and watch movies at home.
I had no idea that the director had invented Risk, too.
Nanook, I never thought about how difficult it might be for people in other areas to pick up a TV signal. I've been here in L.A. with Mt. Wilson and it's TV antennas/towers looming over me, my entire life. I've probably taken that for granted.
DBenson, my brother and I had that Texaco Fire Chief helmet. It has a speaker on the front of the helmet (behind the Texaco star) and it has an ear piece, which can slide out of it's holder and be used as a microphone (I think). It no longer works. At one point, I tried to put new batteries in it, but the old batteries had corroded the terminals. Maybe someone could fix it....someday. I've posted some pics of it here (just scroll all the way down to the last three photos in the post):
Texaco Fire Chief Helmet
@Chuck, Transatlantic Monopoly is s brilliant idea! We had a British Monopoly set we found at a yard sale; I wish we’d thought of doing something creative like that with it!
It’s not surprising to me that a lot of people don’t have fun playing Monopoly; it was originally designed as a tool for teaching economic theory by an anti-monopolist who wanted to illustrate the negative aspects of monopolies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Monopoly
My favorite classic board game is Clue. Give me a good old-fashioned murder for light family entertainment.
Chuck, yes, “The Red Balloon” was a staple of grade school viewing, I’m sure I saw it at least three times. I wonder if it’s on YouTube? I’m thinking about the ending with the boy being carried away by all of the other balloons - how high up was he? It sounds dangerous, especially in those days. Maybe he was actually supported by a crane.
TokyoMagic!, my mom’s house is between two hills, and her cell reception is terrible. My parents had cable the entire time we lived in Thousand Oaks, or so I believe. Also, my brother said that we did own those metal Texaco trucks AND the helmets, which I don’t remember at all. We must have broken those in a hurry.
Melissa, I have an old Monopoly set from my grandmother that I believe is from the 1940s, I should go through it to see if it’s complete; I found an article that said that they could fetch $70 and up. I’d happily sell it, ha ha! And speaking of your favorite, “Clue”, there is also a never-used game of “Clue” from the ‘50s, all the pieces inside are still wrapped in their original cellophane.
Major, a friend just gave me a Clue game from the 50s or 60s. It has drawings of the people/characters. I still have the Clue game that my brother and I were given in the 70s. It has photos of actors/models for the characters. Did you know that James Lipton's wife was the model who portrayed "Miss Scarlet" for the 70s version of the game?
I looked up that Texaco Fire Chief Helmet on ebay. I guess I should have just done that, before taking the pics of mine and posting them. I found one on ebay with the original box. And I was right about the earpiece also being a microphone. I just can't ever remember it working. We got the helmet for Christmas, when I was VERY young. Actually, it might have been my brother's. The box that it comes in says "Constructed of Rugged Reinforced Hard Plastic," so you must have been VERY destructive! ;-) It does seem pretty tough, though. It's survived all these years and doesn't even have a crack. Someone on ebay also has an original ad for the helmet. It looks like it was available only at Texaco gas stations (with purchase) for $3.98.
The sellers on ebay who have them with their original boxes, are asking between $80 and $100. Someone even has the replacement set for the earpiece, speaker and battery compartment, for $39. I guess if I wanted to spend the money, I could fix mine. We'll see.
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