Toy OTD: Quaker Cereal Mail-Order Premium: Cap'n Crunch Bank

Cap'n Crunch was the source of many cool ads, in-box prizes and mail-order premiums. This bank is one of my favorites!

I think this offer was from the late sixties or early seventies - for money and box tops, you could get either a bank in the shape of the Cap'n or his main nemesis, Jean La Foote. It's a simply made item, but it's fun and appealing.

The colors are accurate when you compare it to the cartoon character. Granted, the proportions are extremely tweaked in order to make the character work as a bank. There's not much of a pose here, either, but I think the original design still comes through and rescues the execution. The paint work is rather sketchy too, and to some degree the bank looks like an unauthorized bootleg. It really depends on how appealing you find early manufacturing and design - you either buy into its primitive vibe, or you don't.

These bank aren't terribly rare, so finding one shouldn't be all that difficult. In fact, there's a really nice-looking one up for auction on eBay starting at $24.99 + shipping. Enjoy!

Toy OTD: Jello Mail-Order Premium: Mr. Wiggle Puppet (1966)

I didn't actually see Mr. Wiggle ads when I was a kid (I was a year old when this promotion took place), but I love the design work! The graphics are nice and simple, and as a result the animation is quite good.

Mr. Wiggle was a spin-off brand of Jell-O - apparently it had no sugar, so the ads reminded kids that they could eat all they liked! Mr. Wiggle fed the cathode urchins plenty of gelatin while Sweet-Tooth Sam (Wiggle's Snidely-Whiplash-style arch-nemesis) would try to get some for himself.

General Foods had a mail-away premium offer - for fifty cents and two box tops, you could order a vinyl Mr. Wiggle puppet, a Sweet-Tooth Sam puppet (a vinyl head with the more traditional cloth body), or both!

This is a very cute toy - the proportions of the sculpt are squatter than the animated character, but I'm sure part of this is to create a better fit for a child's hand (plus, he changes shape constantly anyway). The paint work is nice and simple, just like the character's three-color design. It's made out of a good vinyl too, as they've held up really well over forty-three years!

I don't know if this toy ever had any packaging beyond a cardboard shipping box, so I can't really talk about that.

I'm assuming a lot of these puppets were made, because they aren't difficult to find at all - some puppets have warped, but it's still not too hard to get one that's in good shape. There's one for sale right now on eBay for about $60 + shipping, but the auction will have ended by the time you read this. There's also a Sweet Tooth Sam puppet (that I'm considering) on eBay as well for $80 + shipping (I'm assuming he's a little rarer). Good luck!

Toy OTD: Foster's Freeze Premium: Little Foster Wind-Up

I don't have much to say about this little fellow, except that it's another example of a good, cheap toy. The design's been maintained in an appealing way, and there's only three paint passes on one color of plastic. The sculpt's a little stiff, but still cute, especially considering the mechanical nature of the toy. The biggest downside is the same of every wind-up - the winding mechanism is flimsy. Mine was broken when I bought it!

I have no idea how old this is, or how it was sold. I'm assuming it was given away at Foster's Freeze as a premium along with a specific food purchase. I picked this one up at a toy show for just a dollar or two, so if you can find one, I doubt it'll be all that expensive. There's nothing on eBay right now, so keep your eyes peeled!

Toy OTD: '70s Tony The Tiger Vinyl Figure

I'm assuming that this figure was a mail-order premium that you could buy with either cash, or a combination of money and box tops. Regardless, it's a great-looking toy - definitely stockier than the animated character, but appealingly sculpted and painted to preserve its cool graphic design. My travel agent back in Vermont had one of these on her desk, and of course I coveted it, trying to get her to sell it to me, but to no avail. I picked up my first Tony figure from eBay, then upgraded to this one (it had a better paint job) later on.

I don't remember how much I paid for the figure, but being fairly common, I think they fall into the $40-$60 range. Got2haveit.com has one for $49.99 + shipping, and there's an auction on eBay right now currently at $2.99 + shipping! Maybe there's a bargain there...

Toy OTD: Charlie The Tuna Telephone (1987)

A friend of mine was cleaning out his house, so he sold this phone to me - I think I paid about $15 or $20 for it. It's about ten inches tall - one of the older phones that's contained all in one piece. It hangs up when you set it down, so I can see why this style of phone didn't really catch on! At least it looks like you can switch it from touch-tone to pulse-tone and back again.

The sculpt and paint work on it are quite good, nicely on-model. There's the strange touch of the light bulbs in the glasses (I assume that they blink when someone calls), but it doesn't detract from the overall design.

I don't know who manufactured this, so maybe it was a mail-order premium. At any rate, it's not terribly rare or expensive - there's an eBay auction for one right now starting at $9.99 + shipping.