More Stuff From the Box

It's time for even more "stuff from the box"... random items that have been stored in an old cigar box for many years. Hopefully you'll have fun looking at it all.

First up is this set of pins featuring characters from the classic Beatles animated film, "Yellow Submarine". The pins are hand-painted metallic hard plastic (with a metal backing) ©1968 "KFS (King Features Syndicate)-Suba". They are roughly 1 inch tall. You've got a Blue Meanie, the Mayor, an Apple Bonker, Old Fred, John, Paul, George, and Ringo. What, no Jeremy the Boob? No Flying Glove? I don't own much Beatles merch, but I love these pins.

Poking around, I found the publicity images that were used as reference for the pins on several websites. It took longer than you might expect! Designer Heinz Edelmann established the incredible look of this film and the characters.

Next is this nice brass pin from the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, also known as "Expo 58". The Soviet Union had a huge pavilion at that Fair, and had notable exhibits such as full-sized models of several Sputnik satellites. This pin is a weighty chunk of solid brass with nice genuine enamel.

I later found another pin (with some wear and patina) - same design, but now stamped out of thinner sheet brass. Presumably these were a lot cheaper to make.

Here's a Dopey pin made of some sort of pressed wood (or sawdust) from 1938. There were pins for each of the seven dwarfs, and one for Snow White, but this is the only one I have. I've seen photos of other examples that were painted a bit more skillfully, this one is kind of sloppy. But... I love it anyway.

Here are two "poster stamps" from the 1939 New York World's Fair, one advertising the Denmark pavilion (with a mighty viking ship), and the other from the Bayer pavilion. I sure would love to see "The Maze of Superstition"! Broken mirrors, rabbit's feet, spilled salt, black cats... there were so many to choose from.

Another fun souvenir from the 1939 Fair is this giant "lucky penny". It's about 3 inches in diameter, and seems to have been stamped out of some sort of gray pot metal and coated with a thin layer of copper. "Indian Head" pennies were already old-fashioned by 1939 (the Lincoln head cent was introduced in 1909), but I find this design to be very appealing. I've seen other lucky pennies from this fair, all "Indian head" styles, but varying in quality. Some have sculpts that are much more crude than my example, I kind of like them for that reason.

And finally, here's an uncommon pin advertising the 1933/34 Chicago World's Fair. For some reason, the ink on this lithographed metal pin is a bit tacky, even after more than 80 years, and I am always having to unstick it from the glass of my little display case. At this point it's kind of a lost cause, but I'll hang on to it for nostalgia's sake.