A Fun Preview of a Book Item

We had some fun photographing the Model Craft Molding Set...

Hasbro Nurse Kit

Last, and certainly not least, is the most bizarre of all, the Alice in Wonderland Nurse Kit.  Alice is ready to do her civic duty all decked out in Red Cross regalia (well, at least with a hat and new pinafore). 

Again we see very standard nurse kit fare, all from Hasbro's OTS kits.  My favorite is the *ahem* hot water bottle.  I don't know about you, but I'm not about to let my 7 year old use that thing on me!  Of the three kits, this has the strangest closure of all, just a single snap.  How weird is that?  And I dig the faux blue alligator box.

This toy eluded me for years, and I began to wonder if it even existed!  All I had to go on was an ad from an issue of Playthings Magazine from July 1951.  Since that issue was coincident with the release of the film, I felt fairly confident that the toys depicted in it would have been produced, but now I think otherwise.  I think that because the ad lists FOUR playsets, not three. 

The Make Up kit (item 1915), the Sewing kit (item 1545) , and the Nurse bag (?!) (item 1765) are all pictured, but the Nurse kit (item 1735) is only mentioned in a text blurb.

I don't think the Nurse bag was produced.  It seems odd that there would be two nursing playsets made, and it was three times as expensive as the Nurse kit.  It may have been made, but I've never seen one, and who knows how well that plastic material would have held up after all these years.  Still, fun to think about it and if it was made, I'm sure it will turn up someday!

Hasbro Sewing Kit

Next up from Hasbro is the equally strange Alice in Wonderland Sewing Kit.  While it is conceivable that Alice would eventually learn the art of sewing - or at least some form of needlework - I doubt the good Rev. Dodgson ever imagined it being accomplished with a working miniature plastic sewing machine!

As with the make-up kit, this playset is chock full of OTS goodies for a young seamstress, including a doll for which the various clothes were designed!  As the box says, the little red sewing machine does actually sew, I just don't know how well.

The bad thing about this set is the design of the box.  There are no hinges on the lid, it relies on the paper of the lid to act as the hinge, which as you might guess is not that strong and is almost always found damaged if not completely separated from the rest of the box.  The closure is odd on this too, a strange little triple tab connection, although there is a variant of the box with a standard closure, the name of which I do not know, but basically is the old school closure for metal lunch boxes.

Hasbro Make-Up Kit

Some of the coolest, and quite frankly oddest, toys created for the original release of Alice in Wonderland, are the various playsets made by Hassenfeld Brothers, later known as Hasbro.  The first of these is the Make-Up Kit.

It is an unusual experience for a grown man to get giddy with excitement when encountering a mint in the box complete make-up kit let me tell you.  Hasbro basically re-packaged an OTS (off the shelf) make-up kit by slapping a little custom Alice art on it, and voila!  The kit is pretty cool as it contains powder and puff, various play cosmetics, and apparently bottles of colored water that were supposed to be perfume I imagine.  Hours of fun for any little fashion model.  There are of course variations, usually having to do with the contents of the kit (probably what they had on hand at the time), but the oddest variation is the placement of the carrying handle.  Sometimes it is on the side with the closure,

sometimes it is on the top, smack dab in the middle of the art?!  Fortunately the cover art is the same as the art on the inside of the lid.

Interestingly, the art of Alice in the mirror was re-purposed for the various pencil boxes as I noted in this post.

Hassenfeld Brothers Pencil Boxes

Continuing with my Back-to-School theme (I only just realized tonight that I had a theme), Hassenfeld Brothers (later known by the contraction Hasbro) produced a number of items for the original release, most notably a series of playsets that were advertised in Playthings Magazine as well as the National Screen Service campaign book. These were the makeup kit, sewing kit and nurse kit (stay tuned for future posts on those items). But they also produced a pencil box that I have not as of yet found any advertising for.

I have found this pencil box in three sizes to date (small, medium and large) and two colors (red and blue). The contents of the various boxes is similar and pretty standard school supply fare. The illustration on the cover is taken from the makeup kit, if you look closely you can see that Alice is holding a powder puff and wearing nail polish.

The small box has a ruler, some pencils (custom printed with Alice in Wonderland on them), a nib pen (minus nib), a protractor, crayons, and an eraser.

The medium pencil box has the same as above, but also has a strange little drawer for holding bits of paper I imagine. I have found them with a weird poster of university pennants, and maps. The medium size also appears to be the most common of the three sizes, and blue is far and away the most common color as I have only ever seen one in red.

The largest box is essentially the same as the medium box, except that the drawer is deeper than on the medium box.

The upper tray has a different configuration than on the medium box, and does not have space for the protractor, so it probably didn't come with one.

Oddly, it is not really functionally deeper as there is a cardboard filler in the drawer making it shallower. I have no idea why they would go to the trouble to make a bigger pencil box only to remove the extra space.