Happy Valentine's Day!

 

English Birthday Card by Valentine's - Alice

Last in the series (that I am aware of) is this of Alice, with the bluebird of happiness apparently.

Again interior sentiment not really saying much, and certainly not themed to the Alice-ness of the card.

Nanny must have gotten a deal on these cards, and only known one heartfelt phrase for her presumed young charges - this time the recipient is Bobbie.  Twins perhaps?  Who can say, but I'm very glad to have them.

English Birthday Card by Valentine's - Dinah

Now here's something you don't see everyday, a birthday card with Dinah.

And it is even our friend Figaro as Dinah as we've discussed many times in the past.

Interior sentiment is similar to the others.  And this card was given by Nanny to John, she must really have liked him as she gave him seven kisses!

English Birthday Card by Valentine's - White Rabbit

Since I have several of these Valentine's birthday cards, seems the right time to do them all.  The second card in the series features the White Rabbit.

The greeting is 'A gay "Note" for your birthday', odd that they didn't succumb to the 'belated' temptation that seemingly every other greeting card company did.  Refreshing, but odd.

Interior message is again lengthy and not particularly themed to the rest of the card, except for the repetition of the 'gay' sentiment.  For those of you under the age of 30, gay is an old fashioned way of saying lighthearted, carefree, fun, merry etc.  Think Flintstones theme song.  Oh, and the Flintstones is an old cartoon about a stone age family - again for the under 30 crowd.  Hmm...maybe ever for the under 40 crowd.  Damn I'm getting old...

I Went to the DFC Disney Show and All I Got was this Birthday Card - King of Hearts Birthday Card by Valentine's of Great Britain

The DFC show was a rousing success!  Thanks to everyone who dropped by to say hi!  My only score at the show was this English birthday card by Valentine's Greeting Cards, featuring the King of Hearts.

My quest for this card has spanned almost an entire year.  I first became aware of it after last year's D23 show - which I did not attend.  A friend sent me a camera phone shot of it, but it didn't come through until after the show was over.

Yikes!  Never seen this before!  I must have it!  Then followed a series of inquiries by several individuals trying to track down both the vendors and the card.  I did finally discover the identity of the vendor, and I met them at the Dayton show.  But alas, was told the card had sold :-(  Then at the DFC show this summer, one of the individuals who had tried to track it down told me that the card was still available and that there had been some sort of miscommunication!  Hooray!  And it now happily resides with its brethren in the Tulgey Wood.

The interior sports a fairly lengthy verse about living life well...with no reference to the King or Alice whatsoever.  But I will hand it to Joan, a nice obscure card to her friend Gavan is never wrong in my book.

Happy Valentine's Day - 1960s Tri-fold Valentine - Another Variant

Happy Valentine's Day to all my faithful readers!  This valentine card is very similar to the ones I posted here last year and here the year before.  It is tri-fold with the same color scheme as last year's, but this it is not die-cut.

I place this as the newest of the three variants, based on the fact that it is no longer die-cut and therefore cheaper to produce.  I recently came across this picture of a full package of Disney valentines, of which this was one.

Mad Hatter and March Hare Get Well Card by Valentine's Greeting Cards - England

Third in the series is this with both the Mad Hatter and March Hare.

Beautiful art as with the other two.

Mad Hatter Get Well Card by Valentine's Greeting Cards - England

Second in the series of get well cards from Valentine's in England, is this of the Mad Hatter.

Get Well Treble Quick!  Get it, three spouts on the tea pot?  Treble quick?  I crack myself up.

White Rabbit Get Well Card by Valentine's Greeting Cards - England

Fantastic get well card from the English company Valentine's Greeting Cards featuring the White Rabbit.  "Hoping you'll soon be out of the wood" is the sentiment here, although we here in the USA would say "out of the woods."  I like the Tulgey Wood sign that shows the way out.

The inside is where the gold is on this card, showing the White Rabbit in the picture of health, smoking his cigar(?!) and having a spot of tea.  I'm pretty sure this card would not be AMA approved.

As with all English products, this is by permission of Walt Disney Mickey Mouse LTD.

Happy Valentine's Day - 1960s Tri-fold Valentine Variant

Happy Valentine's Day to all my faithful readers!  This valentine card is very similar to the one I posted here last year.  It is die-cut and tri-fold, but this time the inner heart is hot pink instead of red like the outer heart.

I'm guessing that this variant is slightly newer than last years variant, given the color scheme, but still fairly old as it is still die-cut.

Happy Valentine's Day - Vintage Tri-Fold Valentine with Mad Hatter and Alice

Happy Valentine's Day to all my readers.  Various home improvement projects have been putting a cramp on my blog posting, but didn't want to miss an opportunity for posting a vintage valentine.

This valentine is most likely from the 1960s, but I cannot be certain as there is no date on it.  I have vivid memories of valentines like these from my grade school days, the days when my parents (and probably the school) made me give a valentine to EVERYONE in my class, even those yucky creatures called girls.  Ah, how times change.

Life Magazine Photo - Can You Find All the Alice Items? Answers!

Here's what I found in the photo, from left to right, top to bottom:

• Alice gift wrap (the pink square at the far left edge, not yet posted)
• 3 Vira greeting cards
• Gund White Rabbit and Mad Hatter dolls
• Live Flowers LGB
• unknown Alice candy box (!)
• Alice Madame Alexander doll
• Mad Hatter and March Hare Gund dolls
• unknown Alice child garment (!)
• Regal Alice shaker
• Evan K. Shaw figures - Mad Hatter, March Hare, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, White Rabbit, Mad Hatter again, Walrus
• Alice Tea Cup Watch

You get extra credit if you noticed the March Hare SP figure as a part of the Marx playset

Happy Valentine's Day - 1960s Valentine with Alice and the Caterpillar

Wishing everyone a Happy Valentine's Day, and hoping you are spending it with loved ones.

1950 Studio Christmas Card

This week I came to the realization that we are entering the 60th anniversary season for Alice in Wonderland.  And to kick off that season I present to you the Walt Disney Productions corporate Christmas card from 1950.

This is one of my favorite pieces of ephemera from Alice.  The cover is very cool, picturing Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Pluto as they watch Alice and the White Rabbit turn the pages of a copy of Alice in Wonderland.  But the best is to come inside.

A full calendar for 1951 is pictured inside, with fantastic art of the Mad Tea Party, with denizens of all parts of Wonderland celebrating the holiday season.  What better way to start of the new year?

The back of the card teases with a glimpse of the upcoming feature Peter Pan, featuring a brunette Tinker Bell!?

Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday to Me!

Another year has come and gone, lots of Alice has passed through this blog, with lots more to come.  This year I received an Amazon gift certificate via email, and it was in Spanish.  So, what better excuse to post a Spanish language birthday card?

The text of the card reads "I can not believe I forgot, I hope your day has been happy", or something to that effect (Google says so anyways).

I'm not technically late yet, but later than normal, so there it is.

Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!

Happy Valentine's Day - Teacup Ride Valentine with Alice and Mad Hatter

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! From the same set as last years post comes this valentine featuring Disneyland's teacup attraction (with some holiday-specific modifications) with Alice and the Mad Hatter having a spot of tea.


UPDATE: According to Dave Smith at the Walt Disney Archive, this is from 1964 and was produced by Whitman.

Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday to Me!

Yes, it's true, I am a Halloween baby. Go ahead, just try to come up with a joke that I haven't heard in 45 years (yikes, I'm 45!?).

Since I was too lazy to dig out vintage Halloween costumes this year, I'm settling for a birthday card for today's post.

I think this is from the 1970s, it is a Hallmark card, stock number 50B 71-4. It has a 'Productions' copyright, so can't be any later than 1986. Cool thing about this card is that it is a popup. The tea party table pops out at you when you open the card. How cool is that?

Sorry for my lack of posts this past week, it has been review time at work, and I hate writing reviews. But I have some posts already planned for next week, and I bought myself a large format scanner (finally!), so stay tuned for some cool items that wouldn't fit on my regular scanner!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! I love this particular valentine, it came from a set of Disneyland valentines that all featured attractions. I don't know the precise date on this, but obviously post-1958.


UPDATE: According to Dave Smith at the Walt Disney Archive, this is from 1964 and was produced by Whitman.

Vira Greeting Cards - a Page from the Character Merchandising Division Catalog for 1951

While preparing another post, I came across this page in the Character Merchandising Division catalog.

Some of you may recall the series I did on Vira greeting cards back in November of 2008. I had overlooked this page at the time because it was on the back of a page, and in this particular catalog almost all of the Alice merchandise is on the front of the page...that'll teach me.

This page is really interesting, and it illustrates very well something I have noted a couple of times before - what was planned for release and what was actually released don't necessarily coincide. Case in point, card number 410, in the above it is a Mad Hatter card; but in reality card 410 is an Alice card, as seen here. The other designs are all pretty close, although some of these renderings are in fact much nicer than the actual produced card.

Another interesting thing to note is that this page only mentions a single set of 6 cards, but in fact it appears as though they produced a set of 12 cards, a birthday and get well card in each of the 6 designs (although I have only seen 4 get well cards to date).

Buzza Cardoza Birthday Card Record

I hesitated to post this as it is so atrocious, but what the heck.

This is a record greeting card by Buzza Cardoza of Anaheim, California. The content is really pretty unlistenable, but I suppose if you are 5 or 6 years old it is tolerable.

Don't know who the scary voices are, but certainly not Ed Wynn, Jerry Colona, nor Kathryn Beaumont.

Believe it or not, there are actually two versions of this. Cover and inside greeting differ slightly although it appears as though the record itself is the same.



Don't say I didn't warn you...