Small Fry Shoulder Bag by Salient

Years ago I acquired this cute little girl's shoulder bag that featured art of Alice and the White Rabbit with a Rocking Horse Fly (you don't see that every day).  For years I did not know who the manufacturer was, but I suspected it was a company called Salient Inc. of East Longmeadow, MA, who (according to Tomart and the CMD) had a license to produce children's purses and wallets for the years 1951-1952.  Salient is listed in the CMD, but there is no merchandise page in the CMD.

Flash forward a few years, probably around 1998, and I was at the Atlantique show in Atlantic City NJ (now sadly departed) when I came across this brown cardboard box.  The dealer had one of these handbags sitting on the top of it.

I opened the lid and saw this:

Holy crap!  A full box with original built-in store display for the Alice shoulder bag (throw in a few Donald Duck and Pluto for good measure).  While it is difficult to read, the lid has a stenciled 'Small Fry Shoulder Bag' on the top, and a smudge that was probably the item count.  This box held 18, I don't know if that is correct as it is really, really full.  My guess would be that it originally held a dozen.  And how clever is it to create a built-in store display in the shipping box itself?  I love it.  Here is a cleaned-up scan of the inside lid/counter display.  Shoulder bags for little ladies indeed!

There must have been a small find on this bag back in the 1990s, as they turn up every once in a while in mint condition - I have a few extra as well in the Wonderland Bazaar if you'd care to have one.  But this is the only full box with all three styles I've come across.

Original Store Display Sign - Wonderland of Toys

I've been underbidder more often than not on eBay lately (which is probably a good thing), but there are times when you just wish you had gone the extra mile, and this was no exception.  Once again, something I've never seen before, an original store display sign.

This could be unique, a one-off for a local store, I don't really know.  All I know is that it is really cool and I wish I had won, but such was not to be.  As George Carlin says, "you can't have everything, where would you put it?"

The text on the sign reads:  "Another Valu-Rack Department Serviced by Standard Merchandise Co., Los Angeles"  I cannot find any references to this company on the web in the limited searching that I have done, but I presume that they were a local wholesaler of general merchandise to area stores, like the local five and dime.  Large department stores or national chains would have had their own distribution.

It went to a good home, just not mine :-)