Good-Win Paint Your Own Walt Disney Figures in Pottery

Good-Win (Strome & Co Ltd) of London, England was a manufacturer of games and puzzles in the early to mid-twentieth century.  While I have been unable to find much information on this company, they appear to have primarily made dominoes, jigsaw puzzles, and a few other games as well.  The parent company of Strome & Co. does appear in the catalog for the British Industries Fair from 1947 as a maker of a variety of toys and games.

To date only one Disney series has been identified from Good-Win, a series of three Paint Your Own Figures sets featuring ceramic pieces manufactured by Weetman.  These date from 1952 or earlier based on the characters available:  Mickey & Donald, Tweedle Dee & the Mad Hatter, and Flower & Thumper.  It is possible that other items exist since the box for this item pictures additional Disney characters from Cinderella, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Pluto, and the Three Little Pigs.

All items by Good-Win carry their logo of a boy crossing the finish line of a track race with the words Good-Win Reg Trade Mark.

The Paint Your Own Walt Disney Figures in Pottery set for Alice appears to have been made at the time of the film’s release in the UK, 1951 or 1952 at the latest.  A hand-written price on the label of 6/3 equates to about $0.88 in 1951, and $14.14 in today’s dollars.

The set for Alice contains figures for the Mad hatter and Tweedle Dee, as identified by the label on the bottom of the box.  The contents consist of one each of the small white ware figures manufactured by Weetman, with a paint brush, tray, and four tubes of paint.  An instruction sheet is also included, with some advice on how to glaze the figures with some sort of varnish when you are happy with your results - varnish not included of course.

Weetman 'Disneyland Ware' Figures - White

As a follow-up to yesterday's post I present to you the solid white variant of the Weetman figures.

I don't really know *exactly* what these are. Were they made to be sold like this, or are they just 'blanks' that got out unpainted? Pictured here are Walrus salt and pepper shakers,


Tweedle shaker and regular figure,


and small-size Mad Hatter figure.


The size difference is odd too. This Mad Hatter is significantly smaller than his full color counterpart, so did they produce multiple sizes for them all?! I hope not...

Supposedly there is a Weetman catalog out there somewhere that pictures LOTS of these figures, as well as the set of Cinderella-ware. I'd love to get a look at it to see what was produced.

UPDATE:  After many years I now have new information.  The small size Hatter and Dee (which I now know is correct) are by Weetman but made (exclusively?) for a company called Good-Win as part of a paint set with the ever-so-obvious name "Paint Your Own Walt Disney Figures in Pottery", some marketing genius at work over there I tell 'ya.  Stay tuned for a full post.

Weetman 'Disneyland Ware' Figures from England

One of the more obscure sets of figures from Alice come from an English company called Weetman. They are most well known for their Cinderella tea set where all the pieces are figural in nature, the tea pot being the pumpkin coach. But they did do a set of figures for Alice as well. I'm not sure how many they did, but for sure they did Mad Hatter, March Hare, Walrus, and Tweedles. They did figures in full color and solid white, and some of the figures also come as salt and peppers.


These are the full color variety for the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Walrus. Their painting is rather odd, but has a certain primitive charm to it. Each of these figures retains its original foil label, much like the Shaw figures had, but it is especially uncommon to find them with labels intact. Other than the styling of the characters themselves, the foil label is the only marking that identifies them as Disney.


Some figures are stamped on the bottom, either ink or incised. I've seen the following marks: Gr. Britain Jersey, Great Britain Channel Islands, Weetman Giftware England.