What is your favourite vintage (pre 1970) brand?

I see we have a thread, with a poll, about members' current brands favourites, so I thought I'd start a parallel thread about vintage brands, so as not to intrude on that thread.

I haven't included a poll, partly because there were so many vintage brands, and partly because I'm more interested in gathering thoughtful comments about them.

For me, starting collecting as a kid in the UK, it has to be Britains Ltd overall, simply because of the vast range and excellent overall quality in both the lead and plastic eras. However, I'm not a Britains fan to the extent of not acknowledging that they did make some real duds. Two of their worst (in animal ranges. I won't mention some of their dud soldiers) were the lead 'cob' farm horse, a scrawny lifeless beast which looks nothing like a (Welsh) cob, and the deer stag (lead and 1st version plastic) which was similarly lifeless and scrawny. But there were some great figures too, such as the lead wild horse and Ayrshire cattle bull/cow/calf, the plastic cats and rabbits, lead & 1st plastic American bison, and many others.

Other UK companies were a bit up and down in quality, but they did produce some gems. In lead farm/village people there were the great grouping of the JoHillCo Inn Keeper and the Pixyland/Kew seated and standing beer drinking customers.

They wouldn't be allowed today (encouraging kids to drink ), but no political correctness in kids' toys back in the 1930s thankfully.

Elastolin and Marx :) and Starlux but i think this brand isnt pre 1970

Jeol :)

As Kiki mentioned, Jeol is slightly younger...

So I vote for Durolin, composite animals manufacturer from former Czechoslovakia (although I have some figures from 70/80 era).

Starlux is a pre-70's brand Andreas, the first wild animal series was made in 1953

But I'm sure Jeol isn't a pre 70's brand even if it is vintage

It is very hard for me to choose only one pre70's brand as a favorite

So I will choose three if you don't mind.

Two are French and one is German: Clairet, Blancherie Freres and Lineol.

Clairet because of the special touch' of the series, the art deco style which is so elegant and unique. The beautiful sculptures made by François Clairet are even enhanced by the "painting" technique, the different variations and shades are not painted: They are produced with different colours of plastic.

Blancherie Freres because they are for me the Gold medal of the Hollowcast lead wild animal brands, both for quality of production, paintings and range.

Lineol... For the same reasons than BF. This brand reached the zenith of the Composition animal brands.

Kikimalou wrote:

It is very hard for me to choose only one pre70's brand as a favorite

So I will choose three if you don't mind.

Two are French and one is German: Clairet, Blancherie Freres and Lineol.

Blancherie Freres because they are for me the Gold medal of the Hollowcast lead wild animal brands, both for quality of production, paintings and range.

You can have as many favourite brands as you like in this thread - I only titled it as I did to make it an obvious divergence from the other thread. I didn't include a poll because I'm not interested in a popularity contest, but hope there will be interesting posts with reasons why people like these brands. It might even encourage some of our younger members to look in the vintage section a bit more.

As for the BF lead wild/zoo animals - I only wish I had some! They never seem to come up for sale here in the UK, and I have seen how wonderful they are in Richard Lewis's Zoo Man Toy Box site.

I did manage to buy some nice lead BF stone walls from their farm/village range recently though.

Richard Lewis's Zoo Man Toy Box site is indeed a goldmine, too bad it is sleeping for a long time now.

Given my past preferred scale Dave, I'd be tempted to say Merten or Preiser, but actually it's got to be the Marx range in non-HO 'HO'! The Ark, Zoo's, Jungle Village, Explorers and stand alone range in two issues gives a vast number of tiny little animals in styrene and ethylene with paint and materiel colour variations...lovely!

I see I haven't commented here yet.
Although I like almost all vintage companies, my favorite is clearly Lineol.
Most composition figures seems to be made from draws or stuffed animals. Starlux and Clairet opted for an artistic style. Apparently Britains and Lineol, mainly in their 4th generation, tried to sculpt directly from living animals what make them look more realistic. Adding to it, Lineol risked making animals with very delicate parts like their antelopes and they have very thin legs, horns, etc, giving them very realistic proportions. They also have great poses and even other kind of figures represent animals in a very fair way. Fortunately, these figures also had a decorative function so we don't see a toyish style in them. Lineol 4th generation, my favorite.

One thing about the STS Forum is that I am now aware of lots of different firms making animal figures from a variety of time periods. However, my favourite pre 1970’s company is Britains. Perhaps it is because I grew up collecting them when a child and they made available wonderful catalogues so I could tick off the ones I had. Plus they were available in toy shops and in department stores so no need to hunt around for them. I never had any lead animals even in the late 1950’s all the animals I remember were in the then new material - plastic. My first plastic animals were the Herald farm series so in fact I should say that I have two favourite companies - Herald and Britains. Herald were gradually taken over by Britains but it took until 1959 before they became fully integrated into the Britains company. However, Herald worked almost independently until the early 1970’s.

Now I have a wider interest in vintage, pre-1970 companies, but as yet I don’t have original Preiser, Merten, Elastolin etc… 1:43rd scale or 1:32nd scale animal figures. Still looking though.