Club Earth on TAi

Whilst Roger, Beatrice and co. are still working very hard on the Play Visions and K&M pages on ToyAnimal.info, I started working on the Club Earth page. There are already several series and sets which we added, which can be found further in this post. But now we need all the information we can get about Club Earth. If you haven't noticed yet, Club Earth has now its own subforum in the STS Modern companies section, where you can show and share all your Club Earth related figurines. Before I start firing all kinds of questions at you, I want to tell a little bit about this brand first.

CLUB EARTH is a nature-themed toy and novelty line created in 1998 by the US company Easy Aces, Inc., stablished in Cumberland (RI), USA. The line featured stationery items, like pens, pencils, note pads, notebooks and also molded plastic toy figurines featuring animal configurations. In 2007 CLUB EARTH was bought by Play Visions.

Unfortunately that's all we've got on this brand at the moment, but it's important to know that it was first an independent line of animal toys, but is now part of Play Visions. You can find the Club Earth section on the Play Visions site here.

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Now back to TAi. You can find the Club Earth section on TAi here. We're already aware of the next sets and series:

• Arctic Animals Set
  
• Extinct Animals Set
  
• Footprints Stamp Series
  
• To Go Series
  
  
  
  • Birds to Go
    
  • Frogs to Go
    
  • Horses to Go
    
  • Lizards to Go
    
  • Snakes to Go
    
  
  
  

There are still a lot of uncertainties about both the brand and its sets. With this topic I hope to gather as much information as possible with your help! Here is a list of information I still need:

1. Any information about Club Earth in general
   
2. Information about other sets and series, not mentioned above
   
3. Information about the individual series: what are the series/sets called, how were they sold (in suitcase, cardboard, ..)
   
4. Information about individual figurines: what species are they marked and are they marked with a number
   

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If you have any information about any of the above matters or any others concerning Club Earth, please comment on this topic or send me a PM. I would be very grateful for any information. Of course photos of missing figurines and any catalogue pages are very welcome as well!

Thanks in advance!

Very interesting stuff!!!!

widukind wrote:

Very interesting stuff!!!!

Indeed, indeed!

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Thanks to Sean (sbell) I know now there's also a Club Earth series of rays (and a sawfish), which can be seen by clicking on 'spoiler' below:

Spoiler:

Oh, great. I think i will add some in my wishlist.

Julie, I hope you can get a lot of info, you're a fantastic researcher, a passioned person and also a very dedicated one.
That's another Club Earth very interesting line, it is good that we have things as clear as possible once it helps collectors finding their figures, to know what exists and obviously, also identifying them. :)
Sawfish is a kind of ray what shows that the company has explored a certain diversity inside a taxonomic group.

This is awesome

You are doing a fantastic job !!!!!

Roger wrote:

Julie, I hope you can get a lot of info, you're a fantastic researcher, a passioned person and also a very dedicated one.
That's another Club Earth very interesting line, it is good that we have things as clear as possible once it helps collectors finding their figures, to know what exists and obviously, also identifying them. :)
Sawfish is a kind of ray what shows that the company has explored a certain diversity inside a taxonomic group.

They are very well-done figures, although the material does not lend itself to decent photos or to painting. I had hoped that the molds were originally used to produce solid figures (like the extinct animals set), but I've never heard of that with anything else from them. Usually, the figures were the soft jiggly rubber in bright colors like these (I used to see them in impulse buy sections of toy and education stores).

The Extinction set came in three carded sets of three (hence, the odd number of figures in the set--9 is unusual) but I can't remember which came with what.

Club Earth was not associated with Play Visions until long after these sets ceased, and mostly produces soft rubber novelties now. It would be hard to differentiate them from doallar-store novelties at this point.

It is possible that these sets are still around--I still saw the ray set available a few years ago in catalogs. The minimum order numbers were way too high to be reasonable (they were sold as a set of 5 in a carded bag).

EDIT--I actually found the set on the Play Visions site, alongside many of the other Stretch figures:
http://www.playvisions.com/Prod-18-1-98-150/ray-stretch.htm

The colours have changed but the models are the same. And we at least have the item number--#STRY (I'm guessing for STretch RaY).

Julie, I have 4 of their birds so I hope I can help with this project. the figures are; brown pelican, turkey vulture, kingfisher and hyacinth macaw.

Thank you for the Information :)

Thank you so much, Roger and Susanne!

sbell wrote:

The Extinction set came in three carded sets of three (hence, the odd number of figures in the set--9 is unusual) but I can't remember which came with what.

We have a photo from Beatrice here. This shows which figurines came with which.

sbell wrote:

EDIT--I actually found the set on the Play Visions site, alongside many of the other Stretch figures:
http://www.playvisions.com/Prod-18-1-98-150/ray-stretch.htm

The colours have changed but the models are the same. And we at least have the item number--#STRY (I'm guessing for STretch RaY).

Thanks, Sean, this is very helpful!!

I'm also really looking forward to see anything you can find in your catalogues

UPDATE

Regarding:

• Birds to Go
  
• Horses to Go
  

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Thanks to Lance (weaselfan93) we now know that the vulture in the Birds to Go set is actually a turkey vulture. I'm waiting for Lance to photograph this perticular bird and the hyacinth macaw and kingfisher, so these can be added to TAi.

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Now to the Horses to Go set. LeeAnn was so helpful to allow me to use her photographs of the Horses to Go set she owned in the past (which can be seen here). Jarda was very helpful as well by sending photographs of all the horse figurines he owns from this set. But there are actually quite some difference between his and LeeAnn's horses, which could lead us to the conclusion that there were several Horses to Go sets available. I made simple collage of the horses together, the ones with the hand-background by Jarda and the ones with the blue background by LeeAnn:


<sub>Above: Arab 2x
Middle: Shetland 2x
Below: Exmoor, Coloured Horse and unidentified (shire?)


Above: Standardbred 2x
Middle: Welsh (Section B) 2x
Below: Thoroughbred 2x


Above: Appaloosa, Fjord
Middle: Lipizzaner 2x
Below: Haflinger 2x</sub>

Sadly, LeeAnn sold her set of Horses to Go figurines, so we can't check on their breeds. But the fact that most of them are the same mold (but other colouring), would probably mean that they are the same breeds as Jarda's.

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That's the update for now. Please let me know if there's anything you own or discovered that could help the Club Earth page on TAi. I'll probably be working on the Club Earth caterpillars next, so wish me luck..