The Narrative of History

Hey guys. Long story short, I had an emotionally rough kind of day today, and I am not in the most… talkative mood right now. At least not in public.

On a slightly more positive note, I’ve been doing a little research – trying to get that paperwork for BreyerFest done that I know some of you are most anxious about – and I ran across this almost by accident:

The original source page from the 1950 Sears Wishbook, here:

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1950-Sears-Christmas-Book/0315

It is sometimes stated that history is written by the winners, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s partly about who controls the narrative – it’s not always the literal or metaphorical winners – and also about access to the source materials.

I’ve had to struggle with both issues, but more with the latter than the former: a lot of research materials are inaccessible, unaffordable, or simply (but hopefully, only temporarily?) lost to time.

Anyway, I knew about the existence of this particular page – the first appearance of Breyer’s earliest proprietary products in a holiday gift catalog – for a while now, but I didn’t have access to a decent image of it until this week.

It doesn’t necessarily add much more to the Breyer story, but it is nice to have, nevertheless.

The reappearance of this page on my history radar, however, also happens to bring the narrative control issue into high relief.

Breyer is technically celebrating its 70th Anniversary this year, but if you go back to 1950, the only Breyer products that Breyer was actively engaged in promoting were… the Money Manager and the Cigarette Host, as shown above.

The Western Horse likely had its “soft” (informal) release sometime in 1950, but it wasn’t until 1951 that it had its official introduction at Toy Fair. “Breyer Animal Creations” probably didn’t exist as a formal division of the Breyer Molding Company until 1952, at the earliest. (But it definitely did by 1953!)

But 1950 is a nice round number and all the other facts are close enough to be good enough, so the finer and more accurate nuances of history often get shunted aside. 

My Own My Own Money Manager

I sometimes joke – only slightly – that I’m allergic to the month of August.

Judging from the way I’ve felt for the past three or four days, it looks like it’s going to be an especially rough August this year. Time to stock up on the Benadryl…

Anyway, now seems a good time to show you a picture of this, a birthday present from good friends Larry and Ellen:

It’s a Flag Red version of the infamous My Own Money Manager – aka Breyer’s first, modestly successful attempt at breaking into the children’s toy market, in its pre-equine days.

Our best guess now – based on the documentation we have, an examination of existing pieces, and a confab* with fellow Early Breyer History Nerds – is that the Money Manager predates the Cigarette Host.

The Money Managers merely have a “Pat. Pending” mold mark, while the Cigarette Host has a more detailed one; I still haven’t located the Patent yet, though that’s mostly because it’s been relegated to my “TBD” file, along with “find the original Hagen-Renaker lawsuit paperwork”, “finish your Playthings Magazine research”, and “locate any actual company wholesale price lists from 1959-1962”.

Based on a short article featured in a 1952 issue of Playthings, it is mentioned that the Money Manager had been on the market for “three years”, which would mean a debut date of 1949; the Cigarette Host first appears a year later, in the 1950 Sears Wishbook – right next to the Money Manager.

So even before they got started with the horses, Breyer was already repurposing molds!

All I need now is a “Forest Green” version of the Money Manager, and the alleged 6-Drawer version (that still remains unfound) to complete the most obscure Breyer Collector’s Class entry ever.

(*It has been pointed out to me by a couple of different people now that I might have to start arranging meetups at BreyerFest like the YouTubers and Instagrammers do. I will have to give it some thought.)

Breyer Promoted Smoking?

I’d thought that I had already discussed this topic here, but it appears I am mistaken. So here’s a slight rewrite of the article I wrote in my 2003 MGR Sampler about the Breyer Cigarette Host.

I don’t have color copies of the original photos: the Host itself is translucent tortoishell, the box it came in was light brown, and the cigarette labels are metallic gold. Also, the auction I refer to in the article was in November, 2002.

At the time I also assumed that the Cigarette Host predated the Money Manager, but they may well have been released simultaneously.

After the government contracts dried up after WWII, the Breyer Molding Company struggled to find proprietary products to supplement its business. One of these products they experimented with was the Cigarette Host, a miniature cigarette case/humidor. Resembling a miniature filing cabinet, and molded of swirly, imitation tortoiseshell, it was meant to hold an assortment of cigarettes. Each of the four drawers had pull tabs where labels of your favorite brands could be placed.

As you might have guessed, it didn’t sell well. It was neither particularly useful – each drawer could barely hold a dozen cigarettes – nor unique. Just like ashtrays, plastic cigarette cases were given away by local businesses as advertising novelties. Why buy a cigarette case at the dime store when your local bank or auto dealership was giving them away for free?

In an effort to recoup their investment – and to break into the emerging postwar toy market – the Cigarette Host was retooled and sold as a toy bank: the My Own Money Manager. The Money Manager, available in either “Flag Red” or “Forest Green”, met with marginally more success; it can be seen in early Breyer advertising, usually alongside the Western Horse. It even merited a full-page ad in the March 1952 issue of Playthings (tucked behind the Western Horse ad, of course.)

Once Breyer discovered the awesome selling power of plastic horses, however, the Money Manager was also doomed. An educational toy bank (with a booklet on the principles of money management!) simply can’t compete with a toy horse (with removable saddle!) I mean really, if you were an eight year old, wouldn’t the choice be obvious?

While we have plenty of documentary material about the Money Manager, the only evidence we had that the Cigarette Host actually existed (outside of Peter Stone’s brain) was the 1950 Sears Wishbook, where it was listed next to the Money Manager. (Yes, a child’s toy bank was listed next to a cigarette case: this was 1950, remember?) And that’s as far as our knowledge of this bit of history went, because no one actually owned an example.

Until now.

A Cigarette Host turned up in the one place where everything has (or will eventually) end up: eBay. It was listed, not illogically, in the Tobacciana category (smoking memorabilia). It was in the original box, complete with labels. I had to have it – not just for its historical value or rarity, but for an unbeatable collector’s class entry. (Test Colors? Decorators? Bah!) Luckily, I was the lone bidder, and it was mine for the princely sum of $1.99 – exactly 30 cents more than its original selling price in the Wishbook.

I was amazed to find it as small as it was advertised: just a little over 4 inches square. The most amazing thing to me was the fact that was embossed – not with the familiar round Breyer seal, but with the words BREYER MOLDING CO., CHICAGO, ILL., PAT PENDING, MADE IN U.S.A. (I haven’t had time to dig up the alleged patent, just yet.)

Further physical examination of the piece also reveals other reasons why the Cigarette Host wasn’t the success Breyer hoped it would be: it appears to be a rather complicated piece to assemble, and was probably not very profitable to make. And from the amount of warping and shrinking visible in my example (the drawers cannot be opened), we can guess another reason why we haven’t seen many (or any) others: after a few years of use, most of them probably ended up in the trash.

The most interesting thing about the Cigarette Host is how much it actually has in common with the plastic equines, aside from a common heritage. Both products promote two well-known products of Kentucky (horses and tobacco); they encourage addictive behaviors that drain your pocketbook; and in large quantities, are probably bad for you (in completely different ways, of course.) Unfortunately for us, they haven’t invented the “Breyer Patch” yet.