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Rag Bricks
Trumptonalia.
A set of "Rag Bricks" by Dean & Son.
Dean & Son produced lots of washable rag books over the years,and
I suppose this was a fairly logical extension of the concept.
But only logical to them it seems as they actually invented the whole
concept of a squashable toy brick.
Because prior to that they'd always been made of wood.
I'm not exactly sure when these came out,as there's no copyright date.
But it's definitely no later than the 1980's.
And I do know that this was the only Trumptonshire set they produced.
Which is a pity,because they're really tactile,colourful items.
And the artwork may look familiar to some of you because the illustrator was also responsible for the Camberwick version of the rag books - Josephine Wilkinson
The set has 9 "bricks" that came in a transparent plastic hold-all style bag ( not pictured ).
With each one being a 4" square piece of squidgee foam covered in fabric.
Below - The 6 sides of each one are configured as follows :-
Pics 1 & 2 ... 1 side has individual Camberwick characters & 1 side has individual Trumpton characters.
Pics 3 & 4 ... 2 sides have parts of images that only make sense when all put together to form a scene from both Camberwick and Trumpton.
The remaining 2 sides don't have any illustrations at all and are just 2 solid blocks of colour -1 red and 1 green.
cont ...
cont. ... A couple of interesting things to note ...
1. These were definitely produced after 1969. So it's the usual damning indictment of Chigley that they didn't think 9 of its residents would be memorable enough to fill at least half of those blank sides.
And,truth be known,it's actually quite a hard case to argue.
2. It's also interesting that these were designed and drawn by a woman,and that the Camberwick and Trumpton scenes both have the 2 most important female characters as their centre point -Mrs.Honeyman and Miss Lovelace.
And it's not often that the series big-hitters like Windy and the fireman are relegated into the role of onlookers.
Not a criticism,just an observation !
Anyhow,all good fun.
And kids would've enjoyed bouncing them off the walls and trying to find out what was in them.
Which probably wouldn't have been too difficult,as they only had stitched seams for protection.
Below is a photo of the front and back of the label that came inside the packet. And ...
Despite the claims,it would be interesting to know just how resilient ( and colourfast ) they actually were.
And I like the bit,top right,that seems to infer that users of traditional wooden toy bricks were at serious risk !
cont ...
And finally .... Here are the patent details for rag bricks for anyone that's interested. It's quite a short page here
