Look What Else I Found!

This is one of those posts about finding something you've been hunting for a long, long time.  There must be something in the air, because SvelteStuff just recently posted about making a long sought after find just recently.  Those are the special days when you're out junking.  We've all got our personal "finds" list.  Every now and then, if we're lucky, one will turn up.

One turned up for me on Saturday.

Seriously.  How frikking cool is this?

That's a Playskool "Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" toy, named after the famous nursery rhyme.  I had the Fisher-Price version as a kid and loved it!  I played with it all the time.  I used to pretend the old woman was my grandmother.  Before you start thinking how sweet that is, let me tell you that (when I played) when the children were "bad," the old woman would tie them up in the shoe laces as punishment.  I don't recall that my grandmother ever did that, but then again I was never bad.  Weird, yes, but not mad.

I totally love the older F-P toys and look for them wherever I go.  Clearly, I am not alone in this, because they are really good sellers at the booth.  I've made some good F-P finds this year, but this is like the icing on the cake.  I've found one before, in all my years of searching.  Even though it's a Playskool and is a little different from the F-P version (the FP old woman doesn't wear a funky bonnet, for one), it's still close enough for me and brings back all the memories.

Speaking of the shoe lace, I'm psyched that this one has it!  It's the little bits like this that get lost over time.  I don't know if it's original or not, but I think it might be, on comparing some online photos.  It's half red and half white, which is really cool.  When it's laced into the shoe, it almost gives the impression that there are two different laces being used.

The funny looking kid on the end is actually a dog.  I think.

Best of all, it has the figures with it, including the old woman and her headgear.  I think the F-P version might have had more children and they were smaller.  There was undoubtedly a lot of overlap and copying between PS and F-P.  The different shapes on the boys' bodies would be matched up with the shapes of the windows. It was a multi-purpose learning toy!

Really odd looking dog

Now could that sweet face give anyone both without bread?

Totally rocking that bonnet!

For the record, my grandmother never had a bonnet like that, either.

I'm going to hang onto this one for a while, but will sell it in a bit.  I need to figure out how I want to do that.  Putting it out in the booth is an invitation for the figures to become "lost."  Got some pondering to do.

Plus, I want to bask in the glow of making one of those special finds!