It's been a while since I've posted any vintage paper but as I was going through one of the boxes with paper stuff I ran across this thing again which I got seven years ago. The original paperwork was still with it and the seller described it as a "1920's Kellogg's Cereal Premium Log House". yeah, okay, log house huh? (some people's kids!) It's a fort, obviously a fort. It may very well be a Kellogg's mail-in premium but none of the pieces are marked. Any marking would have been on the surrounding cardboard from which the pieces would have been punched out. 1920's? - I just don't know. Any help positively identifying this thing would be appreciated. Also, I have no idea if this was a generic structure or was it based on an actual fort?
Assembling it was a bear for several reasons:
-Most tabs were broken off causing me to lean several pieces against each other so as to be able to photograph the assembly
-It uses tab-&-slot construction and the surviving tabs have become flimsy. Having lost their firmness the tabs no longer fit into the slots easily
- The outer wall (or 'fence' as it is referred to on the pieces themselves) pieces don't join at right angles. The two corner towers have slots cut into them for the inner walls and outer wooden fence The two slots are way too close to each other and cause the outer fence to be skewed as you'll see in the photos. I believe that, if the tabs for the fence were spaced further away from the wall tabs, the fence itself would have assembled in a more correct manner. All the tabs were carefully matched to their appropriate slots so the parts were assembled in the correct order.
As shown in the photos, the fort consists of an inner keep or courtyard with a separate flag stand and an outer 'fence'. The overall footprint is ca 17 1/2" (44.45cm) square. The inner courtyard is 13 1/2" (34.29cm) square and the corner towers are 6" (15.24cm) H. The doors are 35mm high but that would mean any figures meant to go with this would need to be around 30mm tall - a non-standard size to be sure by today's pre-occupation (obsession?) with scale and size. If it were a cereal premium from back in the '20s none of that would have mattered anyway to the manufacturer.
Our next post will be scans of the individual components. Until then - Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina
The front gatehouse
Here's an interesting detail - there's no way to get into the compound! Behind the front fence is the gatehouse, yet there is no gate to allow people to enter tharough the fence!! That detail was omitted in the artwork. DOH!
A drone's-eye view from the gatehouse showing the courtyard's inner detail including the flag stand
The wall to the immediate left of the gatehouse wall
No entryway here
A drone's-eye view from the left side
Here's the back side, or what I've come to refer to as the Chapel Wall because the 'stone' structure resembles a small on-site chapel (the front of the 'Chapel' can be seen in the drone's-eye view of the gatehouse wall)
You'll notice there's no entryway here either
A drone's-eye view of the Chapel Wall
The wall to the immediate right of the gatehouse
Still no entryway
A bird's eye view of the fort. The skewed walls are readily apparent here.
You see how the slots for the inner wall and outer fence are so close together? Had they made the fence slot further apart, perhaps eveything would have assembled more squarely
These Giant of Hong Kong Western pieces are a tad too small but still look okay
A Giant of Hong Kong HO scale figure by one of the doors. he's just a little too short but not by much!