Mr. Potato Head Ride-On Toy

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a long-sought, hard-to-find vintage Potato Head item. From 1973, the Mr. Potato Head Ride-On toy is one of the strangest, and scarcest, items in this long running line.

Measuring 17 inches long, the mobile potato features yellow wheels, a handle, and a seat that lifts up to reveal a storage space for extra face pieces. It comes with two different sets of eyes, ears, noses and lips, along with a hat and glasses, allowing its owner to customize it before taking it for a spin.

Mr. Egg-Bodd, Mr. Potato Head's British Friend

Meet Mr. Egg-Bodd, Mr. Potato Head's friend made and sold in Great Britain in the 1960s.

Mr. Egg-Bodd is very different from other Potato Head friends of the time, because, as his name suggests, he has a very unique body. While Mr. P and his various fruit, vegetable, condiment, and other pals all shared the same humanized plastic body, Mr. E's is made from an egg cup.

He came in a colorful box along with a Mr. Potato Head. The box end features a cartoony panel of the two characters peeking over the edge. Mr. E is depicted as a brown egg on the box, although the actual egg inside this set is white.

Mr. Egg-Bodd is a stylish fellow, sporting a top hat, pince-nez glasses, a pipe, and a very dapper pencil moustache.

Mrs. Potato Head, Housespud, in the Biggest All-New Combination Pack

My latest vintage Potato Head set is one of the rarest, and also the largest, with the box measuring in at 18 inches wide by 12.5 tall. That's a pretty big box for a toy that, in the years before plastic potatoes were added, usually consisted of little more than a handful of tiny face pieces.

But the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Biggest All-New Combination Pack contains much more than the typical set. In fact, it has everything including the kitchen sink!

 

Produced for a brief period in the early 1960s, the Biggest All-New Combination Pack was an attempt to accessorize the Potato Heads in a way that would appeal to both boys and girls, and the large box made it appear to be especially deluxe. In reality, the set's accessories were cheaper than cheap, but the cover art really sold it.

The package included not just one vehicle for Mr. Potato Head, and not just a car, like some of his other sets. This one came with a plane, a train, and a boat.

For Mrs. Potato Head, there was a set of gleaming new kitchen appliances, and a baby in a stroller. (More about that baby in a minute...)

Inside, the accessories were tucked into cardboard backers, while fragile styrofoam display heads held the Mr. & Mrs. face pieces. Both the cardboard backers and the styrofoam heads are very easily damaged while trying to remove the pieces, which is probably one reason the set is so scarce today.

Here is Mr. Potato Head's garage. The vehicles are made of a brittle plastic, and the wheels had a tendency to snap off. These are now rarely found intact.

 

  

This is Mrs. Potato Head's kitchen set. The items are each molded from a single piece of flimsy plastic. They don't have any moving parts, so, for instance, the doors can't open. They are identical to the items found furnishing the metal dollhouses so common in this time period.

 

 

And here is the much advertised new baby, in his stroller. He must have been adopted, as he is clearly a human baby, and not a potato. Or perhaps Hasbro didn't want to go to the expense of designing and molding a new potato character, and they just tossed in these cheap dollhouse babies, apparently thinking kids wouldn't notice.

 

 

 

The set comes with instruction booklets for both Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (and look: there's the human baby right on the cover!) The inside of Mrs. P's gives us a telling glimpse into societal expectations for women at this time:

 

 

Yep, that's right: Mr. Potato Head gets to go gallivanting about in his boat, train, or airplane, but Mrs. P. is expected to stay home with her non-functioning kitchen appliances and the freaky baby.

 

 

 

Mr. Potato Head on the Moon

The year was 1968. The United States was in the midst of its space race, as engineers and scientists worked feverishly to send the first man to the moon. At the same time, toy designers at Hasbro worked just as feverishly to come up with new ideas for their hit toy line, Mr. Potato Head. The result was Mr. Potato Head on the Moon, a clever set in a gorgeously illustrated box that allowed children "to change fruits and vegetables into spaceships, astronauts, or moon people!"

Inside the box was a huge assortment of pieces unique to this set, including a space helmet; alien feet, antennae, fanged mouths, giant eyes, and various other appendages; and spaceship parts. This set was meant to be used with real fruits and vegetables, and did not include a plastic potato. The instructions suggested using a cucumber for the spaceship, an onion (!) for the alien, and a potato for the astronaut.

Mr. Potato Head on the Moon is now one of the rarest and most valuable of the vintage sets, and was long considered a Holy Grail of sorts for Potato collectors. In a quirky bit of cosmic coincidence, I finally found mine just a few days ago, around the time of the recent Blue Moon!

"That's one small step for potatoes, one giant leap for potato collectors."

Mr. Potato Head Picnic Pals

We're just about to head out for our Fourth of July picnic, so it's the perfect time to post one of my favorite vintage Mr. Potato Head sets: his friends the Picnic Pals, created in 1966.

The Picnic Pals were some of the most unusual items ever released in the Potato Head line. There were 6 characters, all featuring plastic heads with separate bodies: Frenchy Fry, Mr. Ketchup Head,  Frankie Frank, Mr. Mustard Head, Willy Burger, and, to wash it all down, Mr. Soda Pop Head.

From left to right: Frenchy Fry, Mrs. Ketchup Head, Mr. Mustard Head,
Frankie Frank, Mr. Soda Pop Head, and Willy Burger.

The Picnic Pals came with specialized accessory pieces made just for them: onion slice ears, pickle noses, and eyes the color of ketchup or mustard.

The Pals were sold in two ways: the first was the rare complete set box, shown below, which contained all the characters plus their original Potato friend.

A rather sinister looking Willy Burger and his henchman, Frankie Frank,
appear to threaten a trembling Frenchy Fry in this box art.
Not sure what that's all about.

The second variation was a tall, slim box with colorful art work, which included one main character, a condiment or beverage buddy, and a Mr. Potato Head.

For some unknown reason, Willy Burger is the hardest to find of the Picnic Pals, although they are all much more scarce than the regular Potato Heads.

We're off to our picnic to eat some of these.
Hopefully ours won't be staring at us.

1970s British Mr. Potato Head

Part of a collection of vintage German and British Potato Heads I recently purchased, this boxed version was made in England by Peter Pan Toys in 1974. Licensed by Hasbro, it is nonetheless strikingly different from the American original. The plastic potato is a different shade of brown, and most of the accessory pieces are also differently colored and shaped. There was also a licensed character unique to England at this time: Mr. Egg Bodd, a hard-boiled egg man with an egg cup outfit he could wear. Sadly, I've yet to find one, but I remain hopeful.

Even though Mr. Potato Head came with a plastic potato by this time, this box depicts his friends made from real fruit and veggies. The art design of this box is quite crude compared to the richly illustrated German examples posted yesterday, but it has its own naive appeal.

Here's the British Mr. Potato Head inside his box,

surrounded by his simply drawn but charming friends.

West German Mr. Potato Head Sets

I recently acquired several vintage 1950s-60s West German and English Mr. Potato Head sets. Some are knock-offs, some were licensed by Hasbro, but they're all fascinatingly different from their American counterparts.

First up: three 1950s knock-off sets made in West Germany. They are all housed in flat cardboard boxes, the same size and shape as those a paper doll set would come in, or a tiddlywinks game. They were released at the time Mr. Potato Head still used real potatoes; the toy sets were comprised solely of accessory and limb parts, and it would be several years before the plastic potato was introduced.

"Mr. and Mrs. Funny Face" features intriguing illustrations of some rather sinister looking potatoes.

Inside, the parts are inserted into holes in the liner, and an illustration of an anxious-looking potato head with a Salvador Dali mustache serves as an example of a completed toy.

If Dali were a potato...

The next West German set features marvelous illustrations of fruit and veggie people on the cover.

The caption reads:

"MANY AMUSING CHARACTERS CAN BE MADE UP WITH THE AID OF

FRUIT OR VEGETABLES."

The interior is similar to that of the previous set:

Kinda creepy Mrs. Potato Head, no?

The last German set is more colorful and friendly seeming,

with bright colors and a happier looking Mr. P-Head.

Inside the "Mr. and Mrs. Funny Face" box.

This one's a jolly potato head, with a prominent pipe.

Coming up tomorrow: a licensed Mr. Potato Head made in England in the 1970s.

Antique Show Find: Mr. Potato Head Knock Off

Mr. Potato Head and I have a longstanding love affair, but occasionally I succumb to the charms of one his imitators. This "Funny Face Kit" was made in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, a low grade knock-off of the original. The whole set is just 5 1/4 inches tall, made of cheap plastic attached to a thin card. Potato Head experts have discovered these originally came in cellophane bags, and were distributed via dime stores or as carnival prizes. Visit mrpotatohead.net, source of my arcane knowledge, to see more fun fakes.

Silly Billy: Vintage Mr. Potato Head Knock-Off

Vintage Mr. Potato Head toys are some of my favorite collectibles. Besides Mr. P-head himself, there are lots of related items to search for, including many knock-offs made during the early years of the craze. This set, Silly Billy, was particularly bold, even including the manufacturer's name and address on the box.

The contents appear to have been molded right from the originals, and the illustrations are virtually identical. Naughty, naughty. I can't imagine they got away with this for very long.

You can see lots more Mr. Potato Head knock-offs (and rare vintage Potato Head stuff) at www.mrpotatohead.net.

Mr. Potato Head Picnic Pals

From the 1960s, the Mr. Potato Head Picnic Pals! Mr. Potato Head has led a very sociable lifestyle. Besides the Mrs. and the tots, he's had a lot of friends. These are some of the hardest to find. They were typically sold in sets of 3 consisting of Mr. Potato Head, a "main character" Picnic Pal, and a condiment or side. From left to right: Frankie Frank, Mr. Mustard Head, Mrs. Ketchup Head, Frenchy Fry, and Mr. Soda Pop Head. Sadly, I am still looking for the final Picnic Pal: Willy Burger.

To learn more about Mr. Potato Head's history, click here: http://www.mrpotatohead.net/