Trimfoot Shoes Alice in Wonderland Advertising Manual - The Alice Look!

Every once in a while something turns up that just completely blows me away.  This is one such item.  The complete advertising and promotional kit for Trimfoot Shoe's Alice in Wonderland campaign.

This thing is truly amazing, 16 pages plus cover and one insert of advertising gold for Trimfoot Shoes.  The campaign was called "The 'Alice' Look" and was centered around the marketing of a series of five different girls' shoes styles based on Alice.  

The manual contains sample ads, copy, artwork, you name it, for you and your local shoestore to maximize your "Alice" campaign.  It even pictures some Stensgaard displays that could be ordered to enhance your window treatments.

But the best part of course are the shoes, I especially love the "March Hare" with the ear-like appendages on the ankle strap.

Interestingly Trimfoot still exists, and although they don't appear to have a Disney license per se at this time, they do make some Marvel character shoes, so technically they are still a Disney licensee.  

National Leather Manufacturing Company Catalog 1953

I was very excited when I found this, a retailer catalog for National Leather Manufacturing Co., Inc. of Brooklyn, NY, as it features several children's bags that I have long wondered about. The catalog lists a wide variety of leather bags and brief cases for business use, but has a large section devoted to Disney bags in the first six pages, along with some other character bags following (I especially like the Captain Video bag).

There is an emphasis on Peter Pan, as that was the new film they were promoting with this catalog (dated January 1953).  According to Tomart, they were a licensee starting in 1951, so it is likely that the Alice bags were available as part of Alice's release, although until a catalog is found from that period it is only speculation.

Of primary interest to me are, of course, the Alice bags, starting with WD30 pictured above, the Alice in Wonderland schoolbag.  Listed as coming in assorted colors and plaid twill, rubberized.  The art is so-so, and as you see, is the only art used on the entire line..

Next up is WD10, the Alice in Wonderland shoulder bag, and WD20, the Alice in Wonderland Utility Bag.  The shoulder bag is essentially the same material and construction as the schoolbag, but the Utility Bag is a vinyl bag, looks kinda like a smallish bowling bag.

Finally WD37, the Alice in Wonderland schoolbag with shoulder strap rather than handles, and no pencil pocket.

Prices listed here are per dozen, which boils down to wholesale pricing per bag as follows:

WD30 - $1.00
WD10 - $0.40
WD20 - $0.90
WD37 - $0.56

$1 in 1951 dollars is equal to about $9 in 2013 dollars, figure that retail markup is about 2x, yields retail pricing on these bags as follows:

WD30 - $18.00
WD10 - $7.20
WD20 - $16.10
WD37 - $10.08

I guess that looks about right.  Stay tuned for more on these National Leather bags.

The Great Cookie Conundrum

While perusing the CMD for other posts, I came across the page for Leeds.  

On that page (which was on the back side of an Alice page, when will I learn to TURN the page) was the listing for the Alice cookie jar by Leeds, which I originally posted last year.

In that post I discussed and pictured the two know Leeds variations on the Alice cookie jar. The blue

and the white

I also previously posted an image from the campaign book, but I now have a better scan of that page

Also in that post I mentioned that while I had never seen this particular style of cookie jar for Alice, I had seen a Donald Duck jar in that style (in a variety of colors), which is also pictured on the CMD page.

This style matches the blue Alice jar.

What I had never noticed before though was this price sheet on the CMD page

Notice how there are two sizes listed for the Alice jar, as well as the Donald and Mickey jars.  Could it be that these two variations are really the two different sizes listed here?

Parfait Soap Sets

Some of the scariest things I've ever seen are these two soap sets by Parfait.  The two sets are Alice and the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter and March Hare.

Each set comes with a soap figure, and a small bag of bubble bath in an illustrated clear plastic box.  The box design is identical for both sets, with just the character names differing.

The soap sets are listed in the Character Merchandise Division catalog for 1951, along with the White Rabbit sachet and a similar set of soap figures for Cinderella.

Evan K. Shaw Catalog

I was lucky enough to stumble across this Evan K. Shaw catalog pretty early on in my collecting days, and it is this catalog that eventually led me to the teapots in yesterday's post. It has a great cover of Alice in front of what looks like a production background of the Tulgey Wood. The little blurb is kinda weird - since when are Disney figures 'native American art'? Did Metlox only employ American Indians?!

The cover is actually a wraparound cover, the back half featuring additional figures of the White Rabbit, the Tweedles and the Walrus.

The remaining 3 character figures (Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse) along with the teapots is pictured on the first page.


There is a cool interior page that shows all the fascinating displays you can create with these wonderful Disney figures in your very own home. I love the 1950s decor pictured here,

although I must say I don't think I'd ever create a center piece like the Alice one they pictured.

Inside back cover is the price list. I must admit I was a little surprised at how much these figures were, at least what the suggested retail prices were. Alice was $3.50, which works out to about $28.75 today according to the inflation calculator. What does a park figure go for these days?

1951 Walt Disney Character Merchandising Division Catalog

I've mentioned this item in several previous posts, thought I'd devote a post entirely to it - the Character Merchandising Division Catalog.

This is another one of those things that most people don't believe exists. And in a sense they are correct, it is not a traditional Kay Kamen catalog - his death bringing about an end to that era - but rather an internally produced merchandising division catalog, or as it says on the cover, News About Walt Disney Character Merchandise. Even still, so rare that it was thought not to exist, although there is a photo of the cover in the TOMART condensed edition on page 280.

I have only seen two of these ever - mine (which I got from the estate of a Retlaw employee) and one that Disney sold on eBay a few years back (when the Disney Auctionears was still in operation). Mine is a folder (like a Pee Chee for those who remember them) containing a large number of loose leaf, 3-hole punched pages. The one from Disney auctions was spiral bound, but I imagine it was similar, probably the folder was cut down to page size and then the whole thing bound. I do remember that the spiral binding was a little odd in that the spiral was longer than the actual height of the catalog by a couple of inches.

This is an invaluable tool, with tons of illustrations of rare, and sometimes unproduced, character items. It is not limited to Alice in Wonderland, but rather is a snapshot at what was planned for the 1951 season. Of course Alice dominates the catalog. Also included is a listing of the licensed manufacturers, unknown how complete this list is though. Its target audience was, I presume, the toy retailers.

I have been slowly scanning the pages, usually in support of a specific post on an item listed in the CMD. Posts with scans of pages from the catalog are tagged with the CMD tag. At some point I will consolidate the scans, perhaps making a PDF of the entire thing. But that is for another time.

Golden Catalog - Fall 1951

I thought I'd add this post as an extension of my Sandpiper post, to illustrate all the other Alice related items that were in the Fall catalog from 1951.

First up is the page describing the Golden Story Coloring Book (see posts here and here for more details).

Second is third of the Little Golden Books from Alice, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party. This is other LGB from Alice to get a single (A) printing, along with the Live Flowers book.

Next is another one of those items that for years I couldn't confirm even existed. Just like the Sandpiper book I had seen references to the DBR-1 and DBR-2 Big Golden Records (or Disney Big Record - DBR), but had never actually seen them, nor had anyone else. But I did finally acquire them about 5 years ago, and I will be posting them in the not too distant future. Too bad the covers are so boring...

Lastly the Big Golden Book; a small entry for the Alice book amongst the other BGBs of the day. Oddly, of the catalogs that I have, this is the last time the Alice books are ever mentioned, even though the BGB and the LGB White Rabbit remained in print for more than 30 years.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 26

Next in the Golden Coloring Book art series is page 26 - Alice in the garden of live flowers.

This is the page that made me realize what this batch of art was from. If you look at the rendering of Alice's face - especially the eyes - you'll see that it is very distinctive. I had always noticed the way her eye's were drawn in that coloring book, and the page of art triggered that memory enough for me to pull out the book and compare.

Another interesting thing is that this page of art - along with all the others in this series - is art from the pre-colored pages of this book. You may recall from my original post that this coloring book is a little different from most, it has a bunch of pages that come pre-colored, acting as a sort of reference.

The Golden Catalog from the fall of 1951 describes these special books as Golden Story Coloring Books, and the pre-colored pages as offering 'a general guide to the young artist'.

Alice in Wonderland Sandpiper Book - Fact or Fantasy?

When I first began collecting Disneyana in the late 1980s, I purchased the fantastic set of TOMART reference books. When I made the decision to collect only Alice in Wonderland items, I scoured the entire 4 volume set, and the condensed edition.

This is when I first encountered mention of the Alice in Wonderland Sandpiper book. TOMART volume 4 lists it as B5547 - Alice in Wonderland (1951) Sandpiper. But, even though TOMART illustrates the Donald Duck Sandpiper book (B5546), it does not illustrate the Alice one. Thus began my quest for the Sandpiper book.

Over the years I gathered more reference material, including the original Campaign Book, which has a small section on Simon and Schuster books, but does not list the Sandpiper Book. Yet I was not deterred.

I eventually found the Donald Duck book, but without its dust jacket, which is understandably harder to find, as it was a children's book. Then I encountered this Lone Ranger book with dust jacket, and I discovered that there were 10 Sandpiper books, of which Alice was number S10.

Now I had fairly substantial evidence that the book did exist. After all, I reasoned, they would not have printed up all these dust jackets advertising books that did not exist. Plus the book that I found was number S9, surely they would not have stopped the series one book from the end.

As the years rolled by, I encountered 6 of the 10 books, and at least one dealer who claimed he had an entire set of 10. I pestered that guy literally for years to at least give me a photo of the book, to no avail. And there the trail ended, nearly 20 years ago. Until last week.

Last week I acquired a large lot of original Simon and Schuster Golden Book catalogs, including the Spring and Fall 1951 issues. I had seen a copy of the Spring '51 catalog previously on ebay, but failed to win it. But last week, the group of catalogs arrived and imagine my surprise when I opened the Spring '51 to pages 6 and 7 and saw a double page spread all about the new series of Sandpiper books.

Now we're talking. The cover of the Alice book, at last! I must admit, I was feeling pretty good about it, since I recognized 6 of the 10 covers pictured.

And yet, the previous 20 years of looking for this book tempered my elation. I started perusing the remaining catalogs, starting with the Fall '51 issue.

And on page 14 is another full page featuring the Sandpiper books . But wait, something's different.

There are now only 6 Sandpiper books listed, the same 6 books that I have seen over the past 20 years of searching. And no mention whatsoever of the other 4 books pictured in the Spring catalog, a mere 6 months prior. They didn't even renumber the remaining books, just removed them leaving holes in the sequence.

The back cover, as on the Spring '51 catalog, contains a checklist, and there is Sandpiper book section, with only 6 books listed.

So, I must conclude, after years of searching, that the Alice Sandpiper book probably does not exist. I cannot be sure of course, but all the evidence now seems to point this way. It is hard to believe that after 20 years I would not have at least SEEN a copy of a mass-produced book by the publishers of Little Golden Books.

If anyone does have a copy, I would of course be MOST anxious to see it.

UPDATE: I have just received additional anecdotal evidence to support my theory on the non-existence of the Alice Sandpiper book. I just received a copy of Steve Santi's excellent Golden Book reference guide, 5th edition.

In it he pictures the same six books that are in the Fall '51 catalog. In the text he states that S6 and S8 were probably never printed, lists a author and illustrator for S5, but only lists Walt Disney Studios as illustrator/author of Alice (S10).

While this could be taken either way, I'm still inclined to interpret this as further evidence Alice not being published.