In the off chance that our neighbor had a basement full of Palaset storage cubes to unload, I stopped into an estate sale around the corner in DC this weekend.
The only white 1970's plastic I found was this rather sweet-looking Eskimo play set which has the unlikeliest combination of materials possible: hand-stitched beanbaggy cloth Eskimos from Japan; simple, machine-cut hardwood animals from Taiwan; an awesome, sliding door-equipped igloo and skis in classic plastic; and a random printed cardboard ocean that fits underneath.
Any ideas about where this came from or if there are other, similar beanbag/Weeble-looking sets out there?
update: so far, there's one confident-but-unresolved vote for Unicef.
My sister and I had the Spanish hacienda (her) and the Japanese house (me) sets of these toys and we LOVED them. I believe they were purchased in the early '70s and I remember them having some connection to Unicef.
Some quick googling brought up this info: first post and second post. Sadly, the link promising more info no longer works. Despite what Unicef says, I really think they were connected somehow, since my tween brain registered that bit of info way back when.
My mom still has bits of both our sets, so our boy, now four months, will be getting a mash-up at some point. I'd sure love to have all the sets, they were pretty damned sweet.
[lol, love the japanese hacienda combo. If you need a sled dog, let me know, and thanks. -ed.]
omg that's so adorable!
Oops, messed up the second link. Here it is:
second post
Sorry about that! This is the post with the expired link I mentioned.
{that link is to the current Unicef Adopt-a-Doll, Save-a-Child program to support immunizations. The page itself is visible in archive.org, but the program is still active on several other Unicef country sites. -ed.]
Does the owner of this eskimo playset still have it and is it available for sale?
the owner is me, and it's not for sale.
Good gosh. I had this same exact set. I was just doing a Google search whilst feeling nostalgic, and viola, this popped up immediately. Thanks for the pic!
I just saw one for sale on ebay!