Vintage Blow Molds Venture Plastics and Falcon Plastics

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Blow Mold Easter Eggs by the General Foam Plastics Company in Norfolk, Virginia

For Sale at RetroChalet

Don't  Put All Your Eggs in One Basket!

What if I told you to picture a vintage blow mold, would you comment below the very first idea that popped into your mind. I'm going to wager that it would either be something vintage Christmas (maybe Santa or a giant candle) or Halloween (maybe a black cat or a witch.)  Maybe even something marked Empire plastics, or something other than the two companies I'm talking about today.  Hard to find are the really well-made thick blow molds pre-2000's by companies who made them. Today's yard art and garden decor has taken on a whole new lighter plastic and sometimes the eggs blow clear across the lawn.  I understand and support the whole "eco friendly" movement, but still, it's not fun at all to chase them all the time.

Pic: RetroChalet

I'm pretty certain that the Easter Egg was not the first thing on your mind.  However, easily overlooked and underthought as a glorious blow mold. It's hard to imagine that the garden decor and vintage yard art "big eggs" of decades ago were made so well. 

These examples, are indeed, blow molded. So. let's dig deeper. These eggs above came from a late 1980's estate and are marked General Foam Plastics Company, Norfolk, Virginia, yet they are not actually foam at all. They are hard plastic with distinct molding lines.  Heavy for an egg if you will. The small ones are about 8" long and the large ones about 12" long. The company is still in business and has been producing fantastic plastic and blow molds since 1957!  The good news about these decorations is they will implant and stay put in your yard.  Easy to clean and durable, they have lasted almost 40 years now. 

My personal favorite: this big egg with the 3-D Bunny from Venture Plastics. For sale in RetroChalet Etsy shop.

Now these smaller eggs look exactly like the egg molds used in Norfolk, but they are marked Grand Venture (circa 1998) and are actually a line from Falcon Plastics of Washington, Pennsylvania. The larger eggs definitely stand out versus their competitors, as they have a bunny on the egg!  Falcon made a crap ton of holiday blow molds however this "division" of the company was short-lived lasting only ten years. Well, technically speaking--there is some confusion as to this matter. 

There is , I'm happy to report, still at the time of this writing, a Falcon Plastics on Wylie Avenue in Washington, PA, which I'm assuming is the main central hub for the six or so molding factories they still do own across the nation, (and their website at the time of this writing boast they have been in business since 1975).  The words "blow molding" can also be found on their sites. 

That leave two theories.  First, according to the website "Blow-Molded" these particular style holiday molds seem to have disappeared after 2005.  This could mean the company is correct, but the actual molds of the holiday lines were sold or parted off to another plastics manufacturer who at least, acquired some of the molds.  The second theory is that it's an altogether different company with the same name in the same town, who was around the same time, yet, I don't believe in such coincidences, do you?

The one thing that's great to see on the Blow-Molded site is the fact they have digitized the actual blow molded catalogs from this company and the one above of Christmas, Halloween, and of course the Easter Egg molds as for the nifty eggs above. I'll link these great eggs below for you to visit their site and relish in the glory of the blow molds!

This acquisition style information is not that unusual.  Often times due to the market growth and either demand or lack thereof for said plastics, it wasn't uncommon for one manufacturer to merge or acquire another. This holds true with molding machinery dies and presses and the molds. The molds must have been the diamond in the rough.  If someone was facing financial crisis, the most economically sound thing to do was to call a competitor to sell out what you could.  In this case, I assume maybe it was no longer profitable for the Grand Venture line of Falcon Plastics to continue, so it may have used some decision making. 

What's interesting is to think if the company was only around ten years, how many eggs marked Grand Venture are still in existence in people's attics or basements?  Does your grandma have these on her lawn? If so snatch one up and look at the markings!

The backstamp of the Grand Venture line of blow molds. Source: RetroChalet , Etsy

How many have ended up in landfills?  Too many, probably, to count. That's why I'm offing my eggs to someone who can appreciate them. 

So, tell me, what fond memories of blow molds do you hold? Do you have any in your home or decor now? What is your favorite all time blow mold? 

Further Reading: 

 You can see them on Blow-Molded.com here.

Happy Collecting!

Cindy

Editor and Owner of Melmac Central

Plasco Plastic Art Corporation Toys, Play Plastic Tea Set, Welcome to 1940

The front of a box, or an advertising signs, with colorful graphics for sale at RetroChalet. 

In the 1940's. the PlasCo name was synonymous with great toy kits for kids.  Little girls could obtain a plastic tea set or dinnerware set just like Mommy's china ones!  They can still sometimes be found in the original boxes which were colorful lithographic designs of the 40s and 50s.  Often lithographed with bright vibrant colors, these sets were just lovely for collection and display. Some had matching forks, knives, and even napkins!  Not all pieces were properly marked but once you familiarize yourself with a few mint in box sets, then you can surely recognize it. 

Inside of the tea set box, from Geraldine's Toys, this set for sale on Ebay. 

Surely a must have for the little girls of the 1940's, who would spend hours playing tea with dolls and bears.  They even made a lot of dollhouse furniture, I am unsure if each piece was marked properly, so some may be hard to tell, but it is out there, and you can search for it. 

A Plasco Dollhouse furniture backstamp courtesy of GamGlamVintage on Etsy.

Buy this at GamGlamVintage on Etsy!

For boys there were western sets, farm animals, toy soldiers and more.  Most of the information that I have found about this company comes from the Toy Soldier HQ, which you can peruse here:    TOY SOLDIER HQ INC <P> REL PLASTICS TOY SOLDIERS AND FIGURES FOR SALE (angelfire.com)   who has a great history on PlasCo and many little boy toys for your perusal, a quite comprehensive list.  This will be helpful next time you are out thrifting or estate sale junking, you will know what to look for.  

The Name, So Confusing!

In fact, the name PlasCo wasn't really the name of the company per se.  It was the Plastic Art Corporation, a subsidiary of REL plastics molding that was created just for the manufacturing of a toy division.  So the name PlasCo was somehow obtained from the Plastic Art Corporation (how, I do not know because they left the Art word out completely, just sayin'.) 

The company thrived in the hey dey making towns for twenty solid years from the 40's to the 60's but later things slowed down and according to Toy Soldier HQ, they were defunct in the 1980's.  

A tea set in the original box is still appealing to plastics collectors who collect tea sets, plastic dishes, melamine dinnerware, or doll and bear themed collections. Mint condition can go from $30-$80 depending on piece count, style and rarity.  Many of the soldier and military collectibles are still popular among male collectors today, and are cute and detailed for small plastic toys. 

How cool it must have been to have toy set like this to play with your dolls and bears in a time before technology of today existed. Life was so simple then. 

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Stetson Marcrest Melmac Plastic Dinnerware

This set, for sale has all the pieces from Etsy seller EddyEtcetera

In the 1940's every housewife wanted a new China dinnerware set, for her family or for entertaining, ceramic was pricey and often kept in the corner china closet for special dinners.  By the 1950's, melmac was the rage.  At first, companies selling plastic had to do some hefty marketing to compete with china, can you imagine the fact that their claim to fame was that it was "unbreakable" or would be replaced if broken or stained (coming from the person who worked at Meladur, she was in the replacement division, and had so many coffee cups weekly that were stained by coffee to replace.)  

Now, keep in mind melmac wasn't exactly cheaper than china dinnerware in a fancy department store, in fact, some lines were downright pricey at the time and would be on display at Macy's or Hecht's and a set for four or six would be just as costly as a high end ceramic set. Some housewives had to save for weeks just to afford a set of dinnerware.  

I have to give kudos to the marketing alliance that would make plastic dishes as expensive as ceramic, and make the housewives want them.  This however wasn't so easy on the china dinnerware manufacturers. It was direct competition to them and at first there was a whole ceramic dinnerware manufacturer alliance that plotted and planned on how to boycott the melmac and reinforce the fact their dishes were better. 

Note the tabbed sugar bowl in the Marcrest line is almost identical to the Stetson line. 

This set from Baxters Collectibles on Etsy.

By the mid to late 1960's the smart manufacturers like Stetson decided to have melmac dinnerware molded for them (by a plastics molder) and add their name to it. It was an appendage of their regular lines, so in fact if you opened a department store catalog, you would see their ceramic dinnerware plus their plastic lines too.   Smart companies like Oneida, Stetson, Russel Wright's designs, will be found both in ceramic and melamine.  Others simply refused to jump on the plastic bandwagon, and this was their loss of profits in my opinion.  At first in the 1980's when I was collecting plastic, most dinnerware collectors scoffed at collecting the plastic lines, because they thought they were junk in comparison to ceramic.  However, over time, it was realized that even the designers who designed the plastic lines put great effort into making them.  From the details and designs on the dishes to the box, marketing and promotional material. 

Stetson stems from it's owners Louis B. Stetson who started the china company in 1919 and was located in Lincoln Illinois.  It was a family business and his nephew worked there too.   It is said that early production included other companies "blanks" along the way, and an article on Worthpoint indicates Stetson manufactured both melmac dinneware and pottery dinnerware.  Now, no discredit to the author but I am unsure if this was true.  If Stetson manufactured their own plastic line (they would have had to have a moulding facility just for plastics)  in their factory, but perhaps they were like many companies who contracted another moulding company to do so . Either way, the history on it is minimal and one day I will delve through my plastics encyclopedias's and debunk this one way of the other, but today I do not have the time. 

History indicates that Marcrest products would buy them out, and this makes a lot of sense because later examples of Stetson melmac and Marcrest Melmac look similar in design.  Marcrest had a great marketing mindset, and would sell a lot of melmac premiums from grocery stores to magazine mail order and relatively affordable at that.   You can see the similarities in the covered tabbed sugar bowls and the funky S design divided round serving bowls. 

Even after Stetson was "out of business" Marcrest continued the solicitations and selling of the Stetson melmac products.  By 1963 the classic 1950's patterns were reworked into a new "Contour Line" which was super cool and hard this day to find.  Melmac collectors may scoff at the 1960's wheat and brown leafy designs but what's truly exquisite is the shape of the coffee cups.  They look like something out of the Jetson's. I personally call them cat eye cups. How fun it would be to have a set of just the cups and saucers in a 1950's kitchen! 

I have several sets of Marcrest and Stetson tucked away.  I always thought they were the perfect weight and design.  The 1950's pink Stetson sets will hold the most value if you are collecting them.  Everyone loves 1950's pink, and if you decided to collect only Marcrest or Stetson, you would be surprised just how many designs there are, many will remain unidentified unless you are lucky enough to search old magazines and find their official names. 

Collecting is fun, and keeps the items out of the landfill and at use in the home. 

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