Barbie Bench Mystery

 

What if I told you the much-coveted Barbie Susy Goose piano got reborn as a cake topper?  Would you believe me?  Well, it's true!

This whole blog entry started a few months ago.  I was assisting in cleaning out the house of a family friend.  This friend died, age 99 years old.  In a dirty old box full of flower pots in her garage, I found this:

   Huh.  A Barbie Susy Goose bench?  Sure looks like it.  But.. um.. it's a little weird.  One, my friend was 99 years old.  Two, she didn't have any daughters.  Three, no children had lived in the house for decades.  Four, no other Barbie stuff or even toys were in the house.  Also.. it just didn't look right.

When I got it home, I examined it next to known a Susy Goose bench.

Hum... well they look pretty similar, but look closer:

Same size.. same basic shape... the plastic feels different though...

Susy Goose Barbie bench has no marks.

The gold bench is marked "WILTON-CHICAGO 60643 W 808 MADE IN"  Note that it says "Hong Kong," but the "Hong Kong" appears to have been scratched out of the actual mold.

Well!  That got me really curious.  Wilton?  Like cakes?  Whut?

So I started Googling.

Turns out, Wilton made a piano-shaped cake topper.  Turns out, this cake topper was 100% made from the parts of the Susy Goose piano.  Don't believe me yet?  Keep reading!

Here are the two piano tops compared to each other.  Pretty much the same, though obviously different plastic and different levels of painting.

The piano legs are also very similar, though I can't 100% tell since I don't have one in person.

Here are the two pedal assemblies next to each other.  Again, they look pretty much the same, just with a different method of attaching to the piano itself.

Here's the detail of the Wilton bench's feet.

Here's a close up of the legit Susy Goose bench's feet.  The molding is much cleaner, but there is less gold detail.

Here they are together from the top.  If you ripped the fabric off of the Susy Goose bench, you would find a similar molded piece of plastic underneath, though it would be white.

Here is a close up of the differences in molding.  You can see the Wilton Cake Topper bench is much cheaper.  The plastic is also a much cheaper weight and feels more brittle.  It just feels "cheap."

Anyway, I have seen this gold bench being sold as a legit Susy Goose product, or even as the Susy Goose piano bench!  It is NOT!   If you buy this bench, please do not pay whatever you'd pay for a Susy Goose piano.  It is knock-off.

However, that being said, of course it displays perfectly fine with Barbie and is an excellent replacement.  Just don't pay a Susy Goose price for a Wilton product.

Here's what the Wilton cake topper looks like in full.  I think you used a Wilton piano-shaped cake pan and put it in-between the top and bottom of the plastic piano pieces?  I don't know.  I couldn't find any other pieces of it in my friend's garage.  The candle sticks look like they might resemble the Susy Goose ones as well.

ANYWAY, there you have it.... no matter how long you collect you're always going to find some new weird thing.

Lastly, I can't speculate as to how this happened.  This cake topper came out in the early-to-mid 1970s.  Susy Goose was out of business by then, I think.  They hadn't made furniture for Barbie for years at that point.  I don't know what happened to their molds, patents, files, or anything like that, or how it might have migrated to Wilton and whoever designed this thing.  Who knows?!  

If anyone out there can share more insight, please do!  Information on Susy Goose online is hard to come by, except that it was registered as a trademark in 1941 by someone named Paul Jones.  THIS ARTICLE says Susy Goose liquidated in 1970, so I'm guessing that would be exactly the time Wilton acquired the molds.  They apparently moved production to Ohio in 1967, shortly before going out of business.

Apparently the original Susy Goose factory was in Jonesville, Michigan, under the name of "Kiddie Brush & Toy Company," founded in 1927. (and HERE is the Wikipedia article about the building.)  I didn't know that Susy Goose products were made in the United States, I assumed they were made overseas like (most) Barbie dolls.  That also makes it more interesting that the Wilton bench was (probably?) made in Hong Kong.

Are the molds still out there somewhere?  Could some toy company make repro Barbie accessories?  Are they floating around?  Does Wilton have them?  Wilton, are you out there?  Can you make me a Susy Goose piano?

SO STRANGE.  Has anyone else ever noticed this, or am I the first one?  

Saturday's Flea Market Find

Found for $5 bucks on Saturday morning is this cute Room-fulls Studio Bedroom set from c. 1974-75.  Too new to be considered vintage by some collectors, they've nevertheless become popular since they are so good for displaying your dolls.

Barbie on the box is wearing Best Buy #7814, also from 1974.  Looks like a Malibu Barbie to me. She has the old-style Japan arms.

The box is pretty beat up but the goodies inside are okay.

The back of the box has a cool 70s graphic, with a sunny sun smiling on Barbie's house.

Other sets included a living room and kitchen.  They are somewhat cheaply made like most Mattel items from this era, but the backdrops are amazing!

Close-up of the bedroom graphic.

Close-up of the other sets.

The chair is somewhat overstuffed and made with a thin felt-like fabric.  It doesn't stand up very well but does better when Barbie is sitting on it.  It's a little dirty so I'm going to attempt to spot clean it.

The studio bed/sofa is a blue plastic box (that oddly enough seems to have two "mounting screw holes" in the top of it for some reason... (picture later?)  The "bedspread" is a very tightly fitted cover that cannot be used as a blanket or anything, just as a cover to the plastic box.  The pillows are cotton fabric in a calico strawberry print.  The bedspread patchwork-esque fabric should be familiar to collectors of Best Buy-era fashions, because it was used in several outfits.  Barbie's Best Buy #7414 from 1975 used this fabric, as did Tutti's #7481 from 1976 Europe.  It's also likely this fabric appears in other outfits that Mattel used to de-stash, because I have a feeling I have several other items in this print.  

The radio/hi-fi/stereo cabinet is just a blue plastic shape with stickers making the graphics.

The backdrop is the best part!  Cool graphics and really good to encourage the imagination.  It can be folded in various ways to make a room-shape.  (The yellow card is just a carpet stand-in and was not actually included.)  I also like that they went through the effort to make the cushion on the stool match the print of the bed.

Sadly the stuffed elephant that is supposed to be included is missing.  If I see the flea market guy again I'll have to ask him to let me know if he finds it in with his boxes of various junk. :)

Anyway, that's the find of the week.