The recent item by Ed Berg about the Empire Plastic Corp. vehicle and building set was great.
I was inspired to see what else the company did, and came up with this wonderful Little House Painter Set. It appears to use the same three buildings that were in the vehicle set.
The vehicle set had three buildings in yellow, red, and blue. While this Little House Painter Set has them moulded in white plastic, which makes sense.
Also included were six cakes of safe, water-mixed paints; and a brush. The card states that 'colors can be washed off with water'. All mounted on a yellow and green card.
The paint colours appear to be red, yellow, orange, green, brown, and blue (I think).
What a great set. I love it.
Some more photographs from Worthpoint:
The address is given on the card as Empire Plastic Corp, Pelham Manor, (N.Y. ?), New York.
This selection of old trade advertisements shows that the buildings were available in a three-piece House Set, No.1008; in the carded Little House Painter set; a boxed Little House Painter set; and with a selection of road and rail vehicles, as shown earlier.
Another company called Keystone made larger buildings of wood, that also came with washable paints, so that the building could be re-painted as many times as you wanted.
One photograph from Worthpoint
Paul Adams from New Zealand
What a great set! I love slightly meaningless toys and this is an excellent example of reusing existing moulds. I suspect the water based paints would not have provided a particularly pleasing coverage on the shiny plastic, but then you could wash them off and try again. I wonder if the instructions recommended washing the houses in detergent and allowing them to fully dry first?
ReplyDeleteSimple prep work for us Old School modelmakers, but probably beyond "out of the box" kids, eager to fill a rainy day...
The back of the card is blank, so 'colors can be washed off with water' was the total of the instructions. I would say these sets were aimed at younger children, so any preparation work would be unlikely. I have since found out that in the early 1960s Empire produced at least two more such sets under the name Paint-N-Re-Paint. A larger set than this, with the three buildings and three vehicles; and an Attack Squadron set with two large jet fighters and three smaller jets. These came with only five paints, and a brush, and sold for 39 cents. It is very hard to find any sales listings for these sets, so it appears few have survived.
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