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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

1980s GDR Musical Nativity & 2012 Asian Christmas Trees

Last year Toys and Stuff featured a vintage tin-litho Nativity set from Marx. This year's Nativity selection isn't quite that old but does date from the 1980s. It's a hand-carved Nativity with Swiss musical movement that was made in the old German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany) and exported to West Germany and measures 5 1/4" (13.3cm) diameter x 7 3/4" (19.7cm) H. The set was made in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) region famous for its wonderful wood carvings. Many of the classic types of Christmas decorations come from this region such as nutcrackers, Christmas tree ornaments and so on.




For a hi-res view of the action, visit the YouTube link below:






The tree shown in the .gif at the top is part of a 3-piece set of Lucite color-changing LED trees which I believe may be from Hong Kong - but don't quote me on that (I still have the box somewhere but can't find it). They are 8 1/2" (21.6cm), 10 1/2" (26.7cm), and 12 1/2" (31.8cm) high and were available in stores last year but I haven't seen them in stores since. I had wanted to buy more of them but never got around to it but after some searching I noticed they're available on-line so perhaps I'll get a couple more.

The Twinkle effect is from Google's 'Auto Awesome' feature in its Picassa web albums.





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