25th Anniversary Baseball Figurines

Hartland Corporation, Milwaukie, Wisconsin USA, was famous for its molded plastic horses and figures of Western heroes such as the Lone Ranger, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers, etc. as well as its series of major league baseball starts from the 1950's and early 1960's.

Hartland was famous for its molded plastic horses and figures of Western heroes such as the Lone Ranger, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers, etc. and their peak production time was summer in a run up to the Christmas season.  In a meeting in 1957, they were looking for ways to keep production going during the slow winter months. The idea of baseball players was decided upon and these figures could be sold at the major league ballparks during the summer months. 

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Hartland Corporation, Milwaukie, Wisconsin USA, was famous for its molded plastic horses and figures of Western heroes such as the Lone Ranger, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers, etc. as well as its series of major league baseball starts from the 1950's and early 1960's.

Hartland was famous for its molded plastic horses and figures of Western heroes such as the Lone Ranger, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers, etc. and their peak production time was summer in a run up to the Christmas season.  In a meeting in 1957, they were looking for ways to keep production going during the slow winter months. The idea of baseball players was decided upon and these figures could be sold at the major league ballparks during the summer months. 

In 1958, Hartland introduced a series of five baseball players and they proved to be extremely good sellers at the average selling price of $1.98. 
Made from a hard plastic that would stand up to "kid" play, the figures were approximately 8" high and were painted with acetate based paint. The first group of players introduced were: Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth.

One interesting thing to note, is that Hartland made these figures at a time when sports photography as we know it today did not exist.  In order to get realistic poses and "game action", Hartland artists sketched players at the Milwaukie or Chicago ballparks in action (with the exception of Babe Ruth who was done with photos.)  In 1960, Hartland began to sign other baseball players to contracts. Hartland introduced Cub's star Ernie Banks and White Sox stars Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox to their figure line.  Right behind this came another 10 players; Duke Snider, Don Drysdale, Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Roger Maris, Harmon Killebrew, Rocky Colavito and Dick Groat. Virtually the entire group is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

In 1963, Hartland was sold to Revlon Cosmetics and the production of figures stopped to make way for production of plastic cosmetic compact cases, probably before other players could be made as there are some real gaps in great players missing from the original series (Kofax, Robinson, Marichal, Clemente, Ford, Cepeda, Roberts, etc.). 

In 1987, the rights to remake the original 18 baseball figures were granted to a Hartland collector and enthusiast and production of less than 10,000 each began on the 25th Anniversary commemorative editions.  In 1990, they introduced six new figures of which Roberto Clemente is one.  The others were Lou Gehrig, Whitey Ford, Dizzy Dean, Bob Feller and Ty Cobb. 

The complete Hartland story is available at <a href="http://www.hartlands.com/history.html"> Steve Blankenships page </a>and is an interesting one to be sure. </p>

 

Subject ID: 131807

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