Tony Sarg's Animal Circus

Often at estate sales, I find items that someone else has saved since their childhood (or their child's childhood) -- dolls, Tonka trucks, handmade Christmas ornaments and Valentines.  I brought home a handful of treasured items from someone's childhood after an estate sale last weekend.

From a distance, they don't look like much -- a small stack of gray cardboard rectangles with blue designs.

On closer inspection, they proved to be cereal prizes from the late 1930s.  The left side of each card reads:

Tony Sarg's Animal Circus

In every package of National Biscuit Shredded Wheat are 3 Animal Cards.  After coloring them with crayons, show them to your Mother or Teacher.  Punch holes through circles and tie together.  Ask Mother to get more "National Biscuit Shredded Wheat," the original Niagara Falls product, so you can get all 35 cards.

This child (whoever he or she was) had collected and saved seven of the cards.  In the center of each is the cartoon animal picture you're supposed to color with crayons.  And on the right is a poem and what would later be called a "factoid" about the real animal.

Circus Bear

Billy Goat on Ball

Singing Turtle

Seal with Ball

Rooster

Smart Dog

Little Dog

These are busy animals, entertaining and educating us while we eat breakfast.

So who was Tony Sarg, the creator of these talented critters?  A few minutes' online searching told me that Sarg was a renowned puppeteer and illustrator in the first half of the 20th century.  He is well-known for designing the first helium-filled animal balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1928, and for designing Macy's animated storefront windows in the 1930s and '40s.  

Certain life lessons are common to many children, including the quest for that special box of breakfast cereal with the prize inside.  The stuffing of the small hand (and forearm) inside the box.  Feeling carefully among the cereal bits for the prize itself.  Removing the small treasure, and then realizing that your parents expect you to eat the cereal, too, whether you like it or not.   

Shredded Wheat has certainly stood the test of time, although it's not being actively marketed to kids anymore.  I'm glad the child who had to eat those boxes of cereal back in the 1930s, saved the prizes inside so we could see them now, and learn about Tony Sarg. 

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Here's what a box of Shredded Wheat looked like in the late 1930s:  http://www.thestrong.org/online-collections/nmop/5/18/95.399

Here is a 1922 animated short film by Tony Sarg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD0SXfv5Vlw

Here is a 1929 video of Tony Sarg's marionettes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ieDZOkVZkU

And here's a short piece of rare footage of one of Sarg's inflatable creatures, from 1937:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AsgYqLZS3E

Here's Tony's Sarg's bio at the Internet Movie Database:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765069/bio

Here's a website that provides a short biography of Tony Sarg and lots of pictures of his work:

http://www.foragerhouse.com/Tony_Sarg_Collection.html