New Member, question about old quarter machine animal figures

[Salamander77]

Hello!  New member.  I've loved animal toys/figures since I was a little kid.  In fact one of my earliest memories was getting little animal toys out of quarter machines.  I was wondering if there was any way to identify those animal figures?  The year would have been I think around 1979 or 1980 at the latest.  The location was way upstate NY - Ogdensburg/Massena area at the Canadian border.  Would have been one of those two towns.  I remember the little animal figures were in those clear plastic capsules with the colored plastic lids.  My memory was that the figures were pretty nice and realistic for what they were.  I'm pretty sure I still have a bison from those capsules.  My parents were such wonderful people.  We were so completely poor and to spending quarters on little plastic toys would have been a real sacrifice.  I'll try to dig up my little bison figure and see if it has any writing on it, but was just checking to see if anyone here was old enough to have remembered such a thing from 40+ years ago and maybe knew something about it.  It's possible that there was a canadian influence because of the location.  Actually, it's possible that the quarter machines were actually in canada, as at that time crossing the border was a total non event and we would do it all the time.  I wish I would have thought to ask my dad about this at some point before he died.  It was a real vivid memory for me.  Me and mom and dad going around to these quarter machines and getting these little animals for me.  I was so excited.  Must be the machines were outside in front of stores or shopping centers or something.   I was only about 3 years old at the time.  anyways, thanks for letting me share my memory. 

also does this forum ever get into older figures?  I have a few older ones that I was given when I was super young by older family members. 

[sirenia]

Welcome aboard! All animal models are welcome, old or new. A good resource is the ToyAnimalWiki, they can be good for finding models, even if they don't have every figure. Worth a shot.

[Salamander77]

Thanks!

I'll check out the ToyAnimalWiki.

I went up in the attic earlier and found my old figures including the little bison



the bottom just says Hong Kong

[bmathison1972]

Oooo I bet you got some neat old stuff stashed away.  When I was a child (1970s), our local drug store had 'bubblegum machines' with rubber animals (mostly insects and spiders) in little capsules. I'd get one every time we went. My most coveted was the lizard, since it seemed so hard to get LOL

[Salamander77]

I used to have a bunch of animal figures, especially dinosaurs.  When I started Kindergarten I could name all of the (then known) dinosaurs.  I used to tell my teacher all about them, haha.

I don't even remember at this point when I got rid of everything.  Maybe I gave them to younger cousins or something, I'm not sure where everything went.  I only have a couple figures left now and one stegasaurus model. 

When my younger son was young I had built up a pretty good collection of Safari and Schleich figures for him, but then I wigged out and threw everything away when we moved out of a house totally infested with mold (and almost everything else we owned) 

I'll make a post here in a couple days showing the few older things I still have.