Nostalgia - Wooden Steiff toys

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

In my post about the Teddies for tomorrow, I had mentioned that there were times when material for Steiff plush animals became scarce because mohair and felt were used for other purposes, for example uniforms (plush animals would have been so much better), and that they used substitute materials, but also produced wooden toys.
Today I want to show you just a few that I pulled from my cabinets - literally pulled which wasn't easy because of course all of them were in the back, it's going to be fun to fit them back in - and mention some others at least.

Let's start with the "Pyramidenkubus" (pyramid cube), also available under the name "Satzkubus" (set cube), in its original box - a set of six hollow cubes with one side missing for nestling them in the box.
Given they probably got stacked and then knocked over, it's amazing there's any color left.

We'll stay in the builder's world a little longer.
Here we have the "Bausack" (building bag) which was linen from 1951 to 1958 and held 100 small building blocks, later it was also available with big blocks in a plastic bag.
I have never counted to see if there are all 100, by the way.

Can't afford your own shipping line yet? Start small with the "Schiffsbaukasten" (ship building set)! It's always good to be prepared.

And yet another building set, the "BiBau", probably called that because the blocks are from two different natural woods in two colors - mahogany and maple.
My guess is that the maple was never as light as on the box because I've seen another box with blocks in similar colors. As you can see, the box has never even been opened, so I think it doesn't have to do with dirty children's hands 😉

Do you have ten black thumbs just like me? No problem.
Build your own flowers from plastic stems and wooden leaves and blossoms!
Look, even I can do it.
Of course, the box is a gross exaggeration of what you can do with the set. My set is complete and I couldn't even build a one color flower. You'd probably need like three boxes to create what's in the picture.

Steiff didn't just force you to build things.
They also made beautiful wooden animals, especially pre-war, but I don't have any of those.
I do have two of the later wood burning series, however. There were many more, wisents, dogs, bears, cats, rabbits, zebras, lions, squirrels, camels, elephants, cows, and who knows what else (without looking it up) - and these two cuties.
See the metal tags instead of the "button in ear"?

That's not all of course.
Steiff made little and bigger trains, agricultural and construction vehicles, puzzles, tiny bird houses, toy boxes, hobby horses, hand wagons (I have one of those, but it's misused as a storage box right now, so sorry, no picture), small or slightly bigger scooters (I have some of those, hard to take pictures of), YoYos, horse wagons.
If you are interested, check out this page which has some wooden Steiff listed.

I think my favorite wooden Steiff is this one, though. You'll see why.

Looks harmless enough, doesn't it?
It can be very dangerous if you try to drive to your field in the morning and get ambushed, though! 😂