Fashion Plates! 1/11/2008

This is an older post from my jamuse.com blog, I am relocating my blog to blogger. One night last month, as I was coming home from work, I started trying to remember what some of my favorite toys were when I was growing up. One of the first things I thought of was Fashion Plates. The main idea of Fashion Plates was to mix and match shirts, skirts or pants and model heads which were on plastic square "plates" onto a tray. You then place paper over your combination and make a rubbing with a black crayon. The really fun part came when you flipped the plates over, each had a pattern (i.e. plaid or floral) or texture (denim) to could apply to the outfit you just created via more rubbings with colored pencils. When I mentioned this my friend and co-worker, Peggy, she said "Well that's just like your artwork now!" And she was right, I had never though about it but it must have had some influence on me. I started browsing e-Bay to see what the going rate was for a previously-owned Fashion Plates toy. I also asked my parents if they had possibly not sold that at their big garage sale when they were moving to a smaller house, but they no longer had it. My advice to those of you looking for your favorite retro-toys on e-Bay: Wait until after the holidays! In the week before Christmas there were some that sold for over $100 and ost of them were more than $35. I checked again right after New Year's Eve and was able to claim a full set (minus the rubbing crayon & holder and colored pencils) with the original box for about $25 including shipping. I haven't used it yet since I need to dig up a black crayon to do the rubbings, but I'll have to post some here! Also after I figure out how to get pictures into my blog.