Lot of 3 Quite Nice Vintage Lineol Elastolin Preiser? Polar Bear & Cubs Germany For Sale

Sohere\'s the deal: I got a box of Elastolin and Preiser toy animals ata recent sale. I kept the ones I wanted for my own collection andI\'m selling the rest. Because some of these animals are definitelyold, and because of the look of them, I don\'t think any of them arevery new; I think even the most recent ones are from before about2000, but that is my educated guess. Elastolin (or Lineol) was a line of toysmade by the German company Hausser that was in business from 1904until 1983. Toy soldiers and animal figures were made. At first theywere molded from a mixture of sawdust and glue, commonly calledcomposition figures, but in the 1950\'s they went to plastic, and thecomposition animals were phased out in the 1960\'s. They were all handpainted (and still are). When Hausser went out of business theirmolds were acquired by Preiser (another German company), which stilluses some of them today to produce animals, and still uses theElastolin name. These animals are all very well-sculpted and aregenerally a cut above your usual plastic animals. I can tell thecomposition Elastolin animals from the plastic ones, but I am not yetsure how to tell the Hausser Elastolin plastic animals from the morerecent Preiser Elastolin animals. Most of these animals are solidplastic (but not rubbery), but a few have a more brittle feel to themand have a distinctive higher sound when tapped with a fingernail.The bigger of these brittle-feeling ones are also hollow. I\'m prettysure the ones with that more brittle feel are Preiser, but I don\'tknow whether Preiser also used a non-brittle feeling plastic too. Inany case, I\'ll describe each lot so you know what you\'re getting:

Thisis a lot of 3 Elastolin polar bears. To the company\'s credit, theseare not just the same brown bears colored white; they are properpolar bears. The adult (mother) is walking, and one of the cubs issitting down while the other is lying down. They are solid, and theplastic does not have that brittle feel to it, so I don\'t know ifit\'s the Prieser Elastolin or the earlier Hausser Elastolin. Figuresthat look like the cubs are still available from Preiser, but I don\'tthink these are recent examples. The mother bear measures about 3inches long by about 1 3/4 inches tall. She does not seem to becurrently available from Preiser. She looks too small to me to be1:25 scale. The sitting cub measures about 1inch tall, and the lying down cub measures just under ¾ of an inchtall. They are sold together in the current Preiser catalog as number47523, where the animals are all advertised as being 1:25 scale, butsince no size is given in the catalog I can\'t be sure they are thesame size as that; they also look too small to me to be 1:25 scale. All 3 bears are in very good condition with nicedetail and painting. I really like these! Luckily there were two setsof these bears in the lot I bought so I could keep one; otherwisethese wouldn\'t be for sale. Check out my other listings for moreElastolin and other toy animals, too; I\'m always happy to send thingstogether to save you postage. Thanks for looking, and if you have anyquestions, just ask! (This description brought to you by my own mind,with zero “help” from AI, ever!)