Sunday, March 25, 2012

Richards Scarry's Puzzletown Part 3

 Hi folks.  I am doing another post on the Richard Scarry puzzletown toys by PaySkool.  There were sub lines released in 1977.   One that included a figure, small building and car and a second sub set of Cars and figures.  In this post I am focusing on the "Puzzletown People, Cars and Places" assortment.  The buildings in this set are small roadside stands.  Rather than use the standard green plastic building square it uses a half sized square that is only found in this set.  It is half the size of the standard green base and a quarter the size of the large base.  A cool feature is the underside included locking elements for vertical building.  These work great in combination with some of the more square buildings, especially the sesame street set that does work 100% with the Richard Scarry sets.
 The first set is "Lowly's Fruit Stand"   It creates a little fruit stand with various produce and such.  If you notice the roof is not a full sized piece.  These roof piece only cover two inches rather than three.  This stand came with Lowly which is the same as in the railroad set so you get a duplicate.  The apple car which is shown below came with this set.
Be careful buying this one on eBay as people seem to go nuts for it.   I have seen the apple car alone go for fifty dollars American. 

Next is the Produce stand.  I think I am missing an egg or two, i sort of remember a cracked one.  This set came with Farmer alfalfa's wife from the farm set.  The Egg car shown below also came with this set.

 The next set is Huck's doughnut shop.  It comes with several doughnuts and the stand.  Huck from the cottage set came with this set so again nothing new as for the figure.  The doughnut card came along with this set.

My daughter wanted in on the pictures so you can see her there in the back ground.  She is who i recollected the sets for so I thought it was sort of fitting having her somewhere in all these posts.
A little note on collecting these sets.  You should look for the sets being included in bundles.  Sometimes people don't realize these are their own sets and include them in with the standard sets from 1976.  The cars sort of give them away but I have scored piece for these off a lot purchase I made.  The prices for these sets are often ridiculous.  I say that as a parent buying toys for his kid, not as a collector.
Here are a couple of shots of the cars I have mentioned above.  They are a touch more complex than the cars from the other sets.  They get into some of the more fantastic vehicles Scarry drew, in his books.

Go see my other Puzzletown posts Here and Here

There is also a brand new post here.

2 comments:

Pam Mikulis said...

I purchased all the Busytown sets A to E when my children were young. They loved them. About eight years ago we threw out most of them because they were in the top of the garage and were filthy...the box was left open. Anyway, I started buying the sets again for my twin grandchildren for Christmas. I now have all the sets and I'm thrilled. I bought them all on e-bay. I wished I had kept even the dirty pieces because the plastic could have been cleaned.
Last night we brought down the rest of the items stored in the top of the garage and found most of the Puzzletown People Cars and Places. The three cars (apple, donut and milk are great, but they are missing the front plastic windshilds. I'm still going through the cardboard pieces for the buildings. I can tell that I'm missing some small pieces (donuts, eggs), but I will know shortly about what is complete....I am so thrilled. I had no idea I had purchased these last items.
I think I am having more fun than my grandchildren will with these sets.
OPam

Pam Mikulis said...

The reason I started buying the sets was because I discovered that some of the old toys are better than the new ones. Also, my children loved these sets so much. I intend to make sure all the sets are complete. I now have extra train/road tracks, cars, animal characters which makes all of it more fun for my grandchildren.