Collecting Early Vintage Bunnies and Chicks for Easter

The following article is from the Ogden Standard, Ogden City, Utah. It was published on March 23, 1918.

War Time Favors Include Plenty of Easter Chicks

      Like good old Santa Claus, the Easter rabbit and the Easter chick admit a Teutonic origin, but one is sure that they --like the beloved folk of fairy lore ---have abandoned the land of their birth for a kindlier environment and will never more return. 

      At any rate children, the world over, will never let them go back. They are world-traditions now and may claim no special country. They belong to the realm of childhood and if grown-ups choose to get pleasure out of them, it is a vicarious pleasure at best and not to be compared with childhood's ecstasy. Watch any little boy or girl in front of a confectioner's window where enchanting bunnies and downy Easter chicks are displayed and you will have no doubt of the matter.

Poultry and ears of corn have a pertinent Hoover suggestion.
The rabbit poppin' out of the hat seems to say: "What Next?"

      There seems to be just as many rabbits and chicks as ever this year, white rabbits and gray rabbits and pretty brown and white fellows with pink bows standing up behind their pink-lined ears. The white cats are are fascinating too and are only less downy and soft then the baby chicks --some of them live chicks that scurry about in lively fashion. The little people love these bunnies and chicks mush better than the ambitious Easter favors, ribbon decked and candy filled, which please grown-up sister; and the modern child with an Easter brim-full of joy in bunny and chick gifts, misses not at all the  excitement of making Easter eggs that little folks of a generation ago found so thrilling and so satisfying. 

The very prettiest Easter
favors adhere to tradition
and present chicks, birds
and bunnies in spring-
like environment.

      Scraps of colored prints and calico used to be hoarded long before Easter time in preparation for the egg-coloring fun. The eggs were tied up in the gay colored cloths and boiled until hard. Then with their parti-colored shells and edible, hard-boiled interiors, they were piled on the breakfast table Easter morning. This is not one of the good old economical fashions to be bemoaned in later, more extravagant times; for dairy eggs served in such profusion, no matter how their shells were disguised with printed calico, would be a very very extravagant breakfast dish just now, and would doubtless cost more then a supply of bunnies and feathered chicks to go all 'round.

      Quite appropriate and Hoover-ish for this war-time Easter are favors representing one of the excellent vegetables recommended in a conservation diet.  Corn is also a patriotic food, since it saves wheat flour; and an attractive Easter favor of this year --respresenting an ear of corn and a feathered chick is pictured. Beside is is a cunning white Easter bunny with pinks ears, popping out of a top hat in suggestive magican manner. But it you lift the bunny out of the hat, you will find a store of candy.

      For a table center at Easter season is the pretty dove cote "Jack Horner." The tissue-wrapped gifts are hidden in the dove cote and each dove, perching on a bracket before a crepe paper covered window, has attached to his feet a long ribbon. When the doves are jostled from their perches their weight drags the gift tied to the other end of the ribbon through the crepe paper pasted across the window. The dove cote is one of the interesting crepe paper novelties, of which there are many new sorts this year. Pasteboard covered with crepe paper was used for the little house and the standard is of wood also covered with crepe paper, leaves and vines of crepe paper clamor over the dove cote and in the paper grass at its foot nestle two natural looking barnyard friends, a rabbit and a rooster. Another Hoover suggestion you see; for the injunction now is to eat roast, fried and fricasseed rooster in preference to hens which must be saved and coaxed to lay eggs for the Allies.

      Still another crepe paper novelty is pictured in the aeroplane which is quite a gem of its kind. Even the propeller is evident in this nicely balanced craft which is equipped with a formidable amount of ammunition in the way of "bombs" each "bomb" an Easter egg filled with candy. the intrepid pilot sits at the wheel, clad in a saucy uniform of checked silk gingham. Who would ever guess that the long, low rakish body of his craft is filled to the brim with gifts, each attached to a ribbon? When you seize one of the booms--the aeroplane being suspended from the chandelier over the supper table-- you pull the gift attached to your particular ribbon through the crepe paper cover of the aeroplane's body.

The Easter aircraft drop eggs instead of bombs:
 The gallant pilot wears a uniform
of saucy checked gingham.

      Very naturally, there is a war-time flavor in many of this year's Easter Novelties. Besides aeroplanes and observation planes, there are various sorts of artillery, even the cumbersome British tank being represented in a structure of pasteboard and crepe paper. And there are fighting men too. There are the useful favors too--practical gifts that may be tied up in tissue and white or daffodil ribbon and tucked into Easter Jack Horners. Of course, there is a war-time flavor to these also. The boy back home from camp for the Easter week-end will receive a sowing kit or some leather-bound contrivance for photographs, writing materials or the like: or his favor may be a pair of woolen socks, knitted by friendly feminine hands. Field glasses are valuable gifts and no soldier or sailor objects to receiving a well-used pair, in such demand are these glasses just now. For feminine guests there are jeweled service flags, photograph frames, lockets that will hold a picture of the special hero at the front, and of course, all sorts of knitting belongings--reticules, needle cases, bracelet wool holders and so on.

More Related Content About Vintage & Antique Easter Figurines, 1910-1918:

• Vintage Easter Collectibles
• Mutilated Bunnies And Other Easter Whimsy
• Toast of the Town