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This playset from Child Guidance seems like a good idea but trust me, having grown up down the street from an actual cannery I assure you, it was the last place on earth you wanted to play.
I dont know if this was a sales hit or not, but I do know they made more toys based on the Green Giant commercials. There were stuffed Sprouts and Giants, and a big playset that featured one dimensional figures and accessories that snapped into a base mat.It had a cornfield, pea patch, etc., and a barn, tractor, sprout, farmerdude, GG, and a bunch of other stuff.
As much as I like the commercials, I don't think I would have enjoyed this.
"Do you believe, you believe in magic?
'Cos I believe, I believe that I do,
Yes, I can see I believe that it's magic
If your mission is magic your love will shine true."
Yes, Sprout was a huge marketing boom for Green Giant. I too lived near and worked at a canning factory for many a summer in the 80s, earning for college. 60hrs a week, hot steamy long hours...
Very inspiring for getting good grades in college, I'll tell you that.
Wow, that Jolly Green Giant Play Set must be pretty rare. I have NEVER seen it in 20+ years of being a toy dealer but I have had those small cans & Sprout figures before, always wondered where they came from!
I picked up the finger puppets from this set in a lot and gave em to a friend of mine who was making a modern Green Giant commercial. They are still on his desk.
I joined this forum just to comment on this. I used to own one of these when I was a kid, and for a while thought I must have been imagining it because I have looked for ages and never found a single pic. Now that I see the pic here it all comes flooding back: there was some kind of twist knob on the back or front (I think I see it on the front in the pic) that when you turned it the little rubber conveyor belt carried the little plastic pieces of corn, carrots, and (I think) bean sprouts to the top and deposited them into the plastic cans on the trucks. When you twisted this knob the windmill thing turned and the weathervane also turned. It made this godawful squeeky ratchety sound like a duck sort of quacking badly as you turned it... used to drive my parents insane. I really cannot remember what the gray handle on the other building is for but I think it had something to do with putting the plastic vegetables in the cans. The thing that was odd is the conveyor belt; I guess wasn't too well thought out mechanically and occassionally a piece of plastic vegetable would drop in the wrong place and get caught, so you got an extra "thrill" bonus when this happened of turning the crank super hard and the vegetable piece would come shooting out the side like a bullet (and hopefully hitting a family member BWAHAHA). I don't remember the big Jolly giant plastic face, something tells me it probably got in my way and I tore it off. If I recall I got this for Christmas one year as my parents knew I loved mechanical moving toys (still do) and was a strange kid who loved vegetables but disliked most fruit. The vegetable pieces were not very substantial they were hollow plastic that you could squeeze flat... yes I played with this thing probably a little too much.
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