Chocolate and Chicorée Cards

1950? Quelques amis de La Fontaine. Paperbound. Ruelle Chocolate. €100 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, July, '23. I have fallen in love with this landscape formatted booklet. It is an album completely filled with Ruelle chocolate slips. Each of the 24 pages offers five illustrations for a single fable. They are quite playful and creative! Some of my favorites include the exploded frog; the wolf's challenging fist after the crane has removed the bone from his throat; the owl's view of the bones that were his children; the rat captured in the oyster. I could go on. It is a rare treasure. I had previously put together a random sampling of ten of these cards. How nice to get all 120! 11¾" x 8". I am happy to present them all here!

1896? 1 French card picturing OF in a human scene of a boy smoking a cigar just as a tycoon does. Chocolat de la Havane is advertised on the verso, available at pharmacies. €2.99 from loccaz through Ebay, Jan., '23. I am not sure that I understand this scene, perhaps along the Seine. The image of the strutting tycoon is delightful; I am less sure how to read the "cadet" dwarf beside him! It was not easy to find the two matches for this card in the collection, both from different chocolate suppliers.

1896? 1 French card picturing DS in a human scene. Chocolat Poulain. Printer not acknowledged. 4¼" x 2½". St. Ouen, August, '13. I am not sure I understand the human application of DS here. Has the child sacrificed a toy, or has the man with the cane given up a real child for a toy? A policeman hurries to the scene. I believe I have found Poulain sponsoring four different kinds of fable cards. The verso has the text of La Fontaine's fable and identifies it as such. The style of these two cards seems similar enough to suspect that they are part of a stock set.

1896? 1 similar French card picturing the same scene but this time advertising Chocolat Poulain. €8 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23. I so enjoy the fun of this scene, and the fun expressed in this series of cards! It also struck me as a great example of seeing the same card used by two different companies.

1920? Two trade cards advertising Chocolat Poulain. "La Lecture" and "Demoiselle." Children pictured -- not in a fable scene -- in the corner of a frame with flowers. Fable text on the verso. €7 each from Simon Rodrigues, June, '19. These are unusual cards. Why make the image and text on diverse subjects? "The Girl Catches a Butterfly" on the front seems to have no connection with "The Serpent and the File" on the back! What do the two children reading have to do with GGE?

1900? 1 French card, "La Cigale et la Fourmi." Chocolat Besnier, de Peretti, Successeur, Le Mans. 2¾" x 4⅜". Amiens. G. Lecocq, Éditeur. This card is fully different from the other I have from Besnier. It has children acting outthe GA dismissal scene. And the verso has Peretti succeeding Besnier in Amiens.

1900? 1 French card, OR, advertising Chocolat Besnier of Le Mans. €5 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23. The card is similar in format to those distributed by Liebig about 1900, but it does not seem to replicate any of them. The boy escapes better, like the reed, than the grown man on horseback, who will perish like the oak. I find it unusual that one firm had three quite different fable card sets within a short range of time.

1950? Seven cards from a set using illustrations from Felix Lorioux advertising Chicoree Williot. Nantes: Imprimerie Moderne. $8 each from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne-Ricouart, France, Sept., '20. FC and an extra of "Weasel in a Granary" for €3 from clajamal through Ebay, April, '22. Bertrand tells me that the set is rare. I wonder how large it is. The reproduction of these Lorioux scenes, especially for small cards, is exceptional! My favorite remains FG.

1920? "Reintje de Vos." Six small trade cards advertising Verkade's Chocolate. Serie 59, Numbers 1-6. 1⅞" x 3½". €15 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23. This small set catches one of the "fable" elements in this Dutch rendition of the Renard story, the horse's outwitting of the wolf. Renard's conquest of the wolf is quite graphic at the end of the series!

1900? Thirteen – out of a numbered series of 20 – small (about 2" x 3") cards by "Chocolat de L'Union" in Lyon. Each is labelled as a "Chromo-Cadeau." One extra of #20, "Cobbler and Financier." $5 each from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '20. An unusual feature of these cards is that one could cut off the bottom portion of each card and return it to Chocolat de l'Union, I gather for some prize. Thus the numbering of each card is given twice, once just above the cut-off demarcation and once below it. We thus have some of the cards before and some after the bottom portion was removed. Now to find the other seven cards!

1990? Two circular cards advertising Tonimalt: "The Lion Going to War" and "The Coach and the Fly." "Lion" for €3.50 from babiyjeu679 through Ebay, August, '22. "Coach" for €3 from segpascal through Ebay, Sept., '22. FS for €3.50 fromalarikepelagi through Ebay, Oct., '22. My first impression is that these are two less frequently cited fables. And of course my next question is: where can I find the rest of the set? I would say that the handkerchief in "Coach" and the frog in "Lion" make the pictures the interesting presentations that they are!

1950? Six cards -- a complete set? -- advertising Chicorei Talpe and picturing events in the Roman de Renard. €10 each from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23. These cards have the same images as cards in two other sets in our collection: "Chicorei Talpe" and "5430." Like the cards in those sets, these cards have an unusual border shaped on each side by a zagged line. This is a complete set of six, whereas each of those is lacking one of the six. These cards are also formatted differently on their front, each having only "Dierenfabels" to complete the image. Finally, the verso lacks the bold script "Chicorei Talpe" written across the upper text on the verso. The verso of each card also identifies Roeselare as Talpe's home. By contrast with those cards, there is no numbering on these six cards. 4" x 2¾".