Red Rose tea figurines

Thanks to an online group I read, I've recently discovered Red Rose tea and Wade figurines/ Wade Whimsies.

This kind of thing is right up my alley. I have a weak spot for vintage premiums/promos/giveaways, and I'm disappointed that they are mostly relegated to a bygone era. How cool would it be for our ordinary grocery items to still come with or inside a free piece of sweet decorated glassware?

So when I read that there was a tiny, cute little figurine inside Red Rose tea, they just totally bought my consumer loyalty. Lol!

(Don't ask me how many Good Seasonings cruets I've amassed over this same loyalty business. Just don't.)

The current series is Nautical theme. I don't necessarily love nautical themed items, but I think these little figures really are just the sweetest. AND I am totally excited that I now collect something that I can display and keep in a vintage printer's tray! My husband collects vintage Fisher Price Little People & Adventure People figures and they display perfectly in printer's trays hung on the wall. I've always been a bit jealous that I never had anything cool that would be small enough to fit in one of my own.

Now I do, but I will have to drink a LOT OF TEA before I'll have much of a collection. With just these two figures I have a stockpile of 200 teabags I'm going to have to get to work drinking, lol!

There's so much neat history and info on the Red Rose tea site that I won't recap it here, but I did want to try to get a picture of both the Wade mark and the underneath of one of the figurines. These are match strikers, though I doubt I'll ever use them for this purpose.

Incidentally, my husband had spotted some figures from the Calender line in a local antique store before we'd ever heard of Red Rose tea or Wade figurines. He showed them to me, wondering if they were related to the Wizard of Oz (May is a violet girl & September is a scarecrow, which almost pass for Dorthy and Scarecrow figures!).

The antique store wanted 10 dollars apiece! Many figurines from previous series can be ordered from the website for 2 dollars each, and they have very inexpensive shipping on them as well. I might just break down and buy a previous series just so I have more than just two little figures to put in my printer's tray display.

And of course, in my excitement for the figurine I've totally neglected to mention the tea. I haven't had a single cup of it hot yet, but I brewed a pitcher's worth a couple of days ago and have been enjoying it iced. It's a nice tea. I'm no tea pro who can capture culinary particularities with poetry, I can only say it's a nice drinking tea. I do love the smell though. I'm not sure if I've just never paid attention to the scent of a freshly opened box of tea or if this particular one is extra smell-goody.

In fact, it reminds me of a perfume I used to wear in High School. This particular perfume stumped the entirety of the internet, ebay included, but I did finds its brother and sisters, Gummy Bear and Cotton Candy.

The perfume I used to wear was Parfums de Coeur Juice Bar and the scent was Long Island Ice Tea. Cannot find a picture or reference to its existence, but I KNOW it did. I had a friend who used to wear the Gummi Bear scent and it would walk into the room before she did. And of course we couldn't wear the same flavor perfume, that would be just unacceptable. Har.

I still love lemon-based scents. I drown myself in Love's Fresh Lemon from time to time, and I'd totally rock the Juice Bar Long Island Iced Tea scent if it still existed.

And as for vintage shopping and thrift scores, life has been brutal. I found a new thrift store a little out of the way. It's not a GW or an affiliated thrift, just a local church thrift. I bought a few pieces of Butterfly Gold & Spring Blossom Corelle for my collection, passed up a few pieces of Corning Ware, but not a drop of Pyrex in site. My area is just bleak for Pyrex right now. I don't know how much better it will be when yard sale and estate sale season starts, but I'm fearing that the vintage ship has sailed. Around these parts everyone, their cousins and the family pet is an "antique dealer".

Hope the sun is shining your way and you're finding better stuff than I am!

Happy Thrifting!