These figures are often spotted in Austrian flea markets in great quantities. I guess there were many millions of them made and given for free in supermarkets. Thanks to a nice reader of this blog, we now know that this figures are actually older than initially guessed, around 2002, and that they were given in schools to children taped to a daily bottle of milk. This action is still carried out in Austrian schools (although now without any give-aways), and it is a great way to incentivize the consumption of milk among children and support the local cattle farms.
There are at least 15 different mice characters (from which I show here 10), but none is marked other than with the CE seal at the back and with the word “Milch” (Milk) in the chest or other part of the body. That is why it has been difficult to find out the manufacturer of these mice. Fortunately, I also found a picture of a "sealed" figure and I can now say that they were made for Wesemann & Co. Vienna/Austria, a marketing and publicity company from Vienna that is still in the business.
There is no information on the Internet so far about them, but my guess here is that they must be from 2006, maybe from 2007, as in that year there was some crisis in the milk production sector all over Europe, and most countries had an oversupply that lead many producers to even dispose the milk in order to avoid some fines from their respective governments and the European Community. I cannot explain this, since I don’t know exactly what happened at the time, and I only vaguely recall many demonstrations and many discussions around the milk quotas that each country had to stick to.
In this context, prices were very low, especially for the smaller companies and milk producers, so many were forced to dispose many liters of milk. It made sense to support some advertising campaign in order to increase the national consumption of milk and dairy products, so less milk had to be disposed and the fine, if any, would be lower. That is why I think these figures are probably an assignment of the Austrian Ministery of Agriculture or maybe some big association of milk producers. Another guess is that you got these figures when buying a certain amount of liters of milk.
The figures are all representing virtues like intelligence, beauty, longevity, vitality, strength, endurance… as well as different cool characters like a skateboarder, a scientist, a surfer, a guitarist… all positive associations with milk and its consumption, so, in my humble opinion, the figure designers did a good job creating these nice figures.
I know these figures are quite new compared to the other toys I usually show in my blog, but since nobody seems to know where they come from (and there is no information on the Internet), I decided to write here my thoughts about them, just in case somebody is curious about them and wants to know more about. If you have some facts about them, I’d be very pleased to hear them. Feel free to leave a message in the comments section, thank you!
FACTS AND FIGURES:
- Names: „MILCH“ FIGURES, „MILCHMÄUSE“ FIGUREN
- Toy Line: Unknown
- Year: Around 2002
- Company: Wesemann & Co Vienna (Probably China, distributed in Austria)
- Size: Around 5 cm
