This Amazing Steiff Prewar Treasure Is No Optical Illusion!

Eye, eye, eye... look what we have here! Steiffgal just got an inquiry about an eye-popping rarity and she could not wait to share this exciting find with you. Let's not monkey around and jump right into the details of this precious prewar primate right away!

What we have here is Steiff's Mimocculo Orang Utan. This example is about 35 cm tall, fully jointed, and made from long, fuzzy red-orange mohair. His hands, feet, ears, and face are made from felt. He features an open, dimentional mouth as well as really unusual and abundant facial seaming. This is because he has a remarkable moving eye feature imbedded in his head. These seams hold his facial fabric, and in turn his eye-movement hardware, securely in place. With Mimocculo, when you pull gently on his ear, his white, brown, and black round glass eyeballs move left and right, as well as up and down. This great example retains his long trailing "f" button and traces of his red ear tag as his Steiff IDs. 

This nifty novelty was produced from 1930 through 1936 in 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 22, 25, 28, 35, 43, and 50 cm. Sizes from 17 cm had the distinctive rolling eye mechanism and deep eye pockets; the smaller ones had standard, stationary glass pupil eyes and closed mouths. Given Mimocculo's charm and collector's appeal, Steiff created a 35 cm tall rolling eye replica of this treasure in 1998. It was produced in an edition size of 3,000 pieces overall and very closely resembled the prewar version.

In the early 1930s, when Mimocculo debuted, one of Steiff's business development strategies was to produce high end items with distinctive mechanical features. Other products with amazing jointing or advances from this era included the company's snap jointed tail moves head Circus Elephants (made in 24 and 30 cm from 1931-1940 overall) a snap jointed tail turns head Circus Bear (made in 32 cm from 1935-1939), and a series of press and release music box animals based on Steiff's most popular prewar pet designs. Mimocculo, with his fabulous flirty eyeballs, fit perfectly into this exclusive club of mechanical marvels.

And just how rare are these outrageously outstanding Orang Utans?Steiffgal has only seen a handful come up for public auction over the past decade or two. Most recently, Ladenburger Spielzeugauktion offered a 10 cm version at their Special Steiff Auction held on June 29th, 2024 in Giengen, Germany. You can see this happy handful here on the left, the image is from Ladenburger Spielzeugauktion. This "mini Mimo" had a starting bid of 180 €, hammered at 3100 €, and was cataloged simply as:

"Monkey, orangutan, MIMOCCULO, made 1930-1933, 10 cm, rust-colored mohair, small glass eyes, felt feet, hands and face as well as ears in very nice condition, unusual."  

Orange you glad you checked out this discussion on Steiff's Mimocculo Orang Utan?

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