Lot of 5. First two are foreign issue, either from Spain or Italy and from the 1960s. Vinyl heads, fabric bodies with felt hands. 9.5" to 10.5" tall. This company also produced Disney puppets as indicated by a factory error "Walt Disney" stitched tag on Hardy. Laurel's body has moisture stain but this mostly blends with the design. Fine. Hardy VF. The remaining 3 are by Ougen and were produced in France exclusively for the European market with very few making it to the states. 1990s. Each about 11" tall highly detailed and of great quality with vinyl heads, fabric bodies and plastic hands. Superb likenesses. Mint as issued. From the Andy Levison Collection.

Here is Andy's story on this company and its puppets-The European Puppet Discovery - Ougen In the summer of 1994 Andy traveled to France. On a visit to a large department store in Paris he found a new world of puppets. There were licensed and non - licensed characters. The licensed characters included the main Disney Characters, Mickey and the gang, and those from Disney Movies from the '50's to the present. Also represented were King Features Syndicate comic characters including the Popeye(R) group as well as celebrities such as Laurel and Hardy and Charley Chaplin. These vinyl headed and cloth bodied puppets had amazingly accurate sculptings and were beautifully painted. They also had little plastic hands attached to their arms. After purchasing one of each of the puppets that were in stock at the store, Andy then found some more characters in the store at the airport on the way home. Andy then contacted the manufacturer, Ougen, to see if he could find out how many different characters existed. He was able to obtain a current sell sheet from the company that contained pictures of each of the puppets in manufacture. Between 1994 and 1999 Andy purchased every licensed character that was in the company's line. The company was family owned, created by Roland Coll in 1926. It manufactured puppets and toy soldiers as well as cockpit figures for model airplanes. In 1999 the Disney license was not renewed by the company as sales were declining. The company was facing hard times and eventually closed.What is most wonderful about Ougen is that its line of puppets could not be sold in the United States as the company's licensing rights were only for Europe. As a result the volume of production was much lower than of a company supplying the US market. In fact the production of characters for the Mulan and Hunchback Movies was very limited. In addition Ougen manufactured characters that were never made in America as puppets, Examples are Pete The Dog (a villain in Mickey Mouse movies) and The Indian Chief from Peter Pan (Tiger Lilly's father) There are numerous other characters as well.In all there are close to 100 characters that will appear in our auctions. We hope you will enjoy Andy's special European find and add them to your collections.