PRE-WAR LANTERN SLIDE SETS

I give a short break to my coverage of post-war Big Bad Wolf publications and temporarily revert back to the pre-war era with this post about British lantern slides. The above image is of the box of a set of slides with sequential images from the short cartoon Three Little Pigs (1933) in which the Big Bad Wolf had debutted. Below are the actual slides themselves; click on the image to view it in real size.

This set is one of the many slide sets based on Disney cartoons which were manifactured by the London-based Ensign Ltd. I cannot see any copyright date in the original box of the set in my collection, but it must date from the period 1933-40, possibly circa 1936. The first Three Little Pigs set by Ensign Ltd, which also happened to be their first set with color slides, reportedly came out in 1933, but that set is reported to feature only 14 slides while the set in my collection is from a later edition with 24 slides (as can be seen in the above images).

Among other sets released by Ensign is one based on Three Little Pigs's first sequel, The Big Bad Wolf (1934):

These sets were marketed either individually or in groups together with the lanterns themselves:

Below is a close-up of the wonderful illustration on the reverse side of the lid and further below is the same illustration on the worn-out front side of the lid:

The below advertisement is from no. 40 of British comics magazine Mickey Mouse Weekly, dated Nov. 7th, 1936 (the same advertisement was also published in several other issues of the said magazine in late 1936):

Tragedy befell Ensign Ltd during the 2nd World War as its facilities were hit and destroyed during the Nazi air bombardment of London in September 1940; as a result, the company had to cease its activities and got liquidated...

More info on Ensign can be found here: http://www.luikerwaal.com/newframe_uk.htm?/catalogus_ensign_uk.htm