Arcade Chester Gump Cast Iron for Sale *SOLD*

Arcade Chester Gump Cast Iron for sale

Our Chester Gump is an oddity that took about a week to fully appreciate and research.  Arcade and toy collectors are familiar with the Gump Race car toy, but not this one.  Andy Gump, the comic character, had a son who was less prominent in “The Gumps” comic strip.  The boy gained some following, and later was a spin-off character that had his own kids book series.

This toy come around the same time, mid-1930’s, and was actually an oddity in the Arcade cast iron car and truck lineup.  It was an “Outdated” pony car toy with Chester Gump driving.  We see images of Charlie Brown in the face.

Our horse and cart condition are all original.  Chester is original but has had his cheeks retouched.  The horse and yellow cart are shining with gold and black highlights and red wheels.  Chester is brown, cream, green, flesh colored and then topped with a green hat.  This many paint applications were costly, and often shunned.  Here, with a license, they wanted to get things right and true to comic.

Chester work a starched collar often as well as a hat covering his frizzy blond hair.  He was a stereotypical kid of the time often exaggerating and getting into trouble.  Chester had to reign him in.  As such, we hunted out and are pairing an actual comic page from the series.  It fully explains the Chester Gump character for modern collectors.  This newspaper page comes with our toy.

As a treat, we have two additional photos showing the history of this toy.  One is a comic strip picture, showing Chester’s cap, then a second, a catalog showing chester and Andy being sold in an ad.