Already for a long time I know that there are playsets from the Ericofon on the market. But never I have bought one. Now I got the opportunity to get one from France although the origin is Italian.

This set reminded me of the 4 intercom sets I made with 2 Ericofons for an exhibition back in 2018.

Two Ericofons connected by a simple wire, functioning as an intercom… a nice playset for kids. In the old days at least. Not sure if these days kids will still be amused by these kind of toys when they have a smartphone or tablet as well.

The size of the phones is approximately the same as the size of the original Ericofon. Nice detail is that the box is showing a wedge, but it contains a flat type of Ericofon (sorry… 😉 ). Each phone runs on a large 3V battery that I do not think are still for sale anymore. From the booklet, the following text I found quite amusing:

The ‘telefoni comunicanti’ playset was manufactured by Ingap, located in Padova, Italy and has article number 6090. They were quite famous with their tin, and later plastic, cars as from the 1930’s onwards. Unfortunately I do not know the year of production but I expect it should have been produced in the 1960’s.

Update 28/06/2024:

There is also a Brio Ericofon on the market. Seems like quite some people had one in their childhood. This is not an electrical device, but a pure wooden play phone. Below is a picture from the web.

On Instagram (yes, you can find me there as well) I encountered some very nice drawings of Ericofons. They were made by Jonn Celemente from Sweden. All credits to this artist!!

Besides these 3 Ericofon related drawings he is also creating very very nice other pieces of art. Please check him out in Instagram as well.

The drawings are beautifully made and some give me a slight feeling of discomfort. This is very personal but this is what I like in art: a grinding feeling here and there does not hurt anyone ;-).

There is this site called TurboSquid where they create all kinds of 3D models. A large scale of different subjects are being modelled. I must say that it is very impressive. Also the Ericofon has been done. Very nicely done!! Not exactly the right touch, but impressive.

I also have one of the pictures from this site as a header on my blog (credits to them). However, independent on how much you do your best on something, there are always some small issues that are not according to reality. 🙂 Do you see it?

Nevertheless it is worth to check out their site.

Update 01/06/2023:

A new 3D was created with a yellow old case. Now the dial is in the right direction. Nice!!

Winter is kicking in now with temperatures dropping every night and the wind comes more and more from the north. The picture reflects for me the cold and darkness of the months to come.

There is not so much happening in Ericofon-land at the moment for me so I am focussing a bit on photography.

There is not so much happening at the moment in Ericofonland. The lockdown is causing a dip here as well. Packages (specially to the USA and Australia) take a long time to be delivered. If being delivered at all… Tracking information is not updated already for weeks. So I am avoiding shipments outside Europe at the moment.

Instead, I decided to create an Insta account and search for information/pictures in that outskirt of the internet. Information is not so much to be found, but pictures more than enough! Even found some of my own pictures back. I am famous. 🙂 The two pictures below of people having the Ericofon tattooed on their arms I found worth sharing as well. Not my cup of tea… 🙂 But nice to share.

I am perplexed.

On the Dutch Wikipedia there is a nice picture of a very large Ericofon. The picture was taken on April 5th 1964 on the T-Bana (Swedish metro/subway) station of Telefonplan, Stockholm at its opening.

Telefonplan is a square in Stockholm where a factory and the headquaters of Ericsson was located at that time.

Obviously the Ericofon was important enough in 1964 to be shown so large and out in the cold.

It is already 5 years ago that I started this blog. The idea was to tell something on what I would come across in Ericofon-land, while taking my own collection a step further than where it was at that moment. Not at all knowing what would follow and if there was something to share at all.

In retrospective, it has been a pretty nice journey so far. At least for me… I really enjoyed it. Sorting out things, making some pictures, thinking about the next subject… I hope that you as a reader did not yawn too much as I am aware that this is a very specific subject. But no worries if you do indeed appreciate it, I have a social life as well and many other interests. One of them should be quite obvious from the site if you dig around.

As long as I can I will still share information with you, my dear reader 😉 Once a month is more or less okay for me. If you have any feedback, ideas, questions, information, pictures or any other contribution from your side, that would be more than welcome. I would also be willing to buy Ericofons from you if you are fed up with them…

Yesterday I watched a Dutch movie on the abduction of Freddy Heineken, the owner of the Heineken beercompany, in The Netherlands in 1983. The movie was made in 2011.

On the picture the girl is going for the truth. She’s calling her boyfriend with a nice red Ericofon which resulted in the localization of one of the criminals.

Actually it is half the truth. The Ericofon used is not a typical Dutch model. The color is Mandarin Red, not PTT Red and the dial face is not black but white. There is also a text on the dial face that I cannot read. The British Post Office tends to place texts on the dial face.

There were Mandarins around in The Netherlands, but they are not very common. Usually they are found in the borderregion with Germany (imported?), not in Amsterdam where this event was located.

Nevertheless it could still be historically correct, but I doubt. The Ericofon is found numerous times in the media. There are a lot of appearances in movies.