Everything authentic. Nothing reproduced. 🏛️ Vintage and Antique Gifts is a multi-channel...
Preserving History: Authentic Objects Across Eras
Vintage and Antique Gifts
Couldn't load pickup availability
Reach up for the ceiling fan chain and find Bullwinkle J. Moose on the end of it — arms folded, antlers up, looking as baffled as ever. His partner Rocky the Flying Squirrel hangs on the other chain in his aviator cap. The moose took his name from a sign on a Berkeley car lot. The man who made him once drove a statehood petition for an imaginary state called Moosylvania to the White House gates and was ordered off at gunpoint. And the box these two came in carries its own clue to its age, printed in the fine print on the back.
This is an unused set of two figural ceiling fan pulls: Bullwinkle in orange with yellow antlers, white cuffs on his folded arms and his wide-eyed, slightly lost expression; and Rocky in gray, arms flung out mid-flight, wearing his light blue flying cap. Each figure hangs from its own gold-tone ball-bead chain, the style used on ceiling fans and pull-chain lamps. Each pull measures 6 inches from the top of the chain loop to the tip of the figure, and the figure itself stands about 2 1/2 inches tall. The pair is new old stock, never installed, and comes with its original box and the bubble wrap it was packed in.
The box is printed on every side. The front panel is yellow and blue, with "Fan Pulls" in red inside a blue oval, "Set of 2," Rocky flying down a bead chain and Bullwinkle standing below him, framed with snowflakes and swirls. One side carries the show logo, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends," over a giant Bullwinkle nose and antler, with www.universalstudios.com along the bottom. The back shows Rocky in flight above the words "Fan Pulls Set of 2" and a block of fine print that begins, exactly as printed: "This is decrative item-It is not a toy." It goes on to say the characters are trademarks and copyrights of Ward Productions, Inc., "Licensed by Universal Studios Licensing, Inc."
That licensing line is the clock. Universal's parent company was MCA — the Music Corporation of America, formed in 1924 by Jules Stein and William R. Goodheart Jr., incorporated as MCA Inc. on November 10, 1958. In 1995 the Seagram company acquired 80 percent of MCA from Matsushita, and on December 9, 1996, the new owners dropped the MCA name and the company became Universal Studios Inc. A box licensed through "Universal Studios Licensing, Inc." and printed with a universalstudios.com web address was made after that change — a late-1990s piece at the earliest, never a product of the original broadcast years.
The logo agrees. That "and Friends" blanket title was never used while the show was on television; it was imposed later for home video and the characters' long licensed afterlife.
Jay Ward was born in San Francisco on September 20, 1920, and raised in Berkeley. In 1947 he opened a real estate office, and a runaway truck crashed through the building and pinned him. While he recovered he turned toward animation, and his first series, Crusader Rabbit, ran from 1948 to 1952.
Ward, Alex Anderson and Bill Scott built the new show out of Anderson's original idea, "The Frostbite Falls Revue." Rocky and His Friends premiered on ABC on November 19, 1959, and ran there until July 10, 1961; as The Bullwinkle Show it ran on NBC from September 24, 1961, to June 27, 1964. General Mills sponsored it, and the animation was farmed out to Gamma Productions in Mexico. June Foray voiced Rocky, Bill Scott voiced Bullwinkle, Paul Frees was Boris Badenov and William Conrad narrated. Thanks to Scott and the writers, the puns came often and shamelessly. Jay Ward Productions also designed the trademark characters for Cap'n Crunch, Quisp and Quake cereals and made the TV commercials for them.
Rocky and Bullwinkle's hometown of Frostbite Falls was a spoof of International Falls, Minnesota — the show even put it in the same Koochiching County. The real town sits on the south bank of the Rainy River, directly across from Fort Frances, Ontario, with a population of 5,802 at the 2020 census.
International Falls has called itself the "Icebox of the Nation" since 1948, and it had to fight to keep the name. Fraser, Colorado, claimed the slogan too; in 1986 International Falls paid Fraser $2,000 to drop its claim. Then in 1996 International Falls let its federal trademark lapse, and Fraser filed for it. The Minnesota town answered with a photograph of its 1955 Pee Wee hockey team traveling to Boston under the slogan, and on January 29, 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office registered "Icebox of the Nation" to International Falls.
Bullwinkle's name came off a sign. Bullwinkel Motors was a car dealership in Berkeley, California, and Alex Anderson borrowed the name, swapping its final letters.
The best Jay Ward story is Moosylvania. In 1962 Ward leased an island on the Canadian border in Minnesota, named it after the show's fictional Moosylvania, and set out with publicist Howard Brandy collecting signatures on a petition to make it the 51st state. As the story goes, they reached the White House with their petition on the morning the Cuban Missile Crisis was breaking — and were ordered at gunpoint to drive off.
For decades the characters were copyrighted in Jay Ward's name alone. Alex Anderson, who had drawn the first versions, pressed his claim after Ward's death in West Hollywood on October 12, 1989, and received a financial settlement and a court order acknowledging him as the "creator of the first version of the characters of Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Dudley."
A 16-foot rotating fiberglass Bullwinkle stood outside Ward's offices on Sunset Boulevard near the Chateau Marmont, a landmark of the Strip; the studio's Dudley Do-Right Emporium souvenir shop on Sunset closed in July 2004. DreamWorks Animation removed the statue in 2013, and on February 28, 2020, it finally received a permanent home at Sunset Boulevard and Holloway Drive.
On June 21, 2000, Ward was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7080 Hollywood Boulevard. Nine days later, on June 30, Universal Pictures released its live-action Rocky & Bullwinkle feature, directed by Des McAnuff, with Robert De Niro as Fearless Leader, Rene Russo as Natasha, Jason Alexander as Boris — and June Foray back as the voice of Rocky. It cost $76 million and took in $35.1 million worldwide. Over the years the rights have moved among Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Classic Media and WildBrain, which held them from 2022 to 2025, before reverting to the Jay Ward estate. Through every owner, the moose and squirrel kept turning up on home video, licensed goods and, here, a ceiling fan.
The box is from the 1990s licensing of the characters. Its licensor carries the Universal Studios name, which Universal's parent company only took in December 1996.
No. They are new old stock, never hung on a fan, with the original box and packing.
Yes. Each figure hangs from a standard bead chain that clips onto an ordinary fan or lamp pull.
Jay Ward's company owned the characters; Universal's licensing arm handled the license for products like this one.
No — the cartoon town was modeled on International Falls, the Rainy River border town that holds the "Icebox of the Nation" trademark.
June Foray was Rocky and Bill Scott was Bullwinkle. Foray returned as Rocky for the 2000 Universal film.
Items from Vetted Pro Collectors
Shipping for items offered by vetted Pro Collectors is determined at checkout. All Pro Collector listings are reviewed to ensure fair, reasonable shipping practices.
For full details, please refer to our Shipping Policy.
Take your time — you've got a full six months. If a piece isn't right for you, send it back the way it reached you and we're good.
In the first 30 days your money goes straight back the way you paid. After that it's store credit, so you can put it toward something you'd rather have.
Return shipping we sort out between us, case by case. I don't make this difficult.
If something arrives damaged, or it isn't what I said it was, send me a photo within 48 hours and I'll make it right.
Email info@vintageantiquesgifts.com or call 802-356-9872 — that's me answering, not a call center.
The only things I can't take back are custom or special-order pieces and gift cards.
