Very similar egg cups 2

Welcome to the second post of our series exploring the notion of 'originality' in the world of egg cups! Today we examine four pieces that seem to be part of the same family of reading eggs, but were actually aren't. Read carefully.

Amazing details: 1) this egg cup, where the soft-boiled egg is supposed to read an imaginary version of German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, was produced by the German company Harlekin, it has a sticker marked ""Original Handarbeit, Made in Germany, Harlekin" and was bought in Germany in 1988 [eggcup0709]; 2) here the soft-boiled egg reads Le Figaro, the egg cup has a sticker marked "Harlekin Geschenke-Wiesbaden" and ""Vergiss nicht die schönen Dinge des Lebens", and it was bought in France in 1986 [eggcup0490]; 3) in this case the soft-boiled egg reads a realistic Financial Times dated from March 1988, and there is no mark, and no sticker [eggcup4223]; 4) here the soft-boiled egg reads a Women magazine, the egg cup was bought in London in 1982 and seems to be, therefore, the oldest of the four. Is it the 'original' one, or was its design inspired from another model? The question remains open!

To see our first post on egg cups that remind us of other egg cups, please check the Very similar egg cups post.

Very similar egg cups

It's an undeniable fact: there are thousands and thousands of egg cups in the world (there are actually more than five thousand egg cups in this house, and we know this is only a very small portion of all the egg cups ever produced). Where do egg cup creators get their inspiration from? How can it be that there are so many different models and that new ones keep appearing? Well, some creators seem to like to look for inspiration in previously existing egg cups, and the truth is that models are not always THAT different. This is what we will explore in a series of posts titled "Very similar egg cups", a series that we start today with a plastic recreation of a china egg cup.

Known and maybe important details: 1) it's a non-footed china egg cup made by the German company Bareuther during the 1960 [eggcup1446]; 2) a very similar egg cup, made in plastic, with the same form as the previous one but including an integral saucer, produced by Belgian firm D.B.P. Plastics, probably at the end of 1970s/1980s [eggcup3362].