"Dandee" Peter Pan kind of miniature gramophone

[budsta]

From the outside this looks pretty much identical to the Peter Pan but on the inside its a bit different.
Again I have not been able to find any information about this one. So if anyone can enlighten me , it would be appreciated.
This was pictured in a catalogue from an auction of Gramophones & Phonographs here in Melbourne back in c1985 and going by condition description I assume this is the same one. ( The same auction had a Edison School Opera that now resides at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra )

Stephen

[jamiegramo]

Another very unusual name! There was a phonograph maker in the US using this name but I doubt they are connected as, like Peter Pan, this looks European. I'm not sure if you acquired the machine you pictured but the condition is certainly really good. The picture shows another 'Dandee' on the left with no information on the maker. The one on the right is an unusual Peter Pan model.

It seems Dandee favoured the reflector in the lid form of sound reproduction from the few examples I've seen.

[Oedipus]

Dan-Dee is new to me, and I don't think it was ever registered as a Trade Mark in the UK. Despite its resemblance to a Peter Pan, it is clearly not a Peter Pan, because it has a different type of turntable, with three sideways folding arms rather than the Peter Pan four upwards-folding arms. The three-arm design was also used on the Cameraphone. Another machine which used the tree-arm turntable was the Carrie-dot, also sold as the Sternogem. Jamiegramo's picture shows an almost identical machine as a Dan-Dee, except that this one has a conventional turntable.

I have no idea who made this machine, SternoGem being the only one with a clue; Sterno was originally a portable gramophone introduced by a Mr Sternberg during WW1 and also marketed as a Columbia, but in the 1920s, the name belonged to the British Homophone Co and was quite a common brand of not very interesting gramophones. They might have made the Sternogem and sold it to others to sell under their own brand names, or they might have bought it in and branded it themselves. It is one of those frustrating designs that seems seldom to have been advertised, so all we know is what we can deduce from surviving examples.

Jamiegramo's unusual Peter Pan is another example; I have seen several of these (I have heard it described as the 'dustpan model'), but have never seen an advertisement, so do not know what its official name was.

[jamiegramo]

Very interesting the Dan-Dee model that I show (from a German auction catalogue) is very similar (apart from the turntable as previously said) to the Sternogem and other shown by Oedipus. The cut-outs in motor board and lid are even the same although the second Oedipus machine has a different motor. I think the explanation that these are by the same maker but with different branding is quite likely.

Jamie

[budsta]

Yes, I did acquire the Dandee first pictured.
It just shows that while we are familiar with the main makers of the miniature portables there must have been a bunch of small makers that came on the scene trying to tap into the market.

Stephen

[chunnybh]

Lovely looking portable.
Perhaps it is a US copy. I know there was a whole Swanson line of portables although they are known for having wooden tonearms.
Here's an article from The Talking Machine World.
Mentions a Nifty, which of course is commonly a European metal toy portable.