Birth and history of Liebig figures

Liebig figurines originate around the mid–19th century. 

In this period, the “fashion” of advertising one’s products by giving buyers various types of gadgets spread in France – most often stickers in black and white or in color using the lithographic technique. Usually, these stickers represent the most varied scenes and at the same time promote a certain product, either directly in the cartoon or on the back with writings or direct advertising messages. At all times there were very few companies that could afford such a form of advertising.

Baron Julius von Liebig chooses to adopt the sticker system himself to promote his meat extract, first giving them to customers and then distributing them through a real points collection. The first two series are printed in France and consist of 16 and 12 figurines respectively, all large format, depicting the meat extract factory located in Fray Bentos. In the following years, numerous other series were published in various countries and in different languages: French, German, Italian, Flemish, Spanish. They were not the only figurines in circulation, but the print obtained with the chromolithography technique of up to 12 colors, the attention to details, the creation of the subjects most often entrusted to real artists, the presence of careful and in–depth descriptions and, not least, the fact of always being in important series of 6, 12 or 18 themed, immediately made it one of the most sought after and loved series of stickers.

Until the early Twentieth Century, the advertising of meat extract was an integral part of the cartoon. Often the image of the jar of Liebig meat extract in a certain way “participates” in the scene painted by the artist. From 1930 onwards, however, advertising images and wording were limited to the back of the sticker, while the entire front was reserved for the cartoon, with the most disparate themes, completely dissociated from the Liebig product. Only the signature of Baron von Liebig remains, usually placed in a corner inside the frame, in a very discrete way. Everything continues until 1974, the year in which the production of figurines ceases.