An article with image of the bullfighter from Fernand Martin number 129 ((In the books known to us, this toy has the Martin product number 47, but that is incorrecte).
NEW YEAR’S DAY BARACKS 1894/1895
It seems that this year, the small booths on New Year’s Day have had a real resurgence in success. We don’t want to witness it except the compact crowd that hasn’t stopped crowding the boulevards since Christmas Eve.
During our walk we came across several sensational toys. In the series of mechanical toys, always very successful, here is the Bull race, which buyers have already dubbed the Little Sugar Bowl (explanation see below): two horizontal bars, one ending in a bull, the other in a toreador armed with his muleta, chase each other; the bull, with articulated legs, leaps upon the toreador who flees from him.
Explanation: Le petit sucrier: the sugar bowl. that was the nickname of Max Lebaudy, the son of a very wealthy French sugar manufacturer, who died young in 1895, after wasting millions, much of it in the most absurd way.
1894 is the year when Max fell in love with bullfighting.
He then intends to organize several bullfights on his estate and thus has an arena built for the occasion.
All of Paris and local notables are invited to attend these bullfights, orchestrated down to the smallest detail, even the program which was written in Spanish!
Because Fernand Martin also belonged to the notables of Paris, it is very likely that he also watched one of these bullfights and in an interview for the magazine: Almanach Pratique illustré du Petit Parisien 1913 article: Les jouet mécanique, invention bien Française by Paul Lagarlère page 71-80, Martin told that he was inspired by the Max Lebaudy bullfight’s to design this toy.
You can find another article about this toy in the link below:
course-de-taureaux-the-bull-fighter