So here we have a mule and that brought us to one of the first characters on children`s tv, Muffin the Mule. Now he is usually regarded as the first children`s tv star, and the first to perform live on screen, though he was but a puppet, operated by Annette Mills. The show ran from 1946 to 1955 but the puppet was made way earlier, in the 1930s, and before he was a radio and tv star, he also had a career on the stage.
The reason for his disappearance in 1955 was that Ms. Mills died in that year. However it was not farewell, because in 1956 he sprang back to life on the rival Independent Television, or ITV. It did not last too long though. Yet that was still not the end, for he returned again, as an animated cartoon, back on the B.B.C., from 2005 to 2011.
I have not yet found him on a trade card, but maybe you know of one?
He did appear on a pack of Pepys playing cards, published in 1949.
And he was on a 20p postage stamp, with Annette Mills, issued in September 1996.
The first thing to point out is that though at one time there were four separate Swiss chocolate factories one called Peter, one Cailler, one Kohler, and one Nestle, by the time this little papery card was produced most had amalgamated with each other, Peter having been founded in the 1860s, and merging with Kohler in 1904, and with Cailler in 1911. They printed these cards between 1921 and 1929, and there were a hundred and twenty series, each of twelve cards. And shortly after the final cards for this series were issued, in 1929, the merged trio were swallowed by Nestle.
However if you look at the album each name is in a different typeface, so there are grounds for thinking them separate still.