Series of Liebig advertising figurines depicting scenes from the four acts of the opera "Aida" by G. Verdi

From the second half of the nineteenth century, the fashion of publishing advertising figurines that were given away to customers both from department stores and from the manufacturers themselves became widespread in France. In 1872 Baron Justus von Liebig decided to publicize his meat extract starting with the first series of 16 118x83 mm format figurines illustrating the Frai Bentos factory. This first series was followed by others distributed both in France and in other European countries, while it was only in 1878 that the production of figurines in Italian began.
The use of chromolithographic printing, which includes up to 12 color changes, combined with the beauty of the images, often produced by real artists, made the Liebig figurines a true cult object collected all over the world, to the point that even today the figurines Liebig are the subject of collecting all over the world and some series achieve respectable values.