Powercoin’s dark numismatic take on the fairy tales that emanated from medieval Europe continues with its third release in the Fear Tales series. It’s easy to forget just how disturbing many of these stories are, given how film studios like Disney have distorted our view of them with saccharin-coated movies and humour-filled adventure romps.

It fell to the Brother’s Grimm, possibly histories most appropriately named writers, to collate many of the old tales into something with mainstream appeal and it’s been a huge success, spawning countless works across multiple forms of media. The debut coin in this series featured Little Red Riding Hood, and it was followed in 2020 by The Little Match Girl. The latest issue showcases a classic – Hansel and Gretel.

The tale is well known, so let’s jump straight to the coin. As we alluded to earlier, this series is not about the kids version of Hansel & Gretel, but rather harks back to the much darker originals. The antique finish also holds areas of muted colour and the design manages to get in all of the elements of the base story – that of the luring of the children to the Gingerbread House. Rather than a warty old crone, the witch is depicted as a siren-like manifestation, almost vampiric in appearance. The obverse is the standard series one that has remained common to the series.

Packaging remains superb, with a book-like box holding the coin in keeping with the literary origins of the Grimm tales. It’s made of wood, is etched with themed styling and holds a neat certificate of authenticity. The hinging mechanism is also pretty cool. The mintage is capped at 500 pieces and it should be available to order from today, either directly from Powercoin or from many dealers worldwide, some of which can be seen at the Where to buy link below. A cool addition to a series reminding us of the darkness that inspired the light of childrens stories today.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

“Hansel and Gretel” (Little Brother and Little Sister) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Hansel and Gretel are a brother and sister abandoned in a forest, where they fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a house made of gingerbread, cake, and pastries. The cannibalistic witch intends to fatten the children before eventually eating them, but Gretel outwits the witch and kills her. The two children then escape with their lives and return home with the witch’s treasure.

Folklorists Iona and Peter Opie indicate that “Hansel and Gretel” belongs to a group of European tales especially popular in the Baltic regions, about children outwitting ogres into whose hands they have involuntarily fallen.

According to folklorist Jack Zipes, the tale celebrates the symbolic order of the patriarchal home, seen as a haven protected from the dangerous characters that threaten the lives of children outside, while it systematically denigrates the adult female characters, which are seemingly intertwined between each other. The mother or stepmother indeed dies just after the children kill the witch, suggesting that they may metaphorically be the same woman. Zipes also argues that the importance of the tale in the European oral and literary tradition may be explained by the theme of child abandonment and abuse. Due to famines and lack of birth control, it was common in medieval Europe to abandon unwanted children in front of churches or in the forest. The death of the mother during childbirth sometimes led to tensions after remarriage, and Zipes proposes that it may have played a role in the emergence of the motif of the hostile stepmother. Source: Wikipedia