Gary Dean, a long-time Empty Stocking Fund volunteer, was the first person to secure one of the new ornaments.
"We have had about a dozen people in to try to purchase them early and about 40 calls," home delivery sales and marketing manager Sheri Moore said.
"We are really expecting a crowd on Friday to buy."
A maximum of 2,000 ornaments will be sold at $10 each, HST included, and the mold will then be broken. Each ornament comes packaged with the heartwarming story of how the Empty Stocking Fund was born. Only cash will be accepted and all proceeds will go to the Empty Stocking Fund.
It was the late artist Jim Stackhouse who put faces to the Empty Stocking Fund children who, for years, represented the plight of Saint John's poor at Christmas and reflect what reporter Harry (Dutch) Ervine saw on his way back to the newsroom nearly 100 years ago.
This year, Moore decided it was time for the children to secure their rightful place in Saint John history and she proposed the idea of capturing them in a pewter ornament.
"I have been watching the Empty Stocking Fund ever since I can remember," Moore said.
"It was our family tradition growing up. My mother had to watch it for the full eight hours every year. It was when we started our Christmas cookies. Even if we were performing on the show, Mom would make arrangements to get us there so she could stay home and watch. When I got older and started working here, I got involved behind the scenes and have been attached to it ever since."
The ornament depicts two waif-life children gazing at toys in a store window and is from a drawing by Stackhouse, who drew the powerful illustration in black ink and wash in the 1960s, actually modelling it after his own two children. He said at the time that his son, Hank, used to wear an aviator cap, which he changed into a boy's cap with flaps, and his daughter, Greer, was the face of the little girl.
The children are dressed in thread-bare clothing and stand together in front of a brightly-lighted window. Pierre-Luc Arseneau, the Aitkens Pewter artist who cast the ornament, said it took pretty much a whole day to get the design perfect.
"I re-drew it and traced over it on the computer," he said. "I applied a three-D rendering program that allows me to take drawings and apply a virtual relief of it. I, virtually, sculpt the piece from my drawings."
It then takes a second full day to mill. Pewter is at least 95 per cent tin with small parts of antimony and copper, making it an extremely versatile metal that improves with age. It doesn't rust, tarnish or affect the taste of food or drink, and requires little maintenance.
Former Telegraph-Journal employee Gary Dean - who ran the Empty Stocking Fund campaign for 44 years and was known as Mr. Empty Stocking Fund - is thrilled with the ornament and was the first in line to buy, even before they went on sale.
"I think it's great," he said.
"It's the old-style logo with the two children. It's really good to see that back again."
The original Empty Stocking Fund logo has always been close to Moore's heart, too.
"It symbolizes what I remember of the Empty Stocking Fund: children helping children.
"While researching different New Brunswick companies to come up with our Christmas subscription packages this year, I stumbled upon the Aitkens site and thought immediately about how we could fundraise for the Empty Stocking fund with a limited-edition pewter ornament.
"I remembered the Uptown Saint John pewter campaign 15 years ago and standing in line myself to get the old General Hospital ornament," Moore said.
"The number of children needing help increases every year and with the economy the way it's been all year, I worried that the Empty Stocking Fund might suffer and was looking for a way to help.
"We have already had numerous phone calls and customers at our counter inquiring on the ornaments since the announcement ads started running on Monday."
Auditions for the Empty Stocking Fund will be held on Saturday, with the 73rd annual broadcast set for Nov. 21.
