Vintage golliwogs

The golliwog was a character illustrated by British/American author and artist Florence Upton (1873-1922) in a children's book published in 1895. As drawn by Upton, he is a friendly character derived from the tradition of the blackface minstrel with black face, bright red lips and woolly hair and he wore a red bow tie on a white collar, a blue jacket and black trousers.

Her books were extremely popular in England and this carried through to Europe and the United States.

Upton did not trademark the character and others adopted it, including toy and doll manufacturers, jam manufacturers James Robertson & Sons, and Enid Blyton in some of her books, where he is portrayed as an evil character.

In 1928 James Robertson & Sons introduced paper labels on their jams and marmalades which could be exchanged for enamel badges featuring a golliwog, and this became one of more... the longest running collecting schemes in the United Kingdom. The promotion continued until 2002 and in the approximately 80 years it was in operation, it is estimated that 20 million badges were distributed.

The word golliwog was adopted in popular usage as a slang descriptor for a black person, but by the early 1980s this was considered inappropriate so the use of the golliwog both as an marketing tool and as a doll, and its prominence has declined since that time.

Despite this, the character remained popular in some parts

of the world, particularly in the United Kingdom, where the Golliwog doll

continued to be sold well into the 21st century.