Thursday, February 26, 2009

Bob the Bunny

Check out this cute little crafty project offered to the public by The Spool Cotton Company in 1930. One in a series of six barnyard friends including Kitty Cat, Puppy Dog, Hal Horse, Clara Cow and Pete Pig, Bob Bunny is a poetic, Depression-era hare easily assembled with a pair of scissors, a few dabs of paste, and a spool of thread. As the card explains:

This little chap
is BOB the BUNNY;
His ears are long,
his tail is funny.
When Bunny laughs,
he bangs his heels
To show exactly
how he feels.
He always wants
to play with you,
And so he tells
you what to do.
Read his directions
then have fun
With SPOOLS that make
your BOBBY BUN.

As with the business cards offered by The Palace Saloon and Restaurant and the Schenk Publishing Company, part of Bob Bunny's appeal is that he's part of a set that the enterprising consumer can collect—an entire barnyard threaded together, as it were, by their versified introductions. Having grown up with mass manufactured plastic Fisher Price barnyards (complete with their creepy bestiaries and round-headed, disproportionate humans), Poetry & Popular Culture has a particular fondness for the world of Bob and his furry friends. Admittedly, that world has its own element of creep—Why does Bob bang his heels when he laughs? What exactly is a Bobby Bun? Why does Bob want to play with me?—but at least it's creep that comes from poetry, not from polymer.