Rose O’Neill was nineteen years old when she left Nebraska for the Big Apple in search of work as an illustrator and cartoonist. A self-taught artist, she had enjoyed six years of success selling her artwork in Omaha, so she had reason to be hopeful.
A Closer Look at Kewpie Dolls
Puck was an American humor magazine, not a hockey weekly or a mischievous fairy trickster in a play about seasonal dreaming written by Bill Shakespeare
Puck began publishing in 1887. It cost 16¢ and was filled with news about government, politics, and social issues. It was extensively illustrated in the days before printing photographs became practical. Mostly, it was filled with political satire, including caricatures and cartoons.
William Randolph Hearst’s company bought Puck in 1916, threw out the politics and social issues and replaced them with fine art and fads. In two years, Puck was dead.
But not before Puck hired the teenage kid from the sticks and put her on their otherwise all-male staff
Rose O’Neill illustrated magazine stories and drew ads for consumer products, including Jell-O and Kellogg’s Cornflakes.
Her drawings were sweet and innocent, cherub-like, and suitable for women’s magazines in the days when pop went to work and mom kept house and raised the kids
As the story goes, a shrewd Ladies’ Home Journal editor saw O’Neill’s drawings of cupids and child-like elves elsewhere and wanted O’Neill to create “a series of little creatures” for the Journal.
And that’s when O’Neill had a dream
As she explained in a 1910 Woman’s Home Companion interview, she awoke seeing them everywhere. “Suddenly they were all over my room, bouncing about on my bed. One perched in my hand like a bird. It’s bottom wasn’t warm like a human baby’s. It was oddly cool. That’s how I knew they were elves.”
In one account of the dream, the fairies introduced themselves (“We’re the Kewpies!”)
In the version I favor, Rose decided she would name the tiny fairies Kewpie (KYOO – pee) because it was short for Cupid (KYOO – pid). “Cupid gets you into trouble and the Kewpies get you out,” she said. Her drawings were sweet and innocent, suitable for women’s magazines in the days when pop went to work every day and mom kept house, raised the kids, and had dinner on the table when pop got home.
O’Neill said her Kewpies were benevolent elves who did good deeds
“Kewpie philosophy takes the unwieldiness out of wisdom, puts cheerio into charity and draws the fangs of philanthropy. I have put all of my love of humanity into this little image.”
Recognizing a good thing when they saw it, other ladies’ magazines wanted O’Neill to draw Kewpie cartoons for them, too. One after another clamored for a chance to publish Kewpie cartoons along with O’Neill’s stories and verses about them.
Kewpie-printed paper dolls went viral and broke the interweb
They were the only paper dolls printed on both sides. Kewpies had a front and a back while others had only fronts. Kewpies were so popular that people started asking for real dolls they could hold and play with.
O’Neill designed several sizes of Kewpies
Freed from the limits of two-dimensional drawings, O’Neill designed her Kewpies to look like “googly-eyed baby cupids, with tiny tufts of hair and budding wings on their backs.”
Kewpies were not just another pretty face, either
Rose O’Neill was a feminist and activist. She used her Kewpies to promote women’s right to vote, support racial equality, and advocate for the poor.
There are many antique sites offering vintage Kewpie dolls for sale
Each has its own version of the Kewpie story. There were so many googly-eyed knockoffs made that if you’re thinking about buying one, know this: the odds are the Kewpie in front of you is not an authentic Kewpie doll.
Basic things to know about O’Neill’s original Kewpies
- they’re mounted on pedestals
- their tiny little wings are tipped in blue,
- their hands look like starfish,
- they have a red heart shape on the front,
- and their googly eyes are mischievously rolled to one side or the other.
At first, the 3-D Kewpie doll’s body wasn’t much more than a base to carry the oversized head around
The first Kewpie dolls were made with both legs molded together as if one and permanently fixed to a pedestal base. Then one day, the legs became two and greater flexibility of arms, legs, and waist followed as the Kewpies evolved. This was the branch of the Kewpie tree that produced dolls you could dress and play with.
The other branch produced ceramic figurines suitable for display as artworks
These so-called Action Kewpie figurines came in every conceivable pose, many with molded accessories. The action is whatever the Kewpie was doing at the time, frozen in a single pose that lasts until someone breaks it. The concept of an immovable action figure provokes a mild case of cognitive dissonance in some, including me.
What is the Kewpie Doll Effect?
Biologists call it neoteny. What they’re trying to say is it’s an umbrella term that refers to all mass-produced dolls with too-round, too-big blue eyes set in too-round, too-big heads, and androgynous bodies with stubby arms and legs.
Konrad Lorenz, Nobel Prize winner in Physiology, said Kewpies had ideal proportions for being perceived as cute and lovable
Walt Disney was the first to draw his cartoon characters that way, because all those attributes describe babies, and babies trigger parental instincts and positive feelings.
Seven years after O’Neill’s first 3-D Kewpie doll, Barney Google arrived in the comics
Barney Google’s goo-goo-googly eyes made the Kewpies’ googly eyes even more famous.
Note: Before writing this article, I thought Kewpie Dolls were the cheap prizes people won at County and State Fairs everywhere. Here’s a photo said to have been taken at the Memphis, Tennessee Tri-State Fairgrounds, somewhere around 1920.
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* Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan before it went Playgirl with mimbos (male bimbos).
Bonus
In 2014, the Kewpie trademark was acquired by a Japanese mayonnaise manufacturer. Tokyo Weekender says Kewpie Mayonnaise was the first mayonnaise ever sold in Japan. Advertisers talk about the “Sleek bottle, red cap, and adorable baby mascot that greets you with every dollop” from its soft-squeeze packaging. Click here to go the article 100 Years of Kewpie: How the Mayonnaise Became a Japanese Icon.
Never heard of them?
Me either. Today, Kewpie uses 4 billion eggs a year – but only the yolks, with no egg whites like competitors. Marketers describe their yolk-only mayonnaise as creamier, with a yellow tint.
Kewpie marketers trumpet its culinary sophistication
This in spite of the fine print on the labels saying it contains MSG, known by many to be a long way from refined good taste. In the U.S., it’s the ingredient most Americans insist their food must not have.
The 4 billion leftover egg whites are used in processed foods and health supplements. The ground-up shells go into foods and fertilizers.
Kewpiesta: Each April, Branson, Missouri holds Kewpiesta, a convention for Kewpie lovers from as far away as Japan and Australia. This year’s is from April 15th to the 19th. Here’s the link to Festival Central.
