Branded Soft Toys

A Gonk is a small furry soft toy which was extremely popular in the 1960s and 1980s as a gift. They are usually plush toys, animal in nature but of no discernible species. more...

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They have no legs or arms (although small flaps of material sometimes serve this purpose) and large eyes (often crossed) and/or noses.

The History of the Gonk

The first thing that has to be made clear is - the accompanying illustrations are not gonks.

Gonks were first \"created\" (unofficially) during the First World War when the flow of teddy bears from Germany was halted. Other factories across Europe had to start producing soft toys. Because of the material shortages, the toys had to significantly simplify their designs. The Second World War again brought soft toy production to a standstill - many factories never reopened. To keep the children's spirits high throughout the two wars, women at home made gonks from stuffing socks with rags and then sewing on button-eyes and material flaps for arms and legs.

In the 1960s, gonks became particularly popular, with their new designs and colours. Pattern books contained instructions for making hand-knitted gonks. In the UK and Australia, they rapidly became the \"must-have\" playground accessory. Fortunately, their simplicity meant that they could easily be made at home, and thus even the poorest children could boast one. Their popularity reached its peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were often given as good luck tokens, or won as prizes at fairgrounds.

Today, gonks are most commonly used as promotional items, often appearing alongside corporate-branded pens or mugs. The gonk will often have fur in the \"corporate colour(s)\" and a short length of ribbon with the company's name attached to the bottom.

Popular Culture

Perhaps the most famous gonk in living memory was Humpty from Play School. Gonks were also immortalized in the early 1980s in the TV comedy show The Young Ones, where Neil gets worried about his exam performance:

\"I sat in the big hall and put my packet of Polos on the desk. And my spare pencil and my support gonk. And my chewing gum and my extra pen. And my extra Polos and my lucky gonk. And my pencil sharpener shaped like a cream cracker. And three more gonks with a packet of Polos each. And lead for my retractable pencil. And my retractable pencil. And spare lead for my retractable pencil. And chewing gum and pencils and pens and more gonks, and the guy said \"Stop writing, please.\"

In 1965, the film Gonks Go Beat was released, and the music from the soundtrack became a cult classic. The advertisements for the film included circular gonk-like creatures dancing around.

Read more at Wikipedia.org