Black Gollies

This is a blip of my 'Golly' collection. I collected all these gollies in the 1960/70's.

To get each 'golly' one had to send off a certain number of labels from 'Robertson's jam/marmalade'. I didn't like jam or marmalade, but my Gran (see yesterdays blip) did. I think my maternal grandparents did too.

My parents must have told them to save all the labels because I've ended up with all these gollies. I think the campaign must have been run over a few years. After all there's a limit to how much jam/marmalade one can eat!

I think there were two sets of gollies:

1) The musical gollies
2) The sports gollies

I've got 8 musical gollies but only 1 sporting golly - the footballer one!

A few years back I saw some gollies in a shop - for sale at £40 each. Would I sell my gollies? - Of course not!

However today, in our very PC world, there is absolutely no way that black gollies would be given away with jars of jam.

As a child in the 1960's, I also had a 'gollywog' - a toy that I loved almost as much as my teddy bear. 'Gollywog' had a black face and wore very colourful clothes.

I'm not sure when it became very un-PC to own 'black' toys. I seem to remember that my next door neighbour had a black doll in the 1960's.

What I do remember is............................. Collecting all the jam/marmalade labels - and being really excited when I had enough to post them off to get another golly.

In today's materialistic world, I wonder how many kids will still treasure items they got for free, more than 40 years ago?