Jo, Zette & Jocko: Was Jocko inspired by a Steiff soft toy?

In doing some research for my Jo, Zette and Jocko site I've learned that the original idea all stemmed from a toy monkey named Jocko Hergé had from some promotion.

Anyone know if this Jocko would be a Jocko Monkey by famous teddy makers Steiff? I know for a fact that their Jocko monkey was released in 1929, making the timing about right.

Here's a link to the picture of the monkey.

Anyone know for sure? Or has another theory? This seems like i'm right without actually knowing for sure, there's really so little information to go on!

Rik

That looks like good detective work to me, Rik.

Sounds like you may be onto something there - your very own signature piece of research!

Apart from the fact that he's a chimp, not a monkey... ;-)

Oh, and I have seen it said that he was first released in 1909, rather than 1929 - that might need to be checked.

I suppose you could solve the mystery by getting Jo or Zette to look in his ear for the button? ;-)

By the way, Jocko seems to have been a generic name used for chimpanzees (in the same way somone might refer to a dog they don't know as "Rover" or a cat as "Tiddles"...) back in the day, so it might be worth doing some digging to see if there was an origin for that, like when [i]Jumbo the elephant[/i] became the generic name for elephants (and very large things, as in jumbo-jet).

Hardly a master detective, I was seeing if my website was put in the google database and i got a barage of info on Steiff, too bad the 75th Anniversary Bear is $200+.

I'll write an article on it tomorrow I think

Rik