The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Happy Friday the 13th!

To celebrate the day, we thought we would share a creepy doll we photographed this week.

This Yellow Kid Mechanical Doll was recently added to the collections and will be on display in our upcoming new permanent collections exhibition, The Story of Comics.

The Yellow Kid Mechanical Doll stands about nine inches tall and is dated to be from 1896. This doll was created as merchandise for the popular comic strip character, Mickey Dugan, or, better known as the Yellow Kid.

The Yellow Kid was featured in Hogan’s Alley by Richard F. Outcault, which started in 1895 and is considered the first commercially successful newspaper comic strip.

There were two competing versions of the Yellow Kid in New York papers for more than a year as George Luks drew Hogan’s Alley for Pulitzer’s World from October 11, 1896 until December 5, 1897, and Outcault created the Kid for Hearst’s Journal at the same time. This competition between papers is the origin behind the term, “Yellow Journalism.” Which is a style of reporting that uses sensationalized exaggerations and headlines for increased sales.

Keep watching until the end of the video to see how our Public Services and Digitization Coordinator, Emma Halm, photographed this doll.

Yellow Kid Mechanical Doll, Bell-Ringer from 1896. Forms part of The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Finding number: CGA.OBJ.17.001.

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