The first time I saw Pauline she was in a cardboard box at a table set up at a highway yard sale. Her cute head was sticking up and I was smitten. From that first purchase, it was a slippery slope to having a basket full of sock monkeys. Most are made by hand, have names and one is from another country and proudly wears a maple leaf sash from Canada.

We did not have sock monkeys as children, so I am not sure what made me fall in love at first sight with a stuffed monkey doll that clearly was showing its age. The woman who sold her to me said the sock monkey belonged to her mother and so had to be at least 50 years old. 

Who knew? The iconic sock monkeys made from red-heeled socks, known today as the “Rockford Red Heel”, emerged at the earliest in 1932, the year the Nelson Knitting Company added the trademark red heel to its product. In 1932, advertising executive Howard Monk came up with an idea to change the heel of the brown sock from white to red. Nelson Knitting added the red heel to assure its customers that they were buying “original Rockfords” as opposed to the generic “Rockfords”. This red heel gave the monkeys their distinctive mouth. During the Depression,  American crafters first made sock monkeys out of worn-out Rockford Red Heel Socks. Homemade red-heel sock monkey dolls usually have unique faces and body characteristics and are considered one-of-a-kind.