Prizes

In Columbus, Ohio there is a science museum called COSI. It used to be located right in the middle of downtown but many years ago it moved to another location. I have not been to the new location but I had been there before it moved. We are talking at least 10 years ago maybe closer to 15. Anyway, at the museum there was a hallway exhibit that lead to the planetarium. The hallway exhibit was a collection of old Cracker Jack prizes.

Thinking on that old exhibit, I did a quick google search for it and found a couple hits. Then I did another search and found this amazing iron-on transfer.

Never having heard the term 'gloryosky' I did a google search on this and found it's Little Annie Rooney's phrase, although possibly misspelled for 'gloriosky'. Little Annie Rooney is a direct blatant rip-off of Little Orphan Annie, the famous red-head Annie we all know from that marvelous movie staring the wonderful Carol Burnett. Back in the 1924 when Orphan Annie came out, it was just a comic strip. But it was such a hit that in 1927 some people thought they could have similar success with their own orphan and so Little Annie Rooney was created. She too is an orphan but she lives with her dog Zero. You'd think something so derivative would have been destroyed, but instead the cartoon strip was published up to 1966!

At this point I get a bit confused. Even though the cartoon strip was introduced in 1927, apparently a silent film about Little Annie Rooney was released in 1925. Now in 1890 a song was introduced in England that referred to Annie Rooney, and so Little Annie Rooney was probably around before the cartoon strip came out. But similiarly Little Orphan Annie comes from a poem written in 1885. This poem was American, so it's possible the two orphans were created independently. But the Little Annie Rooney comic strip was a direct rip-off.

The move stared Mary Prickford as Annie Rooney. In the movie Annie is 12, Mary was 32! But apparently the movie was very successful, because Mary was 'America's Sweetheart'. She was only 5 feet tall, so maybe this helped her pull of the 12 year old image.

The song, being written in 1890 had some interesting language that we've all but lost. In particular is the word 'twixt'. I would like to bring this word back into common usage. For example, 'Today I came into work twixt eight and nine.' I even save a syllable by not using 'between'. That's just efficient.