Every prop in my studio has a backstory. The CarnEvil set is no different, and Grinning Jim might be the strangest one yet.
In 1931, the Old Scratch Novelty Company introduced a new range of children’s toys under the slogan “there’s always room for a grin in every home.” Old Scratch was already known for cheap carnival prizes and mechanical amusements, but Grinning Jim was set to be its first properly national success. With his rosy cheeks, little black hat and enormous painted smile, Jim was advertised as the happiest clown in the world. He appeared as dolls, puppets, musical toys and the popular Jim in the Box. Another model, sold in a shallow wooden frame, was made to hang on a nursery wall, its glass fronted box carrying the cheerful instruction, keep Jim where he can see you.
The toys sold remarkably well. That was rather the idea.
According to former factory workers, Grinning Jim was never meant simply to entertain children. Each toy was said to contain a small amount of something gathered after fires, accidents and executions. Ashes, fragments of bone, scorched cloth, sealed inside the body before the final smile was painted on. The company’s owners apparently believed that every Jim placed in a family home opened a small doorway through which misfortune could enter.
Nobody connected the incidents at first.
Children whispered that Jim moved when their backs were turned. Parents woke to his music playing in locked rooms. Pets refused to cross his shadow. Family photographs showed his head tilted at angles the mechanism should not allow.
Then came the accidents. A staircase collapse in Leeds. A nursery fire in Blackpool. A whole family in Kent found sitting around their dining table, their faces fixed in terrible smiles. Homes with a Grinning Jim seemed unusually prone to fire, disappearance and sudden violence, and on more than one occasion, the toy itself was found entirely undamaged among the ruins.
By 1938, newspapers had started to notice the pattern. Old Scratch dismissed the stories as hysteria and announced that the Grinning Jim range had been discontinued simply because of changing public tastes. Thousands of unsold toys were said to have been destroyed in a warehouse fire.
No remains were ever recovered.
The Old Scratch Novelty Company quietly disappeared not long after. Some believe its owners changed their name and moved into a rather more innocent corner of the toy trade. Decades later, former employees claimed to recognise the same moulding techniques, and the same peculiar painted eyes, in a wildly successful line of soft bodied, adopted children said to come from a cabbage patch.
Collectors now think fewer than fifty original Grinning Jims survive.
There may be rather more than that.
A Jim in the Box is relatively safe while the lid stays shut. The framed version is more troublesome. It was never really meant to display the clown.
It was meant to hold him.
And if you ever find one empty, don’t go looking through the house.
Jim has already found you.
