-Bob's Big Boy Restaurant-Big Boy

Piece	Big Boy
Year	1995
Condition	C - 10
Description	2.25" ceramic
Company	Bob's Big Boy Restaurant

The world's first double-decker hamburger needed a larger-than-life personality to help create a national appetite. So when a fat little boy in red suspenders walked into Bob's Pantry in Glendale, California, in 1936, he became the new symbol for Bob's Big Boy restaurant. Owner and founder Bob Wian created a stylized image for his "Big Boy," with red-checked pants and suspenders, dark wavy hair, cherubic cheeks and a happy grin -- because he was holding the hamburger he was named for.

The Big Boy image became so popular that Bob's Big Boy restaurants soon franchised all over the country under several different names, including Elias, JB's, Frisch's, and Shoney's. Marriott took over the chain in 1967.

Over the years, the Big Boy has cleaned up his image (one suspender used to droop -- now they're both buttoned up tight), shed a few pounds, and lightened his hair from dark brown to chestnut. But his popularity is still so strong that when Marriott was thinking of retiring him in the mid-1980's, a national customer survey voted him back in a landslide decision. Here the Big Boy and his namesake burger appear as a pair of glazed ceramic salt and pepper shakers. The Boy is the salt and the burger is the pepper.

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