SQUIGGLE Sock Monkey is here!

RandomLine and Toysmith launch a fun Spin and Seek Sock Monkey activity pad. Perfect for travel, the activity pad comes with 100 pages of hidden sock monkeys. Players spin the wheel to select a sock monkey face and then have to find it in the maze of squiggles. Fun for players ages 4 and up. Also, look for the Zippidy Doodle Sock Monkey activity pad at all Cracker Barrel locations this Fall.

Sock Monkey History
The sock monkey originated in an era when the craze for imitation stuffed animals swept through Europe and the US. It met the thriving Arts and Craft movement. Craft makers began sewing stuffed animals as toys to comfort children. An increase in the public's familiarity with exotic species, monkey toys soon became a fixture of American nurseries. However, these early stuffed monkeys were not necessarily made from socks, and also lacked the characteristic red lips of the sock monkeys popular today.

Sock monkeys remain a popular toy to this day. Most vintage red-heel sock monkeys found today are no older than the late 1950s, and many date from the 1970s. A number of methods for dating sock monkeys have been debated by collectors, including the shape of the red heel, the tightness of the weave, sock seams, the style of clothing worn, and other features. The term "vintage" red-heel sock monkeys is typically relegated to sock monkeys made from red-heel socks knitted by the Nelson Knitting Company and from similar socks knitted with red-heels by other companies in the same time period. The term "modern" red-heel sock monkeys is normally relegated to sock monkey dolls created after Fox River Mills, Inc.(Osage, IA) acquired Nelson Knitting Company in 1992.