Bob Pelham was 27 years old when he returned home to Marlborough in May 1946 having made the decision not to return to his former profession as an architect. It was not long before he had rented a workshop behind a solicitor’s office in Silverless Street, Marlborough and began to design and create his Wonky Donkeys.
The little figures had proved so popular with the troops and within a year Bob employed a number of ex-service men and women and in May 1947 he registered the Company in the name of Wonky Toys Ltd. About 18 months later the name of the Company was changed to Pelham Puppets Ltd in October 1948.
His first four employees were Sid Hiscock and Frank Clements who created the bodies and bases for the figures. Laura Ray was taken on part-time to paint the figures and soon after, Rosemarie Gibaud came to help with assembling and painting. By the close of 1947 they concentrated on making puppets exclusively.
Bob had a friend who ran a Government Surplus depot in Bristol, providing him with sacks full of wooden components of all shapes and sizes. Bob would buy them all up since nobody else wanted them and then he’d work out what to do with them. He illustrated some of the items in Pelpup News No 28 in 1974.
Producing puppet heads was one of the greatest problems for Bob. He explained, “At first, I turned them on a lathe but they all came out in different shapes from ovals to squarish rounds. Well, I suppose it did mean their heads were all different and individual!”
After meeting Mr Bunce at the Marlborough Mop Fair, Bob was able to obtain a regular supply of coconut shy balls, so now they didn’t have to turn each one by hand, which took a lot of time and slowed up weekly production – they were able to increase weekly production dramatically.
It took time to develop an in-house design and an identity for Pelham Puppets. The face painting made them very distinctive and unique of course, and they tried out all types of different characters to discover what would prove popular with the buying public.
The puppets were sold from the Kingsbury Street premises and they had a window display that attracted many people passing by and he advertised in the local newspaper. For example, this advertisement appeared in the Marlborough Times on 5th December 1947.
Most of the puppets depicted characters of different nationalities and were produced in pairs, such as the Dutch Boy and Girl, but one character that proved very popular with the public, was “Sandy MacBoozle” – the tipsy Scot with the wooden whisky bottle. This photo, from the Daily Mirror, of Bob with MacBoozle, was published on the 30th of December 1947.
The boxes help to date the age of the puppets. Generally speaking, boxes with the Wonky Toys label would have been used up until the Company name change on the 16th of October 1948 and after that, the new Pelham Puppets labels would have been used. The flying pig logo remained in use until 1955 when the full colour “yellow” boxes were introduced.
More photos will be added in future. Please revisit us again soon. I hope you like what you’ve seen so far.
Thanks for looking in, Yours puppetually, David Leech.
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