Googly eyes

Googly eyes, or jiggly eyes, are small plastic craft supplies used to imitate eyeballs. Googly eyes traditionally are composed of a white plastic or card backing covered by a clear, hard-plastic shell, encapsulating a black plastic disk. The combination of a black circle over a white disk mimics the appearance of the sclera and pupil of the eye to humorous effect. The inner black disk is allowed to move freely within the larger clear plastic shell, which makes the eyes appear to move when the googly eyes are tilted or shaken.

For the medical eye condition sometimes known as googly eye, see Strabismus. For the American singer who performed as "Mr. Google Eyes", see Joe August (musician).

Two googly eyes

A googly eye attached to a hammer

The plastic shells come in a variety of sizes ranging from ³⁄₁₆ inch (4.8 mm) to over 24 inches (610 mm) diameter. The inner disks come in a variety of colors including pink, blue, yellow, red and green. Googly eyes are used for a variety of arts and crafts projects including pipe cleaner farm animals, silly sock puppets, mischievous pranks, and other creations. Googly eyes may also be attached to inanimate objects in order to give the objects a "silly" or "cute" appearance. This use often personifies the objects for a humorous effect.

Examples

• Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, the comic strip created in 1919 by Billy DeBeck that inspired the popular 1923 song, "Barney Google (With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)," with lyrics by Billy Rose[1].
• The characters of Badger, Mousey and China the Dog from Children's BBC programme Bodger and Badger.
• Cookie Monster, Harvey Kneeslapper, and several other characters of Sesame Street.
• Corneil the cartoon dog of Watch My Chops
• Nutty from Happy Tree Friends
• Stick Stickly, a stick-puppet host on Nickelodeon during the 1990s and in the early 2010s on TeenNick’s The ‘90s Are All That.
• Mr. Trash Wheel
• Gritty, mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers
• Saturday Night Live skit in which Christopher Walken puts googly eyes on all his plants.[2]
• Kash ("The Money You Could Be Saving with Geico") from GEICO
• Pet Rocks
• OOglies, a BBC stop-motion children's show.
• The Black Mamba, a black sock with a red felt tongue in the TV show and movie Jackass that is used to slap people.
• xeyes, a popular X11 application.
• Seccom Masada-Sensei from Yume Nikki
• The Sight for Sore Eyes is a pair of googly eyes obtainable for the Pyro in Team Fortress 2.
• Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy features a country western character called Diamondback, whose face is covered in googly eyes. He shakes his head so the sound of the eyes rattling adds percussion to his songs.
• For April Fool's Day 2017, Cartoon Network digitally inserted googly eyes onto most on-screen characters in the programs and promos that were being aired that day.
• Forky, a plot important character from the 2019 film Toy Story 4, is a white plastic spork, with pipe cleaner limbs and googly eyes.

See also

• Googly eyed doll
• Pareidolia, tendency to see faces in inanimate objects, among other perceptions

References

1. "Barney Google by Billy Jones and Ernest Hare 1923". YouTube. 22 November 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
2. "Googly Eyes Gardener - Saturday Night Live". YouTube. 30 September 2013. Retrieved 17 January 2017.