Talk:Gonk

What is a gonk?
I always had it in my mind that gonks (Gonks?) were conical and involved a cardboard centre, wool and stick on eyes. A little like those circles of cardboard you'd wind wool round for ages before tying the centre off and cutting the outside of the circle, thus leaving a big fluffy ball, all ready for sticking eyes on. Not that I'm a gonk expert. Christ I wish I was though.

Skalham. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.106.197.39 (talk • contribs) 23:19, 29 November 2006


 * I don't think the pictures are of gonks. I remember gonks as being a ball of wiry/fluffy hair with eyes and feet and nothing else.( I think skalham is describing a version, and it sounds more like a gonk than the pictures) The article is correct in distinguishing beteen a troll and a gonk. Trolls are altogether different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.2.134.14 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 6 February 2007


 * I wrote the original gonk article, which has been expanded by others, and my description of gonks as round shapes with no discernable arms or legs, but only having flaps of cloth is stil accurate, I believe. The pictures aren't really gonks because they have limbs. TBY. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.166.30.50 (talk • contribs) 11:32, 16 May 2007


 * Hey, here's a novel idea--instead of including images of objects that aren't gonks, captioning them saying that they are gonks, then including a disclaimer in the text that says they really aren't gonks, why not just remove the inmages? Calgary 20:07, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I've added a photo of what gonks really look like (at least the 1970s fairground variety). --Rufusplant (talk) 07:51, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there should be a disambiguation page, distinguishing between the trolls, these guys, and the character in Elvira, mistress of the night.Anansi133 (talk) 19:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I bought a pattern from Simplicity Patterns in 1964 and made them for my 7 children and they were greatly loved. I don’t remember any connection to songs, etc. at that time. For some reason I kept the pattern and started making them again this year for my great-grandchildren. They are kind of oval in shape and are stuffed with fiberfill, have hands & arms and feet. I have pictures of pattern and Gonks I have made. CaoroadyCaoroady (talk) 02:38, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Why the massive cut?
It still doesn't explain why an article which was about 10 times the length of this one, written by several people over a couple of years was trimmed to the one-liner we have now. Look at the earlier versions, why the massive trim, what was the rationale? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.1.226.116 (talk) 15:05, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I removed it because it was a rambling, unreferenced mess of original research; Wikipedia has standards and this stuff didn't match up to them. If you like the old version you can permalink it because it won't change unless the page gets deleted, or better still, save it to your hard drive. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 05:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

ooh, get the madam!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.83.127.252 (talk) 14:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Song Name
I'm not sure if this has the relevance to be mentioned in this article, but "The Gonk" is also the name of the distinctive end credit music used in Dawn of the Dead (1978). It has also been used in Shaun of the Dead. Should this be mentioned, at least? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.238.190.231 (talk) 17:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Also used as the end credits in Robot Chicken, if I'm not mistaken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.238.190.231 (talk) 17:38, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Tone issues
I've added a tone tag to this article. A quick review of its edit history and talk page suggests a long and troubled history with many cleanup attempts aborted halfway through and many mass deletions without replacement. Indeed, the former first sentence of the article (which I've removed) was a non sequitur connected to a version mostly deleted about 20 months prior to this writing. On top of everything else, many images in the article taken after the 1923 public domain cutoff appear with no fair use rationale. If anyone wants to spend time on this, it'd be greatly appreciated. 2601:643:8102:18C0:B19B:370F:C69:DA55 (talk) 00:54, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Hand-made Toy
FWIW: Around 1966, when I was 14, and living in a suburb of Sydney, which is a city in Australia, my girlfriend made me a gonk. Most teenaged girls made gonks that year; it was a fad. A gonk was a Humpty Dumpty figure with a body about the size of a slice of bread. It had short arms, but very long skinny legs. It was designed to sit on a bookshelf or mantelpiece and dangle its long legs over. I no longer have the gonk. Or the girl. I never heard of the commercially produced toy until I read this article. --2001:44B8:3102:BB00:B162:91A8:319D:CC2B (talk) 21:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

New (or revised) definition of Gonk
As the name has been used to describe the gnome decorations/toys with no eyes used especially in the UK in Christmas 2021, should a new section be added or a disambiguation? Shaft121 (talk) 11:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Shaft121 I think that a "gnome with no eyes" is the main description that should apply. Looking at a google image search on gonk the added (ping) Wikipedia image is the only one that isn't a gnome with no eyes and I haven't found a citation to say that it was ever anything but that.  I've added a "(or revised)" ref to the above title but you're free to revert this. GregKaye 10:33, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I think there should be a new article for the British gonk, or at least a new special section for it under the Gonk article or the Nisse (folklore) article, maybe both. As @GregKaye mentioned, when looking for "gonk" on Google images, the British gonk, referring to 'Christmas gnome with long beard and no eyes' is what comes up for the most part. The only other image that does not show this kind of gonk is Wikipedia's image of some cylindrical toys with googly eyes — absolutely no relation to the British/Christmas gonk.
 * It seems, according to this article that they originate in Scandinavian folklore. Looking for "Christmas gonk Wikipedia" on Google, the Wikipedia article for Nisse (folklore) came up. These resemble Christmas gonks in appearance and gonks seem to be derived from it, as pointed out by the previous article who calls them a "mix of a gnome and a hobgoblin" § Nisse (folklore). The article also mentions the antiquity of the folklore of the gonks, which means that it was not a novelty toy invented in the 1960s or 1970s.
 * Since it shares cultural elements with the nisse but it has received the name of gonk, I think there should be a new article. SantiChau23 (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

1970s Australian cylindrical gonks
I'm putting this here like a draft. I'm looking through 1970s trove for citations.


 * A gonk was a prize in the Bourke District Hospital Auxiliary Street Stall


 * In the novelties section The Fords Bridge Horse Sports day, Mrs L Green won the gonk competition (presumably for making one)


 * This 1965 ad features a drawing of a spherical gonk as a soft toy making kit

Newystats (talk) 22:51, 23 October 2022 (UTC)