The red goose with the desirable golden eggs was a familiar sight to me as a child as it probably was to most middle-class children of the 1950s and 1960s. It could be found in every store that carried children’s shoes.

Red Goose was part of the Buster Brown line of shoes from Brown Shoe Company. Brown is still around today though the Red Goose brand has long since been discontinued to allow more commercially profitable name lines to exist.

What struck me as odd in researching the history of this bookmark and the name was the lack of information on Red Goose. I found personal reminiscences and a lot of information on the Buster Brown trade name, but Red Goose seems to have faded from advertising history. A shame because I am sure that every child of that period remembers Red Goose Shoes through its games, comic books and playful marketing schemes. As Tim Patterson, in an article for The Standard noted:

. . . slick Madison Avenue marketing techniques were powerful enough to persuade me to go with the Red Goose brand. It had little to do with the quality of the shoe and everything to do with the big red goose that was strategically positioned near the cash register.

This was no ordinary red plastic goose. If a purchase of Red Goose Shoes was made then the extraordinarily fortunate buyer received the privilege of pulling down on the long extended neck and head of the goose. The process of this neck bending would automatically release a golden egg from the goose’s entrails, which would be expelled from its, well let’s say, posterior.

Within that golden egg could be anything. Toy prizes that were beyond imagination were encased in that golden sphere of surprise. The sheer thrill of chance and surprise beckoned my imagination to worlds of childhood wonder.

It did the same for a lot of us. Red Goose was exceedingly popular with kids.

But where did Red Goose begin? I couldn’t really determine that. All I found was on a site called Advertising Icon Museum. I was unable to verify its information, but apparently what became the Red Goose Shoe Company of St. Louis, Missouri began life as Giesecke-D’Oench-Hayes, an outfit that sold shoes to pioneers headed west in 1869. When the company became conscious of advertising’s impact (and its need for simplicity) in  the early 1900s, the name was changed. “Giesecke is German slang for ‘goose,’ so the goose image came naturally,” notes the Toy Museum. “The red color came later when, during the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, some stock boys painted the goose on the cartons red. The head of the company liked the idea, and so Red Goose Shoes was trademarked in 1906.”

Sometime after that, Brown Shoe Company bought Red Goose and incorporated it into its line of shoes. Marketing began in earnest, and the affectionate memories of many a baby boomer began: “I remember when I was young and my mother took us three boys to the Red Goose Shoe store for Easter shoes,” wrote one. “With our pair of shoes we received a free baby chick that had been dyed in different colors.” Another remembers “receiving a Golden Egg made of shiny plastic and it had a prize on the inside. I don't recall what the prize was; I just remember the Golden Egg.”

It pains me now to think what probably happened to those chicks—I am grateful my mother didn’t allow us to take them—as they outgrew their cuteness. How many were simply dumped somewhere after they fulfilled their purpose of selling a pair of shoes or died because of the coloring chemicals applied to their downy feathers? Sometimes marketing has really bad ideas.

That unfortunate strategy worked very well for Brown Shoe Company, which was already doing quite well. The character of Buster Brown, the company’s spokes-symbol, was by that time already a cultural icon, having come aboard in 1904.

Buster Brown began life as a creation of Richard Outcault, a leader in the developing art form of the comic strip as social commentary. He was a little rich kid with a blond pageboy haircut, Lord Fauntleroy-style clothes including a wide saucer-rimmed hat, a sister named Mary Jane and a talking dog, Tige. He was always getting in trouble, but it was innocent trouble, and the comic inevitably ended with him saying, “I’m sorry I was bad, I promise never to do that again. I’ll be a good boy from now on.”

It was at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis that Brown Shoe Company (named after the founder, George Warren Brown, and not the comic character) met their future icon. John Bush, a sales executive, persuaded them to purchase the rights for $200. A former circus performer named Major William Ray who stood less than four feet tall was hired to “be” Buster for the duration of the fair. His performances were a success and launched a unique marketing program where numerous small actors were hired, paired with dogs and sent to towns and fairs all over the country to tell jokes, play tricks and sell shoes. This continued until 1930.

As the line grew more popular, Brown Shoe Company continued to find new ways to entice children to try their shoes. National advertising campaigns were undertaken; a series of silent movies, the “Buster Brown Comedies,” were made; a children’s radio show called The Buster Brown Gang with Smilin’ Ed McConnell began in 1943, moved to television in 1951 and continued until 1954; and the Buster Brown comic book series—free with a purchase of Buster Brown shoes—was launched in 1945.

Somewhere in that history, Red Goose entered the picture. Since I was unable to reach the public relations department of Brown Shoe Company, I don’t know exactly how or when. The web page of the company provides only a bland, abbreviated version of the company’s history, and Red Goose is not mentioned. I wonder why. Surely the memories of a generation are worth a few words. Google “Red Goose,” and you will find mementos for sale: neon signs, the plastic geese that sat near the cash registers, billboard pictures, magazine ads, even a few golden eggs. But little history. Should childhood memories be reduced to only that?

Bookmark specifications: Red Goose Shoes
Dimensions: 3” x 2 1/2” (measured from top of goose’s head)
Material: Cardboard
Manufacturer: Brown Shoe Company
Date: 1950s-1960s
Acquired: eBay


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately 1,200 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.