Baby-shaped bars of soap and other wacky political campaign novelties

Day 68:35The Smithsonian's collection of Presidential campaign ephemera tells the story of social change in the U.S.

From soap carved to look like a baby, to pot holders with Dwight Eisenhower's face, U.S. history is full of weird and wacky election campaign tokens. 

And Claire Jerry says each item tells us a little bit about what was going on in the United States at the time. 

"We can look historically at our collection and see things that recur and things that drop out for a variety of social reasons that don't have anything to do with politics," Jerry, a curator of political history at The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, told Day 6.

And with the U.S. election just days away, Jerry and her team have been busy collecting the items that will mark this year's election. 

She curates an exhibit called The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, which is full of election artifacts. She says that in any campaign cycle, the team will collect anywhere between 100 and 200 items. 

Her exhibit includes tokens all the way back from the first president, George Washington, to the bejeweled MAGA hats and "Coconut Tree Farmers for Harris" pins of today.

The OG campaign button

George Washington was the originator of many aspects of American politics, but lesser known among them, perhaps, his connection to the first campaign buttons.

In fact, his influence is exactly why we call them buttons, instead of what they really are: pins.

"For his first inauguration, metal buttons were produced with slogans like 'God save the President.' And they had a shank on the back to sew on to your clothing," said Jerry, just like the kind used to fasten a coat or shirt. 

But when those buttons were replaced by the pins we associate with political campaigns today, the word button persisted. 

Then, in 1840, campaign slogans in the contest between William Henry Harrison and Martin Van Buren got weird.

Martin Van Buren's team decided to insult candidate William Henry Harrison by saying he'd be happy to live in a log cabin drinking hard cider.  This was despite the fact that Harrison had never lived in a log cabin, nor was he an avid drinker of cider, hard or otherwise. 

But his team leaned into it. 

"They built big log cabins that they would roll down the street. There were kegs of hard cider for all of the supporters," said Jerry. Harrison went on to win that election. 

Baby-shaped soap

And then things got weirder.

During the 1896 election, while candidates William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan were duking it out, voters started to receive boxes in the mail. 

"Produced for each of their campaigns were little four-inch naked babies made out of soap," said Jerry. 

What made this especially odd was that neither campaign team had produced them. The baby figurines were made by soap companies such as Jergens, and carried messages about economic issues. Jerry said she also believes it was a way for soap companies to show their craftsmanship.

"Voters didn't like them. They thought they looked too much like babies in coffins. And so the soap baby is an 1896-only campaign object," she said. 

Eisenhower pot holders and measuring cups

Throughout U.S. history, Jerry says there are some major points at which these tokens began to change. 

One of those pivot points was when women were allowed to vote in the mid-1900s. Eisenhower capitalized on that with measuring cups and pot holders emblazoned with his face, and took the presidential office in 1953.

"It was this idea that there might be things that women would be more attracted to as campaign objects to proclaim their support than men might have traditionally used," said Jerry.

The campaign items even extended to children, including comic books and toys plastered with presidential hopefuls. 

"We think that the idea is that if you can get a family to hang an Eisenhower potholder or read a Harry Truman comic book, you may have a Democrat or a Republican household for life," said Jerry.

At one time, cigarettes, pipes and cigars were popular campaign items, and were produced as recently as 1988, for the campaigns of George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. But as smoking became more taboo, those tokens fell out of favour. 

But Jerry says the one item that has been part of every presidential election and will never fall out of favour is the oh-so-powerful button — or pin, if you prefer. 

"Buttons are a nice, quiet way to have it on your coat, have it on your backpack without necessarily having to get in anybody's face. And more people who maybe don't know you are going to see that button than just the people who follow you on your social media platform," said Jerry. 

Upcoming election

Americans will head to the polls on Tuesday to decide who will be the next president of the United States. 

And Jerry says that even now, when it's so easy to promote your candidate on social media, wacky campaign items still make their way onto the scene. 

This year the team was able to collect a button that said "Coconut Tree Farmers for Harris," referencing Democrat nominee Kamala Harris and her viral moment from last year.

They've also seen the evolution of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats, from the simple red hat Republican candidate Donald Trump first sported, to the more bejewled, stylized version of the hats they see now. 

Jerry says it's all apart of the history of U.S. elections. 

"Our collection enables us to put a contemporary moment in historical context by looking back at the things that we've collected and by also recognizing that we're telling a story that will be told for audiences yet to come."