How is Big Boy Big?

"Big Boy" is the mascot of the Big Boy Restaurant franchise, which got its start in California in 1936. Original owner Bob Wian was trying to think of a name for his new burger, when chubby six-year old Richard Woodruff walked in.  Wian said "Hello, Big Boy," and the name stuck.  Woodruff became the model for the first Big Boy statues.

As an adult, Richard Woodruff stood 6'6" and weighed 300 pounds.  He became a local celebrity, identified as "the first Big Boy" for the rest of his life.

"Hello, Big Boy" is an interesting phrase. Obviously it referenced his chubbiness, but it reflects Mae West's catchphrase, well known in the era, referencing another sort of size.  The question of "How is Big Boy big?"  would appear in dirty double entendres throughout the franchise's history.

By the 1950s, the mascot had slimmed down and was serving the burgers, not eating them.   

Statues of Big Boy, sometimes up to 7 feet tall, were a familiar sight in the 1950s and 1960s, when there were hundreds of local Big Boys competing with McDonald's, Hardees, and Burger King. Local franchise owners added their own names, so you would see Bob's Big Boy in California, Frisch's Big Boy in Ohio, Elias' Big Boy in Michigan, and so on.

My friends and I made dirty jokes about the Marc's Big Boy in Davenport.  He's obviously short, and not particularly fat, so where's the "big" part?

In the 1980s and 1990s, internal squabbles and an oversaturated burger market caused most of the Big Boys to close.  Today they are popular only in Michigan. 

But what to do with the thousands of Big Boy statues?  Sometimes other companies bought them and transformed them into new mascots.

One unique aspect of the Big Boy restaurants were comic books distributed to kids to keep them quiet while they waited for their food.  You could also just buy a copy without ordering anything.

Adventures of the Big Boy appeared several times a year from 1956 to 1996 (over 500 issues). Some issues had a distribution of over a million copies, placing them among the exalted ranks of Superman and Batman.

The books were taken seriously.  Each issue featured a few pages of gag strips, informational articles, an advice column, and at least one 6-page adventure, science fiction, and mystery story,involving Big Boy and his gang (a girlfriend, a best male friend, a dog, and an arch-nemesis).  He was a scrappy, somewhat blustery hero, similar in personality to the 1930s Mickey Mouse.  Among the artists were comic book greats Stan Lee and Dan DeCarlo. 

In the 1970s there were more tv show tie ins.  Big Boy and his friends visited Battlestar Galactica, BJ and the Bear, The Muppet Show, and the Superman movie.

One doesn't expect a lot of beefcake in a comic about a fat kid.  On the rare occasions that his physique was displayed, he was rather dumpy.  But there were occasional musclemen among his friends, allies, and foes.

Not a lot of buddy-bonding, either.  But the question remains, hiding a homoeroticism beneath the spashy macho shenanigans: "How is Big Boy big?"