Twin Peaks Prop – Sonny Jim’s Cowboy Figures

In Twin Peaks’ third season, Sonny Jim Jones has an affinity for the wild west. From the wallpaper to the curtains to the toys beside his bed, desert plains make up the aesthetic of his bedroom. As the 2017 Showtime revival tended to be a bit more sparsely decorated than the original series, I loved seeing this cohesive cowboy clutter and tracked down replicas of a few of the items seen onscreen.

LOUIS MARX & CO. INC.

The two clay colored cowboy figurines on Sonny Jim’s nightstand were made by former New York-based toy manufacturer Louis Marx & Co. Inc. The company was founded in 1919 by brothers Louis and David Marx who first found their footing by tweaking designs for obsolete tin toys and bringing them back to popularity.

Louis Marx felt that there were six characteristics that comprised a good toy: familiarity, surprise, skill, play value, comprehensibility and sturdiness. This formula apparently worked.

According to an article in Time Magazine, Marx was a proper tycoon by the middle of the century with the company producing roughly 10% of all toys sold in the US and grossing $50,000,000 in 1955.

MID- CENTURY COWBOY FIGURINES

In the 1950s and 60s, Marx produced popular playsets based on TV shows like Gunsmoke and The Roy Rodgers Show. The stamps under the feet of my replicas indicate that Sonny Jim’s figures would’ve been produced in this era as they include the roman numeral MCMLXIV (1964).

SONNY JIM’S COWBOY FIGURINES IN TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN

The cowboy figurines only appear onscreen in Part 6 of Twin Peaks: The Return. A security guard finds Dougie Jones gazing at a statue in front of the Lucky 7 Insurance office. The guard drives Dougie home to a frustrated and bewildered Janey-E who sends him upstairs to say goodnight to Sonny Jim.

Speaking of that statue, we know that the show’s art department modeled this after a photo of David Lynch’s father, Donald, but doesn’t it look almost exactly like one of the Louis Marx cowboy figurines?

Dougie sits on Sonny Jim’s bed and the two amuse themselves with the clap-activated lamp. We get a nice view of the two figures standing alongside a Big Tex bobblehead that was also produced in the 1960s, but that’s an article for another day. You can also spot a Hardy Boys book discussed in this article.

Our only other look at Sonny Jim’s nightstand comes in Part 10 as he is startled awake by, ahem, a noise from his parents’ room. Though we don’t see the entirety of the nightstand, it looks as though the toys and books have been put away and the cowboy figures are no longer present. After all, we know Janey-E runs a tight ship!