He was born in 1895, in a children's book published in London and titled, innocently enough, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls. It opens with Peg and Sarah Jane, the dolls, playing in a toy shop when they stumble across "a horrid sight: the blackest gnome". In red trousers and blue tailcoat, with a red bow tie on a high-collared white shirt, he was, the struggling 22-year-old artist who created him confessed, "ugly".
The character was inspired, Florence Kate Upton wrote later, by a minstrel rag doll she played with while growing up with her English parents in New York. When they moved to London, she rediscovered the toy in an attic: black face, thick lips, wide eyes, wild dark hair.
"I picked him up from the table in my studio, and without intention of naming him, without the idea of a name passing through my head, I called him Golliwogg," she said.
The book - illustrated by Florence with words by her mother, Bertha - proved an instant hit in Britain and the empire, going into a second printing almost immediately with the title The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. Over the next 14 years the Uptons published 12 more volumes of the trio's adventures, starring the Golliwogg - who was generally a brave, lovable character.
His career took off. But they had failed to copyright their creation and dolls (without the final "g") appeared in Britain, the United States, Europe and Australia. At first they were homemade, but the German teddy bear manufacturer Steiff was mass producing them as early as 1908, followed by British rivals.
Robertson's jams began featuring the golliwog as its trademark in the early 1900s, apparently after John Robertson saw children playing with a black-face doll in the US. According to David Pilgrim, who has studied the toy's history, Robertson was always convinced "Golly" was a straightforward mispronunciation of "dolly". The company would continue using the Golly as its trademark as late as 2001.
Golliwogs soon started cropping up in other children's books; several Enid Blyton titles feature golliwogs, although only three as central character. But by contrast with the Uptons' work, Pilgrim points out, Blyton's golliwogs were often "rude, mischievous villains".
Nonetheless, after the teddy, the golliwog was by far the most popular children's soft toy in Europe for the first half of the 20th century.
Its image, for white children, was overwhelmingly positive; the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark wrote that the golliwogs of his childhood were "examples of chivalry, far more chivalrous than the unconvincing knights of the Arthurian legend".
Many continue to see golliwogs that way. "I'm not going to tell you how many golliwogs we sell because I don't want to cause offence," says Joan Bland, who runs a well-known teddy shop, Asquiths, in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. "I will say that the word 'golly' simply means 'doll', and that the golliwog's duty is to spread love and happiness. And they do spread love and happiness. Masses of people buy them and collect them, people of all races. We have no complaints, everyone likes gollies. All it is, is a toy."
Following the outcry over a souvenir store at the Queen's Sandringham estate selling golliwogs, Hamleys withdrew them from sale yesterday. But the internet retailer Amazon was still advertising them, and the Signed, Sealed, Delivered website advertised a "traditional golly gollywog" with the message: "Help bring them back into circulation and stop all the 'Non-PC' nonsense."
The owner of Tree Top Toys in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, who declined to give her name, said the "Traditional Golly Doll" she stocked was not offensive as it was not called a golliwog. Martin Oliver of Merrythought, which makes and sells golliwogs and used to supply them to Harrods and Hamleys, said he did not think "anyone who works" at the Telford-based company "sees them as a racist product".
Most black people would see it differently. From the 1940s, particularly during the war, the golliwog's reputation was irreparably damaged by its association with the racial insult "wog".
Golliwog fans today dispute the link, and cite possible alternative origins ("Wily Oriental Gentleman") for the term, but by the 1960s golliwogs were at best seen as symbols of racial insensitivity. Books were withdrawn from libraries; Robertson's was petitioned. MPs of the time including Tony Benn and Shirley Williams backed a campaign to ban them.
"The golliwog," concludes Pilgrim, "was created during a racist era. He was drawn as a caricature of a minstrel, itself a demeaning image of blacks. There is racial stereotyping of black people in Upton's original books, and certainly later golliwogs often reflected negative beliefs about black people - thieves, miscreants, incompetents. Finally, there is little doubt that the words associated with golliwog - golli, wog, and golliwog itself - are often used as racial slurs."
That is certainly the experience of many black Britons. "For as long as I can remember and I'm in my mid-40s, it has always been something people have used to poke fun at people like me," said Michael Eboda, publisher of The Power List of Britain's 100 most powerful black men and women. "There are some white people who've been trying to say that when we were all young it wasn't offensive. I just feel like saying: Maybe not to you. To me, it always has been. To use that term of a black person is an unequivocal insult. There's no other way of interpreting it, and it really makes me wonder how many other people use those terms in their private worlds."
Thatcher film to go on
Carol Thatcher will press ahead with a BBC documentary about her mother, Lady Thatcher, despite the row that blew up after she referred to a professional tennis player as a golliwog.
More than 2,200 people complained to the BBC over its decision to drop Thatcher from The One Show following her off-air comments in the programme's green room.
The BBC1 controller, Jay Hunt, defended the decision yesterday, saying: "What she decides to say at home in private is one thing, but we have given Carol ample opportunity to give a fulsome apology and she has chosen not to do so."
Thatcher's agent, Ali Gunn, said yesterday that her client wanted to maintain a "dignified silence".
The half-hour documentary - due to be broadcast in the autumn - is based on unseen film footage and photographs of the former prime minister.