Metropolis, Illinois Big John.
Big John: Uber-Grocery Clerk
Big Johns are well-meaning hulks hoisting car-sized bags filled with groceries. They were built to stand in the parking lots of Big John food stores. Often mistaken for classic Muffler Men, the Big Johns peacefully coexist with their smaller roadside brethren.
Big Johns are fiberglass with a steel skeleton, barrel-chested and 28 feet tall, originally clad in a white apron and a checked shirt. He wears comically bulbous black shoes. His beefy arms can hold four stuffed-near-to-bursting bags of groceries.
Charles Lincoln wrote to us that his dad carved the molds for Big John during the summer of 1967, while working at the General Sign Company (in business 1939-2010) in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The figures and grocery bags were designed to be customized. "In the mid '70s," Charles wrote, "Giant Food Stores co-opted them for a time, with the larger full torso apron (painted orange)."
When a Big John grocery went out of business, someone usually re-purposed the big guy. That's what happened to the Big John in Cape Coral, Florida, and to a roving Big John pressed into seasonal fireworks service in Lake View, Mississippi. In the 2020s fiberglass artist Mark Cline acquired a Big John mold and began creating customized versions in new poses for roadside businesses that wanted a mascot bigger than a Muffler Man.
West City, Illinois Big John. When his store closed, he moved to West Virginia.
Original Big Johns are rare; probably less than ten exist, and only a half-dozen are known to be publicly accessible. Due to their scarcity Big Johns are sought after by collectors of fiberglass titans. George Farnham, for example, bought an unemployed Big John from a grocery that closed in 2005 in West City, Illinois, and added it to his back yard line-up of giants in Unger, West Virginia. Bill Christman has a disassembled Big John in his private sculpture garden in St. Louis, Missouri.
Big Johns still outside of food stores:
- Carmi, Illinois - known as "Little Giant," changed hands and locations around Carmi for years, but eventually settled into his new role in front of a deli.
- Eldorado, Illinois - still stands at a Big John Super Foods Store.
- Metropolis, Illinois - Well-kept specimen at the local Big John store, but he's often overlooked because the Man of Steel stands just down the road.
