King Tusk Plush Circus Elephant Toy Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey 1987 Vintage

Description

Who was King Tusk? Check out this 1987 press release:
Not since P. T. Barnum introduced Jumbo, the world's largest elephant, to America and the English language a century ago has a titanic tusker been the star of the Greatest Show on Earth.
The 117th edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus which opened this week at Madison Square Garden presents for the first time King Tusk, a 12-foot-6, 14,762 pound Indian elephant that is too big to travel in the show's own railroad train.
King Tusk will move around the country with the circus on its national tour in a 45-foot custom-built tractor-trailer. He is the star of the 'Red' circus, one of two Ringling traveling shows, which can be seen at the Garden through May 17. The other 'Blue' circus already is on the road.
The mastodonic mammoth, billed as 'the largest land mammal on the face of the Earth,' lumbers regally into the center ring of the three-ring show just before intermission as part of a parade of quaint circus wagons, a cast of hundreds garbed in glittering Oriental regalia and 1880s costumes, and a menagerie of exotic animals. He has to be seen to be believed.
Any anmal of such great size is impressive, but it is King Tusk's tusks of purist white ivory that put him in a class by himself. The right tusk, which hangs lower, is 7 feet long and the left, which rises at a rakish tilt, is 6 inches shorter. The circumference of the tusks at their widest is 17 inches. That's a lot of piano keys.
Big Tusk is caparisoned in an 80-yard blanket of gold and silver fabric bespangled with 15,000 mirrors and myriads of sequins, surmounted by a bejeweled howdah, and weighing 700 pounds. To this is attached a 400-pound gold train glittering with more mirrors, sequins and brass studs and a brass plated chain blanket weighing 475 pounds.
This 20th century Jumbo doesn't seem to be as talented as Ringling's 17 smaller tuskers, who can bow, stand on their heads, parade on their back feet, and sway to music. But he doesn't need talent. He just has to stand there like some maharaja's dreamboat to make the audience scream with pleasure.
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