A black power statuette raising his fist in pride but when you pull him outta the box he’s a white man…! This is one of the greatest examples of Soul Kitsch in my collection. So perfect a product in the late 60’s for a market that had long been under-served in terms of ubiquitous pop culture memorabilia. But like The Supremes White Bread and Touch O’ Soul “Off-Black” pantyhose featured earlier in this blog, and boasting on the box that it’s a “Equality- Justice statuette”, couldn’t the product manager have spent a few more minutes thinking about his target audience and poured a little tan tint into the resin before locking down the molds?

Made of “sturdy plastic with base tab” (whatever a base tab is), The Black Power Statuette was manufactured by Zap-Co of Roseville, Michigan.

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Popular causes have always been prime breeding ground for Kitsch but none so powerful as the first wave of products that spin out of these Pop Culture phenomenon. Both Libby The Lovely Liberated Lady and the Do-It-Yourself Coloring Kit Black Power Statuette are two such statements from burgeoning Civil Rights movements in the 1960s and ’70s when these folks were expressing themselves freely among the masses for the first time.

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