Laffing Sal

Laffing Sal is one of several automated characters that were built primarily to attract carnival and amusement park patrons to funhouses and dark rides throughout the United States. Its movements were accompanied by a raucous laugh that sometimes frightened small children and annoyed adults.

Laffing Sal (sometimes referred to as "Laughing Sal") was produced by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (PTC) of Germantown, Pennsylvania during the 1920s and early 1930s. PTC subcontracted the figures's fabrication to the Old King Cole Papier Mache Company of Canton, Ohio.

The figure stood 6 feet, 10 inches high, including a 12-inch pedestal. It was made of papier mache, consisting of seven layers of pressed card stock with horse-hair strengthener, mounted over steel coils and frame. It did not come with a hat ( hats were added by purchaser ) but wore an artificial wig and had a large gap between its front teeth. The head, arms, hands and legs were detachable and were held together with fabric, staples, pins, nails, nuts and bolts. When activated, the figure waved its arms and leaned forward and backward. A record player concealed in its pedestal played a stack of 78 RPM recordings of a woman laughing. When the records finished, an attraction operator re-stacked and restarted them.

PTC produced two other "ballyhoo" (attention-getting) figures, Laffing Sam and Blackie the Barker, which used similar construction. The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California featured Sal, Sam and Blackie over the center of its Laff In The Dark dark ride.

Laffing Sal was a fixture at the Balboa Fun Zone in Newport Beach, California when it opened in 1936. Decades later, the park's management learned that Funni-Frite Inc. of Pickerington, Ohio still had the original molds of Laffing Sal's head and hands, and commissioned them to make an updated Sal to stand above the entrance of their Scary Dark Ride. An endless tape cartridge provided its audio. The figure was removed when the attraction was closed in 2005.

Sal's asking price in 1940 was US$360, equal to $6154 today; in 2004 the one now in Santa Cruz, California cost the bidder US$50,000.

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