Jacko: The Most Famous McElroy of All

 If Johnny is the figure everyone wants, Jacko is the figure everyone talks about.

Jacko is a monkey — a chimpanzee, to be precise — and he is widely considered the most extraordinary figure the McElroy brothers ever built. He was custom ordered by W.S. Berger, the founder of what would become the Vent Haven Museum, sometime around 1940. He has never left the museum's collection since.

What makes Jacko special is not just the sculpt — though George McElroy's work on that face is remarkable, capturing something simultaneously animal and almost human. What makes Jacko special is the sheer ambition of the build. Every McElroy trick is in there, pushed to its limit.

Jacko is one of a kind. There is no cast, no replica, no copy. You can see him at Vent Haven in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. You cannot buy him. You cannot borrow him. You can only look.

I've spent a lot of time looking at photos.

There is something about knowing a thing exists, that it was made by human hands, that it is sitting in a museum in Kentucky right now — that makes the obsession feel almost reasonable.

Almost.

Alessio