It’s a Billiken, and it was all the rage

This glass Billiken was among the artifacts found in downtown Vancouver. (STEVEN LANE/The Columbian)

Heck of a way for an American icon to spend its 100th anniversary: stuck in a cardboard box with pieces of broken pottery and old chicken bones.

Still, it does seem to be a step up. The Billiken spent most of the century in a garbage pit.

The small glass object is one of the artifacts recovered a couple of years ago during an archaeological project in downtown Vancouver. Many of the items are fairly anonymous, but the Billiken’s name is front and center on its base, right below its pudgy little toes.

That’s right, toes. The figure was designed along the lines of a seated Oriental deity.

While it looks exotic, the smiling good-luck symbol was patented in 1908 by a Kansas City art teacher, Florence Pretz.

For a few years, it seemed to be the Snoopy or SpongeBob of its era, showing up in the form of Billiken dolls, banks, jars, bottles and kitchenware.

The quirky name and impish figure live on at St. Louis University, where the Billiken is the mascot of SLU athletic teams.

According to the university’s Web site, one theory traces the name back to a couple of St. Louis sportswriters who thought football coach John Bender “bore a striking resemblance to the impish creature.” After one of them drew a cartoon of the coach as a Billiken, it caught on as the official nickname of all SLU teams.