The Nauga Doll: A Collector's Guide to Naugahyde's Ugliest, Most Beloved Salesman

By Matthew Partsch · Owl and Twig Vintage · October 8, 2026

In 1966 an advertising agency invented an animal so its client could sell vinyl. Federal regulators very nearly ordered it destroyed. The squat, grinning doll it left behind now turns up at estate sales across the Midwest, and most of the ones you will meet are not the real thing.

An animal invented to sell a fabric

Naugahyde had been on the market for three decades before anyone thought to give it a face. United States Rubber, later Uniroyal, registered the name in 1936 for its coated upholstery fabric, and by the 1960s the material was everywhere: dinette chairs, station wagon seats, the booth at the corner diner. Its success had bred imitators, and the company needed shoppers to ask for the brand by name.

Lois, one of the defining figures of Madison Avenue's so-called Creative Revolution, and his longtime collaborator Weihs answered with a creature. The Nauga was ugly on purpose: a barrel-shaped beast with two stubby horns, outstretched arms, a shock of felt hair over two goggle eyes, and a grin full of jagged teeth. The conceit was that Naugahyde came from its hide, which the Nauga obligingly shed once a year without coming to any harm. The first advertisement put the joke plainly, calling the Nauga ugly and its vinyl hide beautiful.

The campaign treated the animal as a member of the household. Life Magazine ran a series of full-page ads in the fall of 1967. One, headlined “The Great Impostor,” posed the Nauga in a pasture beside a puzzled dairy cow. Others showed it as a party guest, a playmate splattered in paint, and a vacationer packing golf clubs. Every ad closed on the same instruction: look for the Nauga's picture on the furniture, and if you can't find the Nauga, find another store.

A costumed Nauga, taller than a basketball center by Lois's description, appeared on television; the comedian Chuck McCann was the man sweating inside the suit, and the creature shared a stage with Johnny Carson. Uniroyal then sold the appearance back to the furniture trade. A dealer advertisement, headlined “My friend and I will help you push recliners for Father's Day,” put Carson in a chair in front of an orange Nauga and reminded retailers that the pair had helped hundreds of stores sell Naugahyde recliners the previous June.

The regulators who wanted it dead

By Lois's own account, the Nauga nearly died before its first ad ran. Lawyers raised the concern that the Federal Trade Commission could view a convincing, made-up animal as deceptive advertising: if shoppers believed the Nauga were real, they might believe its hide were genuine leather. Lois says his staff took the ads to Fifth Avenue and asked passersby whether the creature existed. The answers were uniformly scornful, the objection was dropped, and the campaign went ahead.

That story comes from Lois's own retelling, and no FTC record of the dispute surfaced in research for this guide. It holds up as a period anecdote and should be read as one. The ads themselves kept a careful footnote: each calls the Nauga “imaginary.” The joke took on a life of its own anyway. As late as 1992, readers of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison were writing tongue-in-cheek letters about saving the Nauga, a campaign later chronicled by Snopes and Smithsonian.

The doll

The campaign produced a hang tag, and the hang tag produced a toy. Uniroyal had the Nauga made up as a plush figure sewn from its own upholstery fabric, so the doll doubled as a sample of the product. Lois describes it as a 12-inch doll for children. Many went out as promotional gifts to the furniture dealers and customers who stocked and bought Naugahyde.

Others were earned. A 1967 Life advertisement, headlined “Cover your rottenest chair with my vinyl hide,” promised two rewards for re-covering a worn chair in Naugahyde: a beautiful chair, and a Nauga doll exactly like the one in the picture, for a dollar. The mail-in offer ran on a deadline at the end of 1967, which helps explain why tagged first-year dolls surface across the country rather than clustering around furniture showrooms.

Its tag spelled out the gag in the first person, introducing the Nauga and explaining that it was attached to the piece because the piece was covered with its hide. The dolls came in a range of upholstery colors; the collector and columnist Harry Rinker recorded blue, brown, gray, green, orange, violet, and yellow. A second, larger size, about 14 inches high with arms spanning roughly 22, was produced as well and is the more sought-after of the two.

The Henry Ford in Dearborn holds a Uniroyal Nauga in its permanent collection and dates it broadly to 1955 through 1975. That range begins a decade before the campaign existed, and the museum's record does not explain why; collectors should rely on the 1966 to 1967 launch for any early attribution.

How to tell a real one

• Look for the hang tag first. A complete original tag announcing the Nauga and its hide adds more value than any other single feature, and it is the piece most often missing.
• Find the copyright mark. Early dolls carry a Uniroyal stamp dated 1967. No mark, or a later date, points to a later run rather than a forgery.
• Check the construction. A genuine Nauga is cut and sewn from knit-backed upholstery vinyl, with seam lines you can feel. A seamless, molded, or rotocast vinyl figure is a different toy borrowing the shape.
• Compare the face to the 1967 ads. The originals pair a ragged felt brow over two round eyes with a wide grin of zigzag teeth; the colors of brow and grin vary from doll to doll.
• Feel the hide. Period Naugahyde is a heavy, supple vinyl. Thin, stiff, or papery material suggests a recent production.
• Measure it. A doll near 14 inches tall with a 22-inch span is the large version; price it accordingly.
• Inspect for the usual vinyl failures: cracking at the horns and arm tips, sticky or tacky surfaces from breaking-down plasticizer, and fading on the side that faced a window.

What a Nauga sells for

Prices for the doll run across an unusually wide band, and asking prices outnumber confirmed sales.

At the low end, Rinker put a realistic value of $30 to $35 on a standard 13-inch doll in fine condition in 2014, while noting eBay asking prices from $40 to $300. At the high end, a large original sold on eBay for $249.99, and a New York design dealer offered a large example at $2,800 before marking it sold.

Auction records give the firmest footing. A set of four dolls brought $1,524 at Wright in Chicago in January 2025, against an estimate of $700 to $900. A larger lot of twelve, running from a 1967 doll through a 2007 Nauga Baby, sold for $1,625 at Los Angeles Modern Auctions in March 2022, short of its estimate. Single standard dolls without tags trade far closer to Rinker's figure than to the dealer prices; a crisp tag, a scarce color, or the large size is what pushes a Nauga into three figures. Original 1967 Life tear sheets of the ads trade separately and pair well with a doll.

Caring for one

Keep a Nauga out of direct sun and away from heat, which drive out the plasticizers that keep vinyl supple. Dust it with a soft dry cloth, and if it needs more, use a barely damp cloth and mild soap, then dry it at once. Skip solvents, leather conditioners, and household cleaners with alcohol, all of which can cloud or crack the surface. Store a tag in an archival sleeve if it has come loose rather than retying it.

For the story of the fabric itself, including the gap between its claimed 1914 invention and its 1936 trademark, see the companion guide, The Material Is Older Than Its Own Trademark by 22 Years: Naugahyde. For the rest of the library, see the Field Guides index.