The Big John statues shown below are about 30 feet tall. They originally wore checkered shirts, blue jeans, and an apron, and carried giant bags of groceries. They were built for the Big John grocery store chain which was based in Carmi, IL and was established in 1960. These statues were designed by Jimmy Boyd and produced around 1967 by the General Sign Co. in Cape Girardeau, MO. The stores and statues were named after the 1961 hit song about a coal miner, "Big Bad John." There were about 30 Big John stores in Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky, and Tennessee. It is believed about 25 of these statues were produced. Some of the statues were sold and moved. However, most of the statues were moved back to the company's headquarters in Carmi as stores closed. When the company moved its headquarters to a new location around 2000, the remaining statues were destroyed. Only nine of these statues are known to have survived: the three shown here in Illinois and six others (see blue box below). There was another statue in Olney, IL which is gone now. In 2019, the original molds for these statues were found in Tennessee. Mark Cline has produced a couple of statues with them. For more, see this website.