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The piggy bank is a quirky mistake that has provided fun for children for many centuries.
Piggy Bank. HALINA PASIERBSKA. Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society. Ed. Paula S. Fass. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. p679-680.
Bank on it!. Melinda Page. Country Living. 35.5 (May 2012) p47.
Breaking the bank. Grace Bliss Smith and Stephanie Throne. Cobblestone. 32.5 (May-June 2011) p18.
+ There is no patent for the original shape of the piggy bank
+ The number one country in the world for piggy bank sales is America
+ There are over ten different sculptures of piggy banks, one located in New York City
There have been many different shapes that piggy banks come in including,
+ Bombs
+ Cats and dogs
+ Cupcakes
+ Soda cans
+ Famous Fictional Characters, such as Darth Vader
+ Even a pacman game, where you have to play a round before depositing or emptying money
In England during the Middle Ages, the word pygg meant a certain kind of orange-colored clay. Potters used pygg clay to make jars, bowls, pots, and other containers for storing household items such as salt and grain. People who lived in England during that time called those pots "pygg jars."
You can imagine that a pygg jar would be a good place for hiding or saving money. And that's exactly what many people did. They dropped their extra coins into empty pygg jars.
Over time, people started calling these money-saving jars "pygg banks." It's possible that over the years, people simply forgot that pygg meant a kind of clay and not an animal.
Historians guess that at some point, someone asked a potter to make a pygg (or pig) bank. The potter thought his customer meant a coin bank that looked like a pig. So he formed a bank in the shape of a pig and put a slot in the top for dropping in coins. The potter painted a pig face and tail on the pig bank, and the customer loved it. Soon everyone wanted pig-shaped banks, and many potters began making them. Since the only way to get coins out of piggy banks is to shake them out or break open the bank, orders for new piggy banks grew.