It’s vital to know that Goll[i/y]wog (the doll and the name) is considered racist to many Anglophones. And Wog even more so, in the same taboo class as the N-word. Context: child-speak doggy-woggy
Of course PC (Politically Correct) fashions vary confusedly over space, time and languages. Even sensitive novelists like Nabokov can be caught retrospectively ‘out-of-phase,’ as it were. He regularly uses Negro where Black or African-American have become more ‘acceptable.’ Blacks themselves have long argued over these changing usages. See, e.g., Black linguist John McWhorter’s comments at
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2010/01/john-mcwhorter-on-the-word-negro/20367/
Growing up in 1930s UK, we found the Golliwog black doll rather cute and totally inoffensive. Indeed, until 2002 the Golliwog logo label appeared on the jars of Robinson’s most popular jams and marmalades. The current trend is that both the name and doll are out of fashion, being widely considered as distasteful stereotypes on a par with blacked-up minstrels.
Stan Kelly-Bootle.Didier Machu: Yes, there are traces of Golliwog in Camera Obscura / Laughter in the Dark. Margot twice calls Albinus doggy...in the British edition but in the American edition (100, 180) woggy is substituted....
JM: It would be nice if I were able to retribute DMachu's comprehensive information in connection to the golliwoggs, but this kind of doll, or of adventure-stories for children is very unfamiliar to me. I would never have guessed its presence in "Laughter in the Dark" nor in "KQKn," with the unexpected literary pranks it entails.
I'll check it in the Brazilian-Portuguese edition to find out how the translators cope with it or, at least, how they render the "doggy-woggy" alusion.
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