Captain Quackers' Explorer Log

🎉 Meet the Rempel flock
Our new online Rempel exhibit brings together surviving characters, packaging, and historical research. Mr. Squawker, Squawky, Yippy, and Drakey invite visitors to look closely at the personalities behind these vintage toys.

🔍 Names, dates, and important distinctions
Contemporary illustrations and copyright records help connect named Rempel characters with their history. They also remind us that a copyright date is not necessarily the date a toy first appeared in stores.

🧭 Choose your next duck adventure
A new Exhibits home page gives visitors a starting point for exploring the museum’s online displays, beginning with Rempel.

📖 Making the evidence easier to follow
The Sources & Bibliography page received an expanded guide to patents, publications, catalogs, archival collections, objects, and research correspondence—plus navigation to help curious visitors find their way.

Captain's note: November's adventures are just beginning. More stories to uncover—and plenty of room in the logbook.

📚 The patent research keeps growing
Work continued on two companion projects: a detailed research edition to document evidence and a publication manuscript to share the story with a wider audience. Each new record helps us ask better questions about duck designs, materials, and manufacturing.

🏷️ Small details tell big stories
Maker's marks, molded codes, original packaging, and differences between surviving toys became important clues. A familiar-looking duck can hold an unfamiliar story underneath!

🛁 An exhibit takes shape
Planning began for a Bath & Body Works display bringing together colorful ducks, shopping memorabilia, gift cards, and a ceramic tub. The challenge: turn a collection of objects into a story visitors can follow.

🗂️ Behind every adventure is a little organizing
Collection records, research files, and outreach tracking received attention as the museum continued building the foundation for future exhibits.

Captain’s note: Discovery is exciting. Writing down what we discovered helps us find it again!

🔎 A magazine duck becomes a stronger clue
Scans supplied by the Library of Congress brought the March 1945 Playthings duck into closer view. An Artoys advertisement gives us a company lead—but the duck’s exact identity, material, and intended use remain mysteries for the Research Desk.

🎬 A window into Rempel's world
A digitized 1958 Industry on Parade film arrived from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, giving us moving images to study alongside surviving toys and written records.

🦆 A conversation with the creator of Rubba Ducks
On September 28, we interviewed Mark Boldt about Rubba Ducks. Firsthand memories opened new research paths and reminded us that the people behind the ducks have stories worth preserving, too.

📬 Every answer opens another door
Correspondence about Ernie's duck brought another lead: cameraman Frank Biondi had retained the white duck. No purchase record was found, so its origins remain under investigation.

Captain’s note: Sometimes an adventure begins with a suitcase. Sometimes it begins with a scanned magazine page.

🦆 August 16, 2026 — Wesley Goes to the Renaissance Faire
Wesley—gifted by Cathy and named for a shared love of The Princess Bride—travels to the Bristol Renaissance Faire for a museum adventure.

🏰 The ducks go to Disney World
The museum's Explorer Log heads to Walt Disney World for six days of adventures, discoveries, characters, attractions, and plenty of duck-worthy moments—including meeting Donald Duck in EPCOT.

📜 Historic evidence joins the collection
New acquisitions and research strengthen the museum's growing historical record, including vintage advertising and significant examples from American rubber-toy history.

🔎 The Research Desk takes shape
Open historical questions become active investigations, with evidence tracked through patents, catalogs, trade publications, archives, surviving objects, and contemporary records.

📬 The museum's research network expands
Outreach to manufacturers, historians, museums, archives, collectors, and companies begins bringing new leads—and new pieces of rubber-duck history—to the museum.

🌐 The American Rubber Duck Museum website launches
The museum gets its first public home and begins sharing its collection, research, stories, and plans with the world.

❤️ Captain Quackers reports for duty
Captain Quackers officially joins the museum as Chief Curator & Adventure Officer, ready to follow clues, explore duck history, and guide visitors through the museum’s adventures.

📖 Hope becomes DuckDex #0001
The duck that started it all becomes the first official DuckDex entry.

🔍 Historic duck research expands
Research begins digging deeper into companies and makers, including Sun Rubber, Seiberling Latex, Peter Ganine, Lanco, CelebriDucks, and others.

🧭 The first museum adventures begin
Captain Quackers’ Explorer Log starts documenting the places, discoveries, and experiences encountered while the museum is being built.

🏛️ The American Rubber Duck Museum begins taking shape
What started as a collection is transforming into a museum project dedicated to preserving, researching, and sharing rubber-duck history.

📚 Museum collections work begins
Plans take shape to catalog the collection, document provenance, record condition, and build a permanent museum record for each object.

🔎 The research mission grows
Questions about makers, materials, patents, advertisements, and the origins of familiar ducks begin developing into formal museum research projects.

🦆 The DuckDex takes shape
The idea for a museum-wide catalog of individual ducks develops—treating each duck as an object with its own history and story.

And we're only getting started. Every month brings new ducks, new clues, and another chapter in the museum’s story.