A rubber chicken is a prop used in comedy. The phrase is also used as a description for food served at speeches, conventions, and other large meetings, and as a metaphor for speechmaking.
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A rubber chicken is a replica of a completely plucked but otherwise complete barnyard fowl made from a latex injection mold. A popular sight gag and slapstick comedy prop, rubber chickens are sometimes used by comics as a mock weapon. They are also sometimes used by jugglers in place of clubs. The origin of the rubber chicken is obscure, but is likely a natural change of the use of pig bladders. In the days before the development of plastic and latex, bladders were inflated and attached to a stick. They were used as props by jesters and minstrels for the same comic effects as the modern rubber chicken.
One account attributes the use of a prop chicken to John Holmberg, the Swedish black-faced clown of the early 1900s. At that time, gluttony was fashionable and considered a sign of affluence, and Holmberg would perform with his pockets full of fake food in order to make fun of the upper classes.[1]
Another likely apocryphal account, which is printed on the tag of rubber chickens manufactured by Archie McPhee, claims that the symbol originated during the French Revolution with soldiers hanging a chicken from their muskets for luck. The apocryphal history of the rubber chicken as used by revolutionaries led a Discordian group, The International Rubber Chicken Society, formed in New Fairfield, Connecticut, to use the emblem of the rubber chicken. The International Rubber Chicken Society's occult symbolism may also have led the pseudo-secret society to use the rubber chicken (a sight-gag with the initials "R.C.") to suggest a link between them, Discordian occult practices, and the Rosey Cross ("R.C.") of Rosicrucianism. Monty Python's Flying Circus featured a recurring bit having a raw chicken-carrying knight who hits people when they begin to ramble. Andrés Bustamante also featured rubber chickens during his shows in the 1990s.
A rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle is a gag object found in LucasArts' Monkey Island franchise games. It is also used as a rating system in the TV show Good Game and Good Game-SP.
The term "rubber chicken" is used disparagingly to describe the food served at political or corporate events, weddings, and other gatherings where there are a large number of guests who require serving in a short timeframe. Chicken, pre-cooked, is held at serving temperature for some time and then dressed with a sauce as it is served. Consequently the chicken meat is tough or “rubbery.”
Someone who "travels the rubber chicken circuit" is said to do so by attending or making speeches at many such gatherings, often as part of political campaigning.