Fads in America : What Makes A Fad????
report by : Celestial* LeFave
April 1999
Since the introduction of the television, American economy has reached a new
level in the fashion and toy industries. Mass production of toys made it easier for companies to
make and sell hundreds of the same toy, which, in result, created a social acceptance issue
within children. When television commercials, cartoons, or magazine advertisements appear
using a toy that catches a child's eye, it is spoken about to other children and among parents and
soon enough, it becomes a potential fad. Fad's in toys are not to be taken lightly, they are a huge
part of the economic system and a part of every child's history. If more of a certain toy sells over
any other in the decade, it is then recognized as the biggest toy of that decade. When the toy
disappears from stores and is no longer popular, a child will then disregard the toy as everybody
else (or simply out grow it); but they always look back and remember that they had once owned
the most popular toy and relive the pride. Children through teenagers need fads to grow up
feeling good about themselves, to feel like they too are popular. Since everyone dresses that way,
or owns that same toy, then all people have something in common with each other. All fads fade
away, but sometimes there are toys that have started out as fads and have actually been able to
stay in the market and remain popular; they become collectibles. Fads are things in our society
that are only popular for a short time. They are created by advertising and the need for social
acceptance, however fads, especially in toys, are important to our American culture and the
economy of the world.
The 1950's was a beginning point for the toy frenzy times. There were only a few
major productions. The biggest fads of the decade; the hula hoop and troll dolls. The hula- hoop
was created by Wham-O in 1957, after only four months twenty-five million were sold in
America alone. This was not such a big intricate toy, but the fad was easily accepted over the
1940's frisbee and slinky. The fad only lasted for a single year, but sold more units in that
amount of time than any previous fads and possibly since. Troll dolls, originally known as the
"dammit" doll, were created by a Danish woodcutter named Thomas Dam. As of the late
1960's, Trolls were the second largest selling dolls in America, next in line to Barbie dolls. More
than a million were sold by 1964. "Danes believed the dolls were so ugly that you had to
laugh at them and if you were laughing, nothing bad could ever happen to you.(1)" They were so
well known as a source of good luck that the first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, bragged that she
owned one. The trend faded as many began to think the trolls really were too ugly and discarded
them. Trolls made a brief reappearance in the 1990's.
The hottest doll of the 1950's has surpassed it's faddish stage and earned it's own
space in every little girl's heart; Mattel's Barbie dolls. "High Color" Barbie's are the originals
with hand painted faces, which changed in 1967 with the new "twist and turn" waists. These
dolls have had the longest standing term in toy culture today, and maintain their popularity.
Currently, the Barbie is forty years old and is equipped with laptops and cellular phones. Each
year Mattel introduces 125 Barbie's and generates 1.9 billion dollars in sales. Girls
played with their friends and their friends' Barbie's and they would take pride in their newer,
"prettier" Barbie's. Barbie was, and still is, the model, fantasy woman and, however unrealistic
the figure, girls admire her. This is the biggest toy in the history of toys and will probably stay
around for years to come as a play toy for little girls and a collectible for those who once were
"little girls" too.
In the 1960's there was a board game fad that sold more than Monopoly, mainly
among the teenage crowds; the Quija board. The movie "The Exorcist" presented a young girl
who became possessed after playing with a Quija board; a wooden or plastic board marked with
various letters, numbers, and answers. When the board is asked a question, a "spirit" would
answer through a pointer held by one or more players. Because of this link, many psychic's
would use the boards to communicate with the dead. The game was short lived because of its
repetitive nature and people were just plain bored with it. However, there was still a movie
series sparked by the game, entitled "Witchboard." Next in line for popularity was the "Thing-
Maker," which came out in 1964 and lasted only ten years. The most well known set for the little
heating machine is the "Creepy Crawlers" set; making little rubber bugs, but there were many
different sets available for girls and boys. Congress took away the supplies of goop due to a
hearing on child safety, kids were burning themselves on the hot goop and the ovens. Nobody
said all fads were safe, but that is just one more reason a fad is so short lived.
A decade of Rubik's Cubes, Pet Rocks, and Mood Rings; the 1970's, the silliest
and most useless fads imaginable invented. Rubik's cube, created by Erno Rubik, is a six sided
block which splits into three columns and three rows. The object of the game is to return the
cube to it's original color pattern; there were more than 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible
positions in which the cube could be manipulated. Originally, it was created to teach students
about three dimensional objects, in 1975 there were 4.5 million sold, one for almost every
household. "Legends abound that fans became so compulsive that one developed tendinitis in
her wrist from struggling with the puzzle and another was divorced by his wife for becoming so
infatuated with the device, which she had bought him for Christmas.(2)" The cube decreased in
popularity in 1982, simply due to overexposure. Mood rings were created in 1975 by Joshua
Reynolds, they react to changes in body temperature and are supposed to show a persons mood.
The lifespan of this fad was fixed from the beginning; the crystals within the rings only emit the
color changes for a period of two years and afterwards remain black. Worse than the mood ring,
the pet rock was an entirely silly fad, but a concept not to unlike our common day giga pets or
furbies; a low maintenance pet without the mechanical insides. Created by Gary Dahl, the rocks
only lasted for a six month period, but in that period of time the smiling rocks sold over 5
million, "providing that no matter how ridiculous a concept, millions of people would have no
problem making someone else wealthy for daring to present them with it.(3)"
There was a serious and very important fad in 1974; Moped's were not toys, but
extremely important for use of travel during the fuel crisis at the time. Half bike and half
motorcycle, moped's could not exceed 40 miles per hour. However, they could run up to 220
miles on one tank of gas. By 1977 more than 250,000 people in the United States owned one.
When gas prices eventually went back down and more efficient cars were made; mopeds
disappeared.
Not unlike the 1950's Barbie, the 1977 "Star Wars" movie merchandise began as
a fad and was able to stay around, It didn't just stay around, it's business actually has grown
bigger with the 1990's re-release of the old movies into theaters and with the prequel movies.
Over the past twenty-two years, "Star Wars" merchandise has made an estimated 4.5 billion
dollars in sales, four times more than the box office sales. Last year, Hasbro bought No. 3
Galoob and took over every major "Star Wars" toy license. Analysts believe "Hasbro could ring
up more than 5 billion in retail sales from the three prequels.(4)" This doesn't even include the
toys made by Lego or the computer games from Nintendo or Lucas Arts. Even the internet has
been hit with Jedi fan sites, proving this movie series will be around for a long time and so will
the merchandise.
1980 was the biggest toy decade ever. Merchandise and cartoons were
everywhere and there were plenty of fads! Some of the most well known faddish toys were : G.I.
Joe, Snorks, Transformers, Jem and the Holograms, My Little Ponies, He-Man and She-Ra,
Smurfs, Garbage Pail Kids, Strawberry Shortcake, Teddy Ruxpin, Care Bears, The Dukes of
Hazzard, Fluppy Dogs, Get Along Gang, Glo-Worms, Hug-A-Bunch, A-Team, Rainbow Brite,
Muppet Babies, My Pet Monster, Wuzzles, Polly Pocket, Pound Puppies, Puffalump's, Popples ,
California Raisins, Voltron, Garfield, Alf, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These are just
a few! The toys of the eighties crowded the market with new everything and it was the best time
to be a kid! Since there are so many, here are just two interesting fads that were also cartoons;
Rainbow Brite and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. "Rainbow Brite" had characters such as
"Buddy Blue" and "Shy Violet" who gave the world color and enemy's such as "Murky Lurky"
whom would try to turn the world into shades of browns and grays. There were even sprites who
were little friends of Rainbow's, these were marketed more than Rainbow herself because they
were fuzzy little creatures of different colors with alien like antenna atop their heads. The
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman while both working in
a comic book store, were found on the covers of magazines, in comic books, on lunch boxes,
clothing, televison shows, and in the movies, as well as in toy merchandising. By 1990, the
cartoon show appeared each day on over 125 stations and comic books were selling at a rate of
125,000 each month. Surely, Vanilla Ice (music fad of the early 1990's) did not help the turtles
stay in business with his once popular song, "Ninja Rap," in the first out of three Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.
Another, following the footsteps of Barbie dolls and "Star Wars," was the ever
popular Cabbage Patch Kids. In 1998, the dolls celebrated twenty years of "delivering babies,"
the tradition continues since, creator, Xavier Roberts' very first "little people" to the original
soft-sculptures today. The Cabbage Patch dolls were the most successful of the eighties, their
sales created riots and fist fights between parents! Sales grew from 60 million in their first year,
1978, to a dramatic 600 million in 1985. Back then, it could have been predicted as a fad, the
dolls were sold so quickly and sought after so ferociously that one would think people would tire
of them, but like Barbie, the sales slowed down and the dolls stuck around.
The crave of the 1990's seems to be virtual pets or pets in general; from
Tomagotchi's and Furbies to Beanie Babies and Pokemon. The Internet makes toys easier to
find, but harder to buy. Toys are being sold for much more than what they are actually worth just
like scalped concert tickets. "Tickle Me Elmo," the Sesame Street character doll that shakes and
giggles, was not unlike that of the craze created by the Cabbage Patch Kids in the 1980's where
the parents would literally fight each other to have the opportunity to buy one for Christmas. The
doll's retail price ranged under fifty dollars, but Christmas of 1996, people were so crazy for the
doll there were many who would pay anywhere up to five hundred dollars for one. Elmo was
followed by other "tickle me" dolls and the fad ended.
Many potential fads have arrived within the nineties decade, but it is too early to
tell whether or not these will stay around as a few others have or if they will simply fade away
with time. Beanie Babies now are worth money and growing, but they could take that very same
turn baseball cards took and go down in value or only gaining value slowly. "The Dow is
playing footsie with the 10,000, but the Absolute Beanie Index is down 26.4 percent over the
past nine months.(5)" Furby was the hottest toy for the 1998 Christmas season, it's an
"animatronic" pet and the closest thing to a living creature. Tiger electronics created the Furby
by combining the concept of Beanie's with the electronic giga pet, the result is a strange looking
creature that somewhat resembles "Gizmo" from the Steven Spielberg movie "Gremlins."
Interest in the little creature comes from it's "cuddly" look and it's own language "furbish."
It responds to touch and learns English from whomever talks to, which is why the National
Security Agency in Maryland has banned the Furbies. Rosie O' Donnell hosted a show in which
she announced she hated the new Furby. Even while considering that she began the "Tickle Me
Elmo" craze, she could not stop the Furby movement. Some of the buyers of Furbies have
already become tired of them, keep in mind, they never die. Created in Japan, Pokemon has
become the hottest toy craze of 1999 in America. In just four years, Nintendo created : games,
the T.V. show, comic books, feature films, talking watches, and figures, generating 4.5 billion
dollars in revenue. The cartoon is a thirty minute cartoon that involves 150 different characters
who playfully battle with each other. One article writer's opinion of the show is that it is "sort of
like a small version of the House of Representatives.(6)"
The "Teletubbie's" is the most controversial children's television show currently
on the air. "'He (Tinky-Winky) is purple, the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a
triangle, the gay-pride symbol' said by Reverend Jerry Falwell, issued a 'parent' alert in his
National Library Journal to warn readers that Tinky Winky, a character from the popular
children's television show, "Teletubbies," could be a gay role model for impressionable children
and should not be ignored..(7)" Dave Thompson, the original "Tinky-Winky," was fired in 1997
because he was thought to be portraying the character in an outlandish manner to a gay
audience. Thompson denies being gay or his actions as portraying such ways. He has since
found work as a 'nude balloon dancer," so maybe Jerry Falwell was misled with probable cause.
Another little known factor against the show would be an episode in which "Dipsy" was hit on
the head with the letter "E," (British slang for the drug ecstacy). One can only question if this
occurrence was just another "coincidence." It can only be predicted that the show and
merchandise will diminish with these rumors and the shows lack of educational value, but it may
be too soon to know for sure.
With all these toys one could only imagine what the market would be like if every
toy that was ever popular was to stay on the market. Fads keep the economy stable, giving way
to new products so that the other companies may take that same chance to reign their products
and make high profits. Needless to say, no matter how "fickle" buyers are, they keep the
economy going and in order to make them happy a business must keep them interested.
Although faddish toys are short lived, they are always an important memory for each generation,
as well as a part of our culture. The toy manufacturers scurry to come up with the next "hot"
item to market for millions. As we enter the first decade of the 21st Century, with the
technological age upon us... who knows what the market will bear? Will we resort to simplicity
or "out of this world?"
Works Cited :
Adscape International
"Collectibles."
Bad Fads Museum, 1998.
Bryant, Adam
"Time to Short for Beanies?"
Newsweek, March 29, 1999, page 46.
Kaplan, David and Rogers, Adam
"It's a Pokemon Planet."
Newsweek, March 1, 1999, page 48.
Newsweek
"Perspectives."
Newsweek, February 1999.
Rogers, Adam
"Waiting for Star Wars."
Newsweek, February 1, 1999, pages 60 - 64
1. Adscape International, Internet
2. Adscape International, Internet
3. Adscape
4. Rogers, 64
5. Bryant, 46
6. Kaplan and Rogers, 48
7. Newsweek, Perspective