Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1712

'Tis The Season

Over the years, I have written multiple articles and columns about my childhood Christmas memories, first as they related to living (1946-1948) with my Prosser grandparents at 717 High Street, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and second with my parents (1948-1962) at 51 West Depot Street in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. Not wishing to repeat myself, albeit I am certain some “Rinker on Collectibles” readers may not have read the previous articles or columns, I searched for a different set of Christmas memories to share.

All of a sudden, I smiled. I had my Christmas holiday story hook. Like so many individual stories, it allowed me to travel down multiple memory pathways associated with the act of collecting and the holiday madness of collectors and the general public.

After a long and bitter custody fight with my first wife, I was successful in obtaining custody of my son Harry Jr. in 1978. My second wife Connie wanted to make certain that Harry, Jr. had a special “first” Christmas at our home. A Star Wars wristwatch was on Harry Jr.’s Christmas wish list. I remember the look of triumph on Connie’s face when she returned home from a lengthy shopping trip with a Star Wars wristwatch in her possession. She stood in line for over an hour.

[Author’s Aside: I am a December 23 Christmas shopper in terms of family presents. One trip to a local mall, and I am done. Do not be deceived by my past early “$300 and a Closet” holiday toy shopping sprees. They were a business not a family necessity.]

The Star Wars watch was one of the hot ticket items during the 1978 Christmas season. Harry Jr. was elated when he opened his package. My attitude was different. I never understood the fuss about getting a specific present on Christmas morning, especially the “hot toy” of the season. If parental love is measured by this criterion, I was a lousy father. I preferred to wait until the post-Christmas season when demand was less and prices often reduced. Okay, so I am a Scrooge.

The Star Wars wristwatch fad starting me thinking. This is a good time to review other Christmas fads and explore collecting fads in general.

What constitutes a Christmas fad? Historically, the answer was scarcity. In modern times, it is much more complex. There are six major criteria. First, the item must no longer be available on store shelves by early December at the latest and with no possibility of resupply before December 25. Second, prior to the first criterion, there has to be a frenzied group of buyers in a crazed mental state, willing to endure anything including fighting, physical assault, and trampling others to secure the desired toy. Sales chaos is essential to the process. Third, the media has to fuel the lunacy, first by a series of “hot” toy articles and then reports about the impending shortage and the antics of those willing to do anything necessary to acquire the toy. Fourth, the manufacturer of the “hot” toy increases rather than decreases the product advertising, especially on television. Fifth, toy speculators acquire a large number of examples that they scalp on the secondary market for prices ranging from 10 to 100 times the initial selling price of the toy. The media reports this phenomenon, further increasing the concepts of desirability and scarcity. Finally, an unrelenting wail of “if you love me, you will get me one for Christmas” reaches crescendo pitch from children across the nation. Parents quickly reach the “I will do whatever it takes to shut the kid up” mindset.

If you ask someone to identify the most famous Christmas fad of all, the most obvious answer is Tickle Me Elmo in 1996. Who caused it? Blame Rosie O’Donnell. She featured Tickle Me Elmo on one of her October talk shows. By Black Friday, 1996, the electric stuffed Muppet was missing from toy shelves across America. Attempts to keep restocking efforts secret failed. Robert Waller, a Wal-Mart employee, told representatives of “PEOPLE” magazine, “I was pulled under, trampled—the crotch was yanked out of my brand-new jeans….I was kicked with a white Adidas before I became unconscious.” His injuries included his back, jaws, and knee, a broken rib, and a concussion. As Maurice Chevalier sang to Hermione Gingold in “Gigi,” “Ah yes, I remember it well.”

Tickle Me Elmo was not the first Christmas fad and perhaps not even the worst. In 1903, there was a Christmas run on the No. 5 Lionel locomotives. In 1923, the No. 4 Liberty Coaster wagon was a scarce commodity in stores prior December 25.

In the early 1950s, there was a major run on television cowboy western memorabilia. Holiday toy shelves were quickly stripped of Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and The Lone Ranger licensed products.

I did not select the 1983 Cabbage Patch Kids craze as the top holiday craze because its focus was exclusively female. The Tickle Me Elmo craze was sexless. In fairness, it was ugly and perhaps even uglier than the Tickle Me Elmo phenomenon. It was reported that some Big Box and department store managers armed themselves with baseball bats as a means of maintaining customer order.

Teddy Ruxpin (1985) and Furbys (1998) are the other toys on my Top 4 Christmas Toys craze list. When developing the list, I felt certain the internet played a major role in supporting the crazes. It did for Tickle Me Elmo and Furbys. It was notably absent in support of the Cabbage Patch and Teddy Ruxpin crazes. Harkening back to a former time, these were driven by newspaper and antiques and collectibles periodical classified advertising. Print media classified advertising has all but disappeared in the digital age.

In researching Christmas fads, I came across references to the 2014 toy speculation for Disney’s “Frozen” Elsa doll. In April of that year, toy scalpers had cleared the shelves of Elsa dolls. The secondary market asking price reached $1,000. Kudos to Disney who came up with a plan not to let Elsa became the 2014 Christmas craze toy. First, Disney limited the sales in Disney stores to no more than two examples per customer. Second, Disney immediately ordered new stock and by the 2014 holiday season there were plenty of Elsa dolls on shelves everywhere.

Collecting crazes played and continue to play a major role in the secondary antiques and collectibles market. While I have written about specific crazes ranging from Beanie Babies to Holiday Barbie to Princess Diana memorabilia, I have not explored the subject in depth.

In researching this column, I made a collecting crazes list. There is more than one type. The first is a standard collecting category that runs hot for a number of months or years and then cools off. It continues as a standard collecting category for decades afterwards until becoming an endangered collecting category. The category may experience multiple crazes or runs during this time frame.

The second is a collecting craze that can extend for months, years, and even decades but whose history is a standard bell curve from its origin to its demise. Collector/Limited edition anything (bells, cottages, ornaments, plates, thimbles, or whiskey bottles), Hummel figurines, and McDonald’s and other fast food toys belong in this category.

The third includes products whose lifetime is limited to less than a decade and quickly develop a secondary speculative market that eventually collapses abruptly. Beanie Babies, comic trading cards, Precious Moments figurines, and Zu-Zu pets are examples.

The final group consists of fads that achieved only momentary collecting status. Some might designate them as weird. I call them fun. The list includes giga pets, hula hoops, pet rocks, pogs, silly bandz, Tamagotchi, telephone credit cards, and trolls. These appear on internet listings focusing on fads that were a “huge” waste of money. They do not come close to my Top 10 list of the things in life that are a huge waste of money. Nothing that brings a smile to a face or satisfaction to a person is a waste of money. Okay, pogs are the exception.

I identify fads in terms of things not people. In doing research, I came across a reference to Cynthia Bix’s “Fad Mania! A History of American Crazes” published by 21st Century Books in 2014. It chronicles human fads such as danceathons, pole sitting, and telephone book cramming. I am old enough to remember these. Of course, I only read about them in magazines and newspapers or saw them in movie news reels. I never participated in any of them. Really!

Harry L. Rinker welcomes questions from readers about collectibles, those mass-produced items from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Selected letters will be answered in this column. Harry cannot provide personal answers. Photos and other material submitted cannot be returned. Send your questions to: Rinker on Collectibles, 5955 Mill Point Court SE, Kentwood, MI 49512. You also can e-mail your questions to harrylrinker@aol.com. Only e-mails containing a full name and mailing address will be considered.

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