In my earlier post, Kitsch Culture, I reflected on why our culture feels the need to collect crap - ie. souvenirs, tacky knick-knacks, and bulky bric-a brac. Things that inexplicably take hold of our sanity and convince us we need to have them in order to feel complete.Past fads like pet rocks, mounted singing rubber fish, glass klackers, metal lawn darts and more recently, Beanie Babies are the physical evidence of this insanity.
(For a not so scientific explanation of this phenomenon, see Beanie Baby Economics.)
The items I mentioned really captured our imaginations and sold like hotcakes, which always sell like hotcakes, by the way -
So, just imagine how awful the items were that failed to fulfill our crap collecting "needs."
For a mere .25 cents, I picked up this fine specimen of the 70's at a local thrift store. It seems the 70's were a time to put grooming on the back burner and focus on sandal making.
Why? Because as Sandal Making Magazine Issue No. 1916 clearly states, "Nowhere is the 'Age of Leather' more apparent than in the desire to have your own authentic, custom made sandals."
More thrift store shopping yielded a nifty little recording, also from the 70's, that teaches your parakeet how to teach himself to talk!
Although on the surface it may appear that the 70's were about empowering everyone, including parakeets, to find their own voice, getting your parakeet to teach himself how to talk was just another way to free up some more time to focus on making even more sandals; like the Spartacus and the Centurion.
Remember when those two Canadian guys made that trivia game that swept the game industry in the 80's in their not so Trivial Pursuit to fame and fortune?
Well, believe it or not, two other Canadian guys tried that - eight years LATER with a game called Tour de Force!
It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read How My Father Built the Sudbury Arena, that one of those guys was the wily Canadian icon, Pierre Berton. The other was a former evangelist, Charles Templeton.
These two guys were just too smart for their own good.
Instead of including general topics everyone could relate to, they weirded things up with categories like Wicked Women; Flora and Fauna; Disasters and Cars; Trains and Planes.
They stole a really good idea from some fellow Canadians and made it bad.
Maybe the game failed due to the fact that they politicized it and alienated a large percentage of their Canadian market by specifying the game was "Playable in English Only" and then repeated this in French on the box.
Whatever the reason (any one will do), the game not only failed to capture our imaginations, but our interest too.
I'm afraid that due to recent retro trending, some of these products might surface again. If a time for sandals descends upon us once more, I hope it will be a lot less hairy next time round.
EXTRA! EXTRA! – This is where I sometimes recommend a song, a book, and a film to watch, but for this piece I thought it might be fun to play a lightning round of Tour de Force, just to say you played a vintage edition of this rarely sought after and highly obscure game. Here is a question from the Disaster category:
"In 1952 more than 4,000 Londoners died within a fortnight. What killed them?"
(Sidebar: Game failure reason number four - the use of the word fortnight.)
Good luck....although, there is no actual prize involved, and absolutely nothing is at stake...not even bragging rights.
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