Yarbertown

As if the travel and family commitments didn’t make Christmas crazy enough, the holiday season is often marked by a conspicuous consumption and pursuit for certain random products that’s downright insane. Every year or two, some new fad hits the scene and sends kids into a frenzy and their parents into a fury, and just as quickly, those crazes are forgotten as shoppers move onto the next big thing. In a sense, every toy craze is regrettable, but the ones listed here are probably the worst. Although the kids who caused them are either in college or grown by now, the memory of these fads lives on.

Tickle Me Elmo: One of the most infamous fad toys ever released, Tickle Me Elmo made 1996 a living nightmare for parents trying to buy them and for other people trying to avoid them. Like all good crazes, this one came out of nowhere to take the country by storm, as the vibrating, laughing doll wormed its way into kids’ lives everywhere. The toy proved so popular that sales stayed high for more than a year and new shipments would often sell out quickly across the country. A Walmart employee in 1996 was tackled by 300 customers fighting to get the last doll, and he got a concussion for his trouubles. Worth it? No way.
Cabbage Patch Kids: There’s something inherently creepy about pretending your dolls were born in a field of vegetables. Cabbage Patch Kids exploded in popularity in the early 1980s, with riots breaking out in the 1983 shopping season as consumers clamored to get their hands on the latest craze. More than 2 million dolls sold in the first year alone! A few years later, though, the fad had waned and Coleco was facing debt, forcing them to sell the brand to Hasbro.
Beanie Babies: When future generations look back at our time, we will be forced to apologize for Beanie Babies. The toys were nothing more than small plush animals with simple names like Splash the Whale and Cubbie the Bear, but in the late 1990s, they were a Christmas toy that parents sought like gold. Beanie Baby collectors — presumably having little else to do with their days — stockpiled less common models and sent their value skyward, selling them for thousands of dollars online. When McDonald’s partnered with Ty to issue some of the toys in 1997, the holiday fad only got hotter.
Furby: In 1998, everyone wanted a Furby. It didn’t matter that the fur-covered toy robots resembled gremlins caught between furry and scaly; sometimes, these things just get popular for no reason. The toys start out speaking “Furbish” but eventually “learn” to speak English, meaning their programmed chips gradually spit out more recognizable phrases the longer you own one. By 2005, more than 40 million Furbies had been sold.
Pogs: What were we thinking? No, really: what were we thinking? As with many Christmas crazes, pogs were cheap trinkets marked up by virtue of being an inexplicable fad. The thin cardboard discs were bounced around with the aid of a heavy slammer; basically, it was like marbles or jacks, just with Metallica stickers (or Alf). The toys had been around for years but went huge in 1995 before fizzling out when owners realized they were spending serious stacks of cash for paper trash.
Mortal Kombat: The greatest allure is that which is forbidden. Put another way, boys will always want the stuff they’re not allowed to have, especially if the prohibition is a result of violence or graphic adult content. The Mortal Kombat arcade game was the most popular of its time (and, blowing up in the early 1990s, arguably the last great arcade release), and the resulting 1993 Sega Genesis version became one of the biggest sellers in the history of Midway Games. The game had been toned down for home use, turning the blood into “sweat” that could be reversed to its original red splatters by inputting a code.
Pokemon: There are, no lie, currently 649 fictional Pokemon species that have appeared in the franchise’s various media elements. The trading card game and animated series exploded in the U.S. at the end of the century, and the resulting media frenzy and sales explosion was turned into a hilarious episode of South Park that lampooned the game as just a cheap ploy to make kids buy bad merchandise. If it was true, the kids didn’t care. The 1999 holiday season was an avalanche of interchangeable and forgettable characters.
Bratz: Bratz pulled off the impossible by making parents long for the days when their daughters were only getting bad advice on gender roles from Barbie. The female dolls sported big eyes, thick makeup, and clothing that could best be described as morally casual. The dolls hit it big beginning with the 2001 Christmas season and sold more than 125 million units in their first give years. The franchise has since spawned a TV series and a movie.
Tamagotchi: Tacky, tiny, and seemingly everywhere in the late 1990s, these keychain-size games required users to keep “feeding” an electronic pet unless they wanted to let it “die.” By 2008, more than 70 million (!) of these things had been sold, and chances are most kids found one in their stocking when the craze was in full swing a few years ago. Now, though, we’ve all moved on to the latest attention-sucking gadget: cell phones.
Pet rocks: The Me Decade gave us bad shirts, Watergate, and pet rocks; it’s still debatable which of those was the worst. Pet rocks were meant to be a gag, created in 1975 by California ad exec Gary Dahl as a jokey response to everyone who ever complained about the difficulties of training and caring for an actual animal. But, this being the ’70s, the fad took off in a real way, as everyone clamored to have the hip and ironic pet rocks for Christmas that year. Sales peaked that season and then mercifully dropped off. If you spent the $3.95 (about $15 today) on one, congrats: you have a rock in a box. If you missed out, well, there’s always eBay.

9 Obscure Holidays in December (Besides Christmas)

Mickey Yarber — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:00:39 +0000

There are obscure holidays, and then there are really obscure holidays. I used to think Canadian Boxing Day and Three Kings’ Day were weird; in reality, there are so many holidays stuffed into our calendar that you could spend the whole year observing them and still miss a few. Here are a few of my favorite upcoming weird holidays.

December 5: Bathtub Party Day
The online herbalists at wellcat.com copyrighted this holiday in order, I have to assume, to inspire people to buy essential oils and fancy salts to add to their bathwater. I’m not sure what their definition of “party” is, but the way I see it, there’s a 50% chance that Bathtub Party Day is the only holiday on our calendar which advocates having multiple, simultaneous sex partners. (Speaking of bathtubs, December 5 is also repeal day, which celebrates the end of Prohibition and the need to create bathtub gin.)

December 6: St. Nicholas Day
This is weird on two counts: not only does St. Nick have his own day, but it’s also not December 25, the day we normally associate with this most roly-poly of saints. Also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker, he was a Greek bishop whose reputation for selfless gift-giving made him the inspiration for Santa Claus. For his work helping the poor, he’s also the patron saint of pawnbrokers (for those of you who didn’t realize that pawnbrokers needed divine intercession).

December 7: National Cotton Candy Day
Invented in 1897 and originally marketed as “fairy floss,” cotton candy first became popular at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. It was officially renamed in the 1920s.

December 8: Take it in the Ear Day
I have no idea what this day means, who invented it, or what I’m supposed to do to celebrate. (Or what, exactly, I am meant to be taking into my ear.) There is, however, a nifty tee-shirt you can buy commemorating the event, which makes me suspect that perhaps tee-shirt designers are the ones behind TIITE day.

December 12: Poinsettia Day
Poinsettias have long been associated with the holiday season, but that’s not the reason behind this day. It was created by an act of Congress in 1851 in honor of Joel Roberts Poinsett, a United States ambassador to Mexico, who first brought the plants back from our neighbor to the south. He died on December 12, 1851.

December 21: Forefathers’ Day
If you know your historical dates, you’ll know that December 21, 1620 was the day the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. First celebrated in 1769 in honor of the pilgrims, this was an ill-fated holiday that eventually fell into obscurity in favor of Thanksgiving. (Do we really need to get excited about the pilgrims more than once a year?)

December 21: National Flashlight Day
This sounds like just another random holiday until you realize that December 21 is also the Winter Solstice — the darkest and shortest day of the year. As long as you’re celebrating, here’s some fun flashlight trivia: it was invented in 1898 by Joshua Lionel Cowan, who also invented the Lionel train.

December 23: Festivus (for the rest of us)
Seinfeld fans, of which there are many, will get it right away. Created by staff writer Daniel O’Keefe, it refers to a fake holiday made up by his father Dan in 1966 to celebrate his first date with his future wife.

The holiday includes novel practices such as the “Airing of Grievances”, in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the “Feats of Strength” are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode. The original holiday featured far more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O’Keefe’s book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O’Keefe family, and how O’Keefe amended or replaced details of his father’s invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

December 29: Pepper Pot Day
This real, actual holiday commemorates a thick, spicy soup that was created to feed the Continental Army during the fantastically harsh winter of 1777-78. George Washington’s chef combined scraps of tripe, small bits of meat and some peppercorn with spices to create “the soup that won the war.”

By Ransom Riggs at mentalfloss.com

Happy Thanksgiving

Mickey Yarber — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:10:37 +0000

Johnny Cash Sings Thanksgiving On Dr. Quinn

Mickey Yarber — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:00:10 +0000

A Brief History of Black Friday

Mickey Yarber — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:30:03 +0000

Forget Thanksgiving turkey, fellowship, and football; for a lot of shoppers, Black Friday is the week’s truly notable holiday. The unofficial start of the holiday shopping season is often referred to as the busiest shopping day of the year, but where did this tradition start and just how big is it? Here are the answers to a few frequently asked questions about Black Friday. Hopefully they’ll give you some good talking points as you line up outside Best Buy at 4 a.m. on Friday.

How did Black Friday became such a big shopping day?

It’s hard to say when the day after Thanksgiving turned into a retail behemoth, but it probably dates back to the late 19th century. At that time, store-sponsored Thanksgiving parades were common, and once Santa Claus showed up at the end of the parade, the holiday shopping season had officially started.

In those days, most retailers adhered to an unwritten rule that holiday shopping season didn’t start until after Thanksgiving, so no stores would advertise holiday sales or aggressively court customers until the Friday immediately following the holiday. Thus, when the floodgates opened that Friday, it became a huge deal.

So retailers were always hoping for an early Thanksgiving?

You bet. They weren’t just hoping, though; they were being proactive about it. In 1939, the Retail Dry Goods Association warned Franklin Roosevelt that if the holiday season wouldn’t begin until after Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the traditional final Thursday in November, retail sales would go in the tank.
Ever the iconoclast, Roosevelt saw an easy solution to this problem: he moved Thanksgiving up by a week. Instead of celebrating the holiday on its traditional day—November 30th that year—Roosevelt declared the next-to-last Thursday in November to be the new Thanksgiving, instantly tacking an extra week onto the shopping season.

Brilliant! How did that work out?

Not so well. Roosevelt didn’t make the announcement until late October, and by then most Americans had already made their holiday travel plans. Many rebelled and continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on its “real” date while derisively referring to the impostor holiday as “Franksgiving.” State governments didn’t know which Thanksgiving to observe, so some of them took both days off. In short, it was a bit of a mess.

By 1941, though, the furor had died down, and Congress passed a law that made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November regardless of how it affected the shopping day that would become known as Black Friday. [Image credit: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.]

Why call it Black Friday?

If you ask most people why the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, they’ll explain that the name stems from retailers using the day’s huge receipts as their opportunity to “get in the black” and become profitable for the year. The first recorded uses of the term “Black Friday” are a bit less rosy, though.

According to researchers, the name “Black Friday” dates back to Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. The Friday in question is nestled snugly between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy football game that’s played in Philadelphia on the following Saturday, so the City of Brotherly Love was always bustling with activity on that day. All of the people were great for retailers, but they were a huge pain for police officers, cab drivers, and anyone who had to negotiate the city’s streets. They started referring to the annual day of commercial bedlam as “Black Friday” to reflect how irritating it was.

So where did the whole “get in the black” story originate?

Apparently storeowners didn’t love having their biggest shopping day saddled with such a negative moniker, so in the early 1980s someone began floating the accounting angle to put a more positive spin on the big day.

Do retailers really need Black Friday to turn an annual profit?

Major retailers don’t; they’re generally profitable—or at least striving for profitability—throughout the entire year. (A company that turned losses for three quarters out of every fiscal year wouldn’t be a big hit with investors.) Some smaller outlets may parlay big holiday season sales into annual profits, though.

Is Black Friday really the biggest shopping day of the year?

It’s certainly the day of the year in which you’re most likely to be punched while grabbing for the latest Elmo doll, but it might not be the busiest day in terms of gross receipts. According to Snopes.com, Black Friday is generally one of the top six or seven days of the year for stores, but it’s the days immediately before Christmas when procrastinators finally get shopping that stores make the serious loot. Black Friday may, however, be the busiest day of the year in terms of customer traffic.

Snopes’ data shows the ten-year span from 1993 to 2002, and in that interval Black Friday was never higher than fourth on the list of the year’s busiest shopping days by sales volume. In 2003 and 2005 Black Friday did climb to the top of the pile for sales revenue days, but it still gets stiff competition from the week leading up to Christmas, particularly the Saturday right before the big day.

But Black Friday tells us how the holiday season will shake out, right?

Again, not necessarily. According to a 2007 Time story, even if Black Friday goes swimmingly for retailers, it doesn’t really tell analysts much about how the holiday season will look. The National Retail Federation told the magazine that since the bulk of holiday shopping still occurs in the week leading up to Christmas, those days are far more important for retailers’ bottom lines than Black Friday is. That week coupled with the steep discounts most retailers start offering on the day after Christmas end up determining how well the holiday season goes for retailers.

What’s the story on Cyber Monday?

It’s obviously a bit tough for online retailers to cash in on the retail bonanza that their brick-and-mortar counterparts enjoy on Black Friday; you can’t really have a doorbuster sale when you don’t have any doors to bust. In 2005, though, Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, started promoting the Monday immediately following Black Friday as “Cyber Monday,” Black Friday’s tech-savvy cousin for online retailers.

So is Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day of the year?

Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday probably isn’t quite the e-commerce boom that you’d expect. According to Snopes, the first few years of Cyber Monday looked a lot like Black Friday. Sales were certainly higher than normal, but the biggest e-commerce days were still usually a couple of weeks before Christmas. Basically, online shopping’s big days are governed by the same keep-putting-it-off impulse that shapes traditional retail’s best revenue days, only the online jackpots come a little earlier as procrastinators have to allow for shipping time.

By: Ethan Trex at mentalfloss.com

15 Black Friday Myths

Mickey Yarber — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:00:44 +0000

MYTH: Black Friday sales begin on, well, Black Friday
Most major retail chains will have their Black Friday sales online on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, when you’d expect people to be busy traveling to relatives’ houses and stuffing themselves with turkey. In fact, in years past, we’ve seen some deals sell out before Black Friday. dealnews’ #1 Black Friday tip is to begin shopping online on Thursday, as early as possible.
MYTH: Doorbusters are free
Whaaa? Believe it or not, many people believe that Black Friday is a day to score freebies. This myth may be what lures people to sleep overnight outside a store, but most doorbusters are just low-priced items meant to create frenzy. If you find a free TV on Black Friday, please send us a photo of it alongside your pet unicorn.
MYTH: The deals are so good on Black Friday, they’re worth sleeping overnight on a curb for
These days, more and more Black Friday deals are available online as well as in-store. Couple that with the fact that many Black Friday doorbusters are either matched or beaten later in the season, and you can only conclude that it’s not worth camping out for Black Friday specials. At most stores, being first in line to go in at 5 am only guarantees that you’ll get shoved around as the 500 people behind you are also let in.
MYTH: Nobody will match Black Friday prices
That’s just not true. In a few weeks, we’ll put out our list of stores that offer price matching on Black Friday. (See last year’s list.) Moreover, major online retailers like Amazon.com will have Black Friday sales too. In fact, in 2009, Amazon matched the best Black Friday prices at Walmart. And Best Buy. And newegg. And Staples. And Office Depot. And Apple. And Target. The list goes on.
MYTH: Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year
The Saturday before December 25 is actually the busiest shopping day of the year.
MYTH: Prices on Black Friday are the lowest you’ll see all year
Many Black Friday deals are matched or beaten later in the season. It’s a buyer’s market, and prices aren’t going up. If a deal doesn’t make you swoon, wait for a better deal later. Also, in their Black Friday ads, retailers often mix in their everyday prices with their steeper discounts, hoping that a shopper will bite on a high-profit item.
MYTH: Black Friday prices are always sale prices
Not only are some deals matched later on, some prices were better before Black Friday. In the past several years, retailers have been caught red-handed jacking up prices before Black Friday, then lowering them with supposed discounts that leave the price higher than it was before. It helps to know what things cost now to make sure you’re getting a bargain down the road. When applicable, peel back price stickers to see what the original price really was.
MYTH: If you have buyer’s remorse, you can always just return your purchases
Not so fast! Stores have tightened their return policies considerably, making it harder to return items. Some will only give you store credit even if you have a receipt, not give you back the cash value or credit your card. Some stores are now even keeping track of serial returners and banning them. If you don’t remember to ask for a gift receipt for each item, your recipient may be unhappy too, because they’ll likely only be offered store credit for only a limited portion of the return. Bah humbug!
MYTH: Signing up for a store credit card to get an extra discount is a no-brainer
If it’s really that good for you, do you think they’d try to up-sell you so hard? There’s a reason why most people decline these offers, not the least of which is the fact that retailers dangle such offers to get you to overspend. Also, opening new lines of credit can affect your credit score, so you have to consider how long you’ll keep the card, will you pay it off each month, and will it harm you the next time you need a mortgage, car loan, or other form of credit in the near future.
MYTH: All of the good deals are in the Black Friday ads
On Thanksgiving Day, retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have historically advertised additional Black Friday deals that weren’t in their circulars. These “secret” deals will only be found online (e.g., at BestBuy.com), so the trick is to uncover them on the Web on Thursday so you’ll know about them when you get to the store on Friday.
MYTH: Leaked Black Friday ads are accurate
In fact, they are often inaccurate. See last year’s leaked OfficeMax flyer. It was 100% inaccurate. This year has already had its first failure, as two conflicting Harbor Freight ads have been released (hopefully one of those is right).
MYTH: You have go to an Apple Store in person for its Black Friday Sale
In reality, all of Apple’s Black Friday sale prices will be available at the Apple Store Online, with free shipping site-wide. However, consumers looking for the season’s best deals on Apple products should also check Apple resellers like MacConnection, Amazon, and MacMall, which undercut Apple’s Black Friday prices last year and may offer a sales tax advantage.
MYTH: Black Friday is the best day to buy a new TV
For the last three years, the best time to buy a good TV wasn’t on Black Friday; it was either in December (2007 & 2008) or January (2009). The rule is that Black Friday is the best time of the year to buy no-name TVs, and the weeks following are the best time to buy high-end TVs.
MYTH: If you are buying big-ticket electronics, you should protect them with extended warranties
Not necessarily. Retailers lower prices, then need add-ons to recoup profit. Don’t be talked into buying a long, pricey warranty if you know a one-or two-year plan will do the trick. It’s cheaper to buy a techie friend dinner in exchange for help than paying for in-home setup.
MYTH: You can get free shipping coupons codes for anything
If only that were true. Free Shipping Day this year is December 17, and has hundreds of participating merchants, but doesn’t nearly encompass all of them. You can look around on the Web every day for coupon codes, and wait for a free shipping offer for the store you want, but you won’t get it for everything.

Weird Wednesday: Weird Thanksgiving Facts

Mickey Yarber — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:00:43 +0000

Now those of us who celebrate Thanksgiving often only see it at its face value – a great excuse to eat plenty of food and to appreciate everything that we have. But there is much more to this crazy holiday and the stories and history behind it are definitely worth remembering. Here are some interesting facts about this traditional holiday that you might not know.

Link

The First Thanksgiving was only eaten with Spoons and Knives

Forks are something that most people take for granted but imagine eating your turkey with a spoon instead of a fork this year. The reason for the fork being absent was because it was not brought by the pilgrims in 1620. It was introduced ten years later by Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts but it was not brought into popular use until the 18th century.

Thanksgiving is not only celebrated in the United States

For those of you who don’t know, the Canadians also celebrate their own form of Thanksgiving. They however celebrate it on the second Monday of October. Throughout their history the Canadians have been known to celebrate days of thanks but it was after the American Revolution, when Americans who were still loyal to Britain moved to Canada. They brought their traditions of Thanksgiving with them and the Canadians began celebrating Thanksgiving as an end to the Harvest. And they Canadians actually refer to our Thanksgiving as “Yanksgiving” in order to differentiate it from their own Thanksgiving.

It is a Presidential Tradition to pardon one turkey each year

President Truman started this tradition in 1947. He handpicked a turkey and then sent it off to live the rest of its days at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia. It has become tradition that two turkeys be pardoned (in case the first turkey become unavailable). The people of the United States actually get to vote on the name of the turkey. This year President Obama pardoned a turkey named Courage and had it sent to Disneyland.

Benjamin Franklin wanted the Turkey to be the national bird of the United States

Luckily for those of us who prefer the Eagle, Thomas Jefferson was opposed to this idea and fought Benjamin Franklin on it. It has been rumored that Benjamin Franklin named the male Turkey “Tom” in retaliation. Franklin’s reasoning was that the turkey has a much greater significance to the American people (being the main food source for the Pilgrims) and he claimed that the Eagle had “bad moral character.”

The best way to check if a Cranberry is ripe is to bounce it

If you want to know if a cranberry is ripe then all you need to do it throw it at the ground and measure how high it bounces. As long as it bounces higher than four inches it is ready to be picked. Who knew that is what it takes to make the perfect cranberry sauce for your Thanksgiving. The cranberry is actually one of only three fruits that are native to North America and it is served at 94% of Thanksgiving dinners.

Thanksgiving has not always been the fourth Thursday of November

It was Abraham Lincoln that slated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thanksgiving of November. In 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up a week in the hope that it would move up the Christmas shopping season and be fruitful to retailers. The move was proven to be very unpopular and it was changed back two years later.

Thanksgiving brought about the creation of T.V. Dinners

Part of the reason that Swanson started creating T.V. Dinners in 1953 was because they needed to find something to do with 260 tons of frozen turkeys that were left over from Thanksgiving. Talk about a lot of Turkey dinners!

Think you have it rough imagine feeding 140 people for 3 days!

The first thanksgiving was comprised of the surviving 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians. This was definitely an endeavor because there were only 5 surviving women. Just imagine the amount of food that would involve and cooking trying to keep that many men well-fed for three straight days.

Turkeys in Space

Turkeys as food have become such an important staple and comfort food of Americans that Turkey has even been served in space. The first meal in space was a Turkey dinner and Thanksgiving has been celebrated on a number of space shuttles including the Columbia and the Mir.

Americans eat the weight of Singapore in Turkey every Thanksgiving

According to a study done by the National Turkey Association Americans ate 690 million pounds of turkey during Thanksgiving 2007. That is equal to the weight of the entire population of Singapore. If that isn’t enough to make you feel stuffed then nothing will.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Link

Just remember that despite its crazy history and some of it’s strange traditions, Thanksgiving is all about family and being thankful. After all when the pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving they were just happy to be alive (over half of them died before the first Thanksgiving) and most of us have much more than that to be thankful for this year.

By Stephanie Schoppert at Weirdworm.com