Were the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to proceed as planned this summer, Team USA would have boasted a truly world-famous member. A deal inked in February officially announced Team USA’s Global Ambassador for Inclusivity–“an iconic symbol for equal opportunity, fair play and global harmony.” And who was this vaunted dignitary? Hello Kitty. Alas, the mouthless white…
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is a busy man these days. In the last week or so, he’s thrown his weight behind numerous initiatives to help his home state, including SBA loans, food distribution and the procurement of a COVID-19 testing machine. But another of Portman’s maneuverings affects people across the entire nation. That’s because Ohio…
In 1930, residents of Havana gazed upwards and for the first time saw something other than the withering tropical sun. They saw a sculpture of a fruit bat. It was massive, cast in bronze and sitting atop the city’s first skyscraper built by the Bacardi Corp. The structure was a 12-story colossus of red granite…
If you’re enjoying the soft feeling of your jeans or shirt against your skin at the moment, the odds are good that you owe a debt of gratitude to a woman named Audrey Gaiser. She wasn’t an inventor or an executive or a marketer, but something better than all three: She was an inspiration. In…
On a recent winter afternoon, Tom Nelson looks over the display of luggage at Zero Halliburton’s flagship store in Manhattan. There’s nothing flashy about the place or its cases, which rest atop spindly black-metal stands below the trained gaze of spotlights. But the one thing that truly stands out is the silvery sheen of aluminum…
Well into the second half of Rear Window, Paramount’s 1954 classic directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Lisa Fremont (played by Grace Kelly) and photographer L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) are mulling through the evidence that their neighbor Lars Thorwald has murdered his wife. A key indicator: Mrs. Thorwald has vanished from the apartment across the way–leaving behind…
Exactly six years ago, as football fans were gearing up for Super Bowl XLVIII, a minor crisis erupted in the shopping aisles of America. It began as a rumor, a suspected hoax, until Kraft Foods took to Facebook to confirm the worst in a Jan. 9 post: “As you have likely seen or heard by…
In 1977, The Rockford Files on NBC was entering its fourth season. Playing the dashing but down-on-his-luck private eye Jim Rockford was veteran Hollywood actor James Garner. The gig made the handsomely weathered Garner one of the most recognized men on the tube. So when Polaroid hired him to pitch its latest product, Americans sat…
If the annals of branding prove one maxim over and over, it’s this: The best ideas often hit when you least expect. Case in point: the kitchen of a Kansas City, Mo., adman named Bob Bernstein. It was sometime in 1975. His agency, Bernstein-Rein, was sitting on a prestigious regional account for McDonald’s, which had…
Two decades ago, toy inventor Ron Dubren heard giggles coming from a playground. It was a bunch of kids tickling one other. Inspired, Dubren created Tickles the Chimp. Tickles didn’t make it very far, but after Tyco Preschool combined Dubren’s invention with a Sesame Street licensing deal, the toy became Tickle Me Elmo–so popular that…
When Prohibition became the law of the land in 1919, the near-immediate effect (apart from taking everyone’s favorite libations away) was economic disaster. Across the country, countless companies went out of business: breweries, restaurants and taverns closed their doors. Truckers who hauled beer lost their routes. Even barrel makers laid down their mallets. Economists estimated…
On Friday, Nov. 28, 1924, The New York Times carried an item on page 15 about Santa Claus making an early seasonal appearance: “With a retinue of clowns, freaks, animals and floats, the bewhiskered man in red … arrived at 9 o’clock yesterday morning.” The story, measuring just a few column inches, was a throwaway….
A kid plays on a swing, contemplating his afternoon snack. His co-star, an animated character in Nutter Butter’s 1973 television commercial, is the spitting image of Willy Wonka, the beloved Gene Wilder version, though some viewers have noticed touches of Uncle Sam. With an earworm jingle and a breezy backdrop, the spot serves a memorable…
Ghosts and goblins don’t scare the leaders of the Smarties Candy Co. In fact, the trio of execs who run the family-owned business embrace all things Halloween–a holiday they spend at least nine months prepping for and during which they sell millions of the iconic pill-sized, fruit-flavored candies. “It’s our Super Bowl,” said Liz Dee,…
An admitted beginner in Etch A Sketch artwork until a few years ago, Arlene Biran created a respectable-looking Labrador retriever on the iconic drawing toy during a recent phone interview. “If you practice, you will get better,” she said. “And it makes you feel proud when you’ve finished.” Biran, vp, marketing and global business lead…
A rare bit of agreement echoed through the fickle world of fashion in the past year. It began when Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) announced: “Boat shoes are back.” Next came Esquire: “Yep, boat shoes are cool again.” Newcomers such as the website Valet piped in: “The classic preppy shoe has returned.” Paul Sperry (1) came up…
If you had lived in New York City three decades ago and spent some time in Central Park, you might have chanced upon a slender, bookish-looking man named Naoto Ohshima. And if you had perchance run into him, you’d have influenced the course of video-game history. It was 1990. Ohshima, an artist for Sega, had…
American distillers are known for protecting secret recipes and ingredients, but few guardians match the commitment of one Jimmy Russell. The Wild Turkey distillery in Lawrenceburg, Ky., where Russell has overseen the stills for 65 years, has used the same yeast strain since the 1950s. At some point, the thought occurred to Russell that were…
The internet, as most of us know by now, tends to blow up over ridiculous things. This is why, in March 2017, the web was abuzz not with actual news like the impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-hye or the landslide in Addis Ababa, but with the tattoos of Ed Sheeran. Specifically, the Heinz…
Most people would be thrilled to live in a city as hip and sophisticated as San Francisco. But Natalie Kueneman, web developer by trade, remembers how tough things were for her there. The problem wasn’t that there was no arts or tech scene; it was that Kueneman couldn’t find Tab cola for sale anywhere in…
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