Back to School with Gabe Henry

Who will you be this year? No matter your age, it’s likely that your body remembers the school calendar, and with the blooming aisles of binders and pencils and backpacks, it’s easy to feel like a nervous, hopeful kid waiting for that first day back in class. For this episode, Antiquated Education Correspondent Gabe Henry tells Sarah about the history of the shopping season known as Back to School, from the Depression-era department store promotions and the original mascots, to the development of trendy clothes, lunch boxes, and notebooks, and into the memorable commercials and new gadgets of the 1980s and 90s. Together they discuss the commercialization of ritual and what the promises of Back to School shopping taught us about the reinvention of the self. Digressions include the Nickelodeon blimp, Fred Meyer Jewelers, and the Ann Getty baby craze. More Gabe Henry: http://www.gabehenry.com Get Gabe's book "Enough is Enuf: Our Failed attempts to Make English Easier to Spell" @gabe.henryy on Instagram Produced + edited by ⁠⁠Miranda Zickler: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.linktr.ee/mirandatheswampmonster More You're Wrong About: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Bonus Episodes on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Buy cute merch⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YWA on Instagram⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  If you want to seduce me, don't just yell at me that I need to be seduced, you know, give me some free stuff.

• 0:17Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You're Wrong About the Podcast, where much as we regret to speak of it, it is back to school season. And with us today is Gabe Henry. Gabe, how are you doing in this season when all the Target entrances smell like crayon wax?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  I'm doing okay. I mean, for the, for me, this time of year is bittersweet because, I mean, I love summer, but I really love fall. I mean, like, I'm a sucker for, you know, apple picking and the, all the pumpkin shtick and-

• 0:47Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, those apples won't pick themselves. I mean, they will eventually, but then it's harder to eat them.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  But, I mean, this time of year, even though I haven't been in school in a long time, this time of year still brings back these old feelings of being a kid and starting school again in the end of summer vacation and knowing I'll be going back to a life of homework contests and all that old sense of dread. I mean, it's amazing how your body remembers the school calendar.

• 1:14Sarah Marshall?

  Yes. I associate it with like a feeling of like both great dread and also great sort of anticipation of like, this is really going to be the year that I get it together.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, similar to New Year's Eve, there's that sense of dread, maybe a sense of like, a little regret. Any kind of new year turning over gives you a little bit of hope, a little bit of dread. But I think with back to school, there's a sense of, I can really start a new identity this year because I haven't seen these people in a few months and I can get a whole new wardrobe.

• 1:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, you could have that summer transformation.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I actually remember being a kid and browsing the shelves in some pharmacy and, and looking at the binders and, and thinking, should I be a red binder guy this year? Or should I be a blue binder guy again? I mean, what does this binder say about me?

• 2:08Sarah Marshall?

  What did you go with?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I wish I remembered. I do remember clearly picking out the pencil case that zips all the way around and being very proud of that choice.

• 2:16Sarah Marshall?

  Well, blue is really timeless and classic, you know, and, but yeah, these things are important. Yeah, school supplies being like such a fraught thing too, right? Where it was like a way of defining yourself that was also dependent on your parents' ability and willingness to spend money on them or to attempt to get something trendy and therefore probably annoying.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, if you get the knockoff Lisa Frank folders, what are people going to think?

• 2:44Sarah Marshall?

  God, I miss Lisa Frank. Lisa Frank was like an acid trip.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Baby's first acid trip.

• 2:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. It's like, just like all these little cultural artifacts and remnants are just so, like, does Kenzie know about and gettys? Do they know that at a certain time, the like, woman who was going to be okay would potentially have a big coffee table book of newborn babies arranged in giant conch shells and surrounded by flowers and stuff? There was just like, sleeping, I feel like, you know?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  I'm going to go out on a limb and say, no, they don't know what you're talking about.

• 3:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. You would like, for example, you would get three sleeping little babies and you would

• 3:31Sarah Marshall?

  dress them up as peas and put them in pea pods. Or you would put a little, little hat on a little baby to make it look like a stamen and put it, put the baby inside a giant fake poppy. And this was like, I can't, these were huge. And they, and let me say something else that is going to surprise you if you don't know what I'm talking about. They weren't considered tacky. These were, I feel like these were considered to be, maybe not like, you know, art or anything, but like a very normal, middlebrow, nice, normal lady thing

• 4:07Sarah Marshall?

  to have. We were like, ah, babies inside flowers. I don't know. That, that's neither here nor there. Just to say that culture changes a lot and has these surprising little wrinkles that, you know, then time marches on and you don't hear a lot of references to. And I feel like, I guess, that's kind of your beat over here. And you're going to tell us today about back to school season and like how and when we started doing this, because it does feel, the more we're talking about it, like a very ritualistic, almost Wicker Man-esque kind of a period when I imagine also, if you're a company, you're going to be depending on making a lot of money. And so we have to also reinforce this

• 4:48Sarah Marshall?

  idea of like, this like massively important ceremony that you must go through.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Right. It is such a familiar ritual. I think we take it for granted. I mean, it feels like it's just part of the seasons now. Anyone who grew up with it, it's like the leaves are changing, birds are flying south, Target puts out composition notebooks. It's just what happens.

• 5:10Sarah Marshall?

  Right. They put them out way too early. They're out in late July.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:13Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. It's like a very integral part of like the seasons of American life, I would say.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's a very abrupt transition, I would say, for a kid.

• 5:21Sarah Marshall?

  Yes. Cause it's summer weather.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. One day it's sunscreen and pool noodles. The next day it's like, summer's over, kid.

• 5:28Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Buy a pen.

• 5:29Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and also, and also because of climate change, you know, I mean, I, do you remember kind of the sense memory of like wearing clothes that are a little too warm, but you've bought all of your back to school clothes and you're like, I am wearing these. And then you're like, it is too warm. Oh no. Does that happen to me?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I think that, that window of late summer, early fall, when you misclothe yourself.

• 5:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  When you accidentally wear something too warm or too cold, it's get, that window seems to be getting bigger and bigger for me. Now it feels like six to eight weeks of not knowing how to dress.

• 6:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, last year in Portland, I was still growing tomatoes until Halloween, you know? But then it's like, the, the, the too warmness of the clothes is just part of it because it would be abrupt, kind of, no matter what you did. But it, yeah, it's like suddenly fall begins not as a season, but as a state of mind. And you've been on our spelling beat before, but now we're kind of transitioning, I think via spelling matches to like, the weird American pastime beat a little bit.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was trying to figure out what my beat is in regards to You're Wrong About. And I think it's just anything I found boring in high school. So there's dictionaries and spelling and back to school. And we're recording this late summer. You know, if you walk into a Target, you're going to see glue sticks. If you walk into a Gap, you're going to see back to school styles. It really feels like this natural transition we're going through. But the origins of back to school shopping are pretty, they're actually pretty artificial. I mean, basically it was created as kind of this marketing gimmick during the Great Depression. Department stores were struggling. They needed a way to manufacture seasonal

• 7:15Speaker 01

  hype. And basically what they were trying to do was create a second Christmas and push it into September.

• 7:23Sarah Marshall?

  Well, that feels about right.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And, I mean, before this, before the depression, there was plenty of late summer school shopping, but most of it was as needed. You know, if you needed new pens, you bought new pens. If your shoes were falling apart, you bought new shoes. But it didn't necessitate a shopping spree. It was not this unified, commercial shopping season until department stores really packaged it that way and sold it to us. I mean, it's kind of a hallmark holiday in that sense.

• 7:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And one of the things this reminds me of is like the convention of the diamond ring, you know, is the engagement ring is obligatory, which seems organic, but was in a similar way created by capitalism generally and De Beers specifically, based on the problem of what do we do with all these goddamn diamonds? And the answer is to inflate their value by associating them with a rite of passage in somebody's life.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Right. An anniversary, Valentine's.

• 8:18Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, right. Cause then you, you start with a diamond engagement ring and then you attach diamonds to like more and more milestones in your life, especially in your marriage. And in this case, you have, yeah, similar to Christmas, like a sales event and a marketing event that happens every single year and that you can, you know, fold into your expectations for the amount of money you need to make, I assume.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Right. It's created by businesses. It's pushed by businesses. I mean, basically how it started was, so the depression hits in 1929, millions of Americans lose their jobs, retail goes to shit, and department stores have to start getting inventive. So they come up with promotions like economy days. And this is when all the prices in the store would drop just for one day. They opened up bargain basements, which is when they would shove all their surplus stock and damaged goods into their basements and sell them at heavily discounted prices.

• 9:14Sarah Marshall?

  So that's how Filene's basement was brought into the world.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  I believe so.

• 9:18Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  And department stores, they would hold knitting competitions. They would hold publicity stunts. I mean, all to get people in the door during a time when consumerism was down, the economy was down. One thing I found really funny is that Gimbel's, the department store in New York City.

• 9:36Sarah Marshall?

  Featured an elf, right?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yes. They try out this marketing tactic called Gimbel's Tells the Whole Truth, in which they deliberately advertise the flaws in their products so that consumers will, I mean theoretically, trust them more. So here's a Gimbel's ad from 1933.

• 9:53Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Sale, North Star and Chatham blankets, $7.96 each. Salesmen and buyers have handled them a lot, so you'll find them slightly must or soiled. Very fine wool, satin bound, green, orchid, blue or beige. Sorry, no mail or phone orders. Truthfully, they are slightly soiled.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  And they end it with an exclamation point.

• 10:20Sarah Marshall?

  God, I, truthfully, they are slightly soiled. I would die for, you know, one of those millions of retailers with an Amazon storefront to say, truthfully, they are slightly soiled. You know, it's like, just tell me, if you tell me, then I can feel like I'm in cahoots with you to buy this blanket, which is a very different experience.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Here's another ad for sandals.

• 10:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, please.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Sun Sing Sandals, 98 cents. They have leather soles and covered Cuban heels. Frankly, they are not made for hardware, but if they do last only a few weeks, you can afford another pair.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Isn't there a part of Miracle on 34th Street where the Macy's Santa Claus tells people, you know, you can't get that here, but if you go to Gimbels, it's a similar thing.

• 11:07Sarah Marshall?

  Yes. And this thing of, right, that it being so unexpected for you to admit to having flaws as a company, that it will cause people to trust you, which of course can also be used cynically, but like, God, there's nothing like the phrase, truthfully, they are slightly soiled, exclamation point. I also want to backtrack to what you said about department stores holding knitting competitions to try and entice people. And you just point out that, you know, we're living in an age of companies closing a bunch of stores and

• 11:41Sarah Marshall?

  blaming large scale shoplifting, which, okay, I, I don't believe it. I don't believe that they believe it, but that's what they're saying. And also this sort of attitude on behalf of brick and, brick and mortar retailers. And also this belief on behalf of brick and mortar retailers of like, we've tried everything and people don't want to come to the store. And it's like, have, have one knitting competition, Nordstrom's?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:15Sarah Marshall?

  If you still exist, I can't remember.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I don't know what it's like in Portland, but in New York, every pharmacy, every CVS, every Walgreens, it's all locked, every item is locked up. Deodorants, the shampoos.

• 12:29Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, that's what it's like at a lot of stores. And then those stores close and they're like, everyone's shoplifting. And it's like, maybe people don't shop there anymore, Fred Meyer, because you make them feel like you regard everyone as a shoplifter and you have to track down one of your three employees if you want to buy deodorant.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Right. It's a very antagonist relationship they have with consumers. If only they would try some knitting competition.

• 12:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Maybe there would be more trust. Maybe they could unlock the deodorant and I can actually buy deodorant without having to talk to a person with a key.

• 13:04Sarah Marshall?

  If it's a speed knitting competition, then you're gonna need it, you know?

• 13:12Sarah Marshall?

  This is also, did you encounter Dish Night at the movies?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:16Sarah Marshall?

  It was like a depression thing. Let me just look this up quickly.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:21Sarah Marshall?

  Depression Dish Night. Okay, Dish Night at the Movies. We're looking at, this is the International Museum of Dinnerware Design. All right. Here's what the Dinnerware Museum website says. "We look fondly back on Dish Night as a quintessential depression era theater event. The giveaway promotions of inexpensive dinnerware were one of the most successful solutions that small town and neighborhood movie theater managers found to bring movie patrons back to empty theaters during the hard times of the Great Depression. The one free to each lady china and glassware campaigns filled movie theaters of the 1930s with as much drama, elation, desire, disappointment, and anguish as anything that was shown on their silver screens."

• 14:04Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 14:05Sarah Marshall?

  You can get a gravy boat with Ronald Coleman on it.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I'm seeing these photos. Really is incredible. Dish Night at the Movies.

• 14:13Sarah Marshall?

  People need plates. It would work. If I, please, someone give me a movie theater to distribute plates through. All right, Gabe, you have stuff to say. Thank you for tolerating that derailment.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  No, it was a good tangent and it needed to be said. People need to hear this.

• 14:31Sarah Marshall?

  It did need to be said. People, I know that they're not ready for the truth, but I can't help that.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  So, all right, well, to get back to it, basically, I mean, department stores are trying to do what movie theaters are doing at the time and everyone's trying to do in the consumer world is get people through the door, get people to pay money. So they're trying out all these gimmicks. And the most successful gimmick they come up with for department stores is these kind of artificial shopping seasons. The only major shopping season at the time is Christmas. So they basically start looking at the calendar and saying, what else can we monetize? And this is around the time that Valentine's Day expands into this massive gift giving occasion. You mentioned diamonds, but just the association of Valentine's Day and jewelry starts to become prominent around now.

• 15:19Sarah Marshall?

  What was it like before? Was it more about cards or?

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Flowers, cards. And it was, I think it was less about gift giving in general and more about a day in the calendar to spend together. It was a little bit more symbolic. Mother's Day was similar. And this is also around the time that Mother's Day becomes super commercialized. But before that, it was observed very informally. It was just a day where you tell your mother, you need to spend a day with her. You tell her what she means to you. But Mother's Day becomes so commercialized, the inventor of Mother's Day, this woman named Anna Jarvis, she completely disowns the holiday by the 1930s and she spends the rest of her life trying to sue greeting card companies.

• 16:05Sarah Marshall?

  Good for her. Just like the guy who invented K cups.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 16:10Sarah Marshall?

  Well, I don't know that he's sued anybody, but I think he's been, I should, let me just confirm this. Why do, why do I spend so much time on this show being like, I have a vague memory of this thing?

• 16:28Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. K cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod system. That's the CBC. And if you can't trust them, then honey. "I don't know why people have them in their house," K cup inventor says of his device. So it's, I think it's like that.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  It's like part of this long list of inventors that came to regret their invention.

• 16:53Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  It's kind of like Oppenheimer.

• 16:55Sarah Marshall?

  Yes. Oppenheimer, the K cup guy. I mean.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Mother's Day.

• 17:00Sarah Marshall?

  Mother's Day. These are all on a level playing field with each other. Yeah. And it, this makes me think of two things. One is that if you make Valentine's Day into a gift giving rather than a quality time holiday, and you know, I think you can make the argument that Mother's Day is similar. Although I guess there's like a big emphasis on brunch, but also brunch ain't cheap. Then you turn holidays from a reason for people to work less into a reason for people to work more. Evil.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. This day of the year that should be a stress free day, turns out being more stress, more tension. And so, I mean, this is where this big commercialism comes from, this big pressure to buy something special. And, you know, you need a diamond, you need the right kind of flowers. And this is also around the time that back to school takes off as this big blowout shopping season. So department stores start ramping up these big promotional sales for school supplies and clothing. And one of the early tactics they used to turn back to school into a shopping season is they give it a mascot.

• 18:11Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And the thinking is Christmas has Santa Claus. So back to school should also have some kind of recognizable face that children can get excited about. And so that's what some of these stores tried to do. And one of the first attempts at making a back to school mascot was by JCPenney. So in 1933, they adopt this cartoon character named Scrappy. Scrappy is this little cheery boy with a really round head and big eyes. He looks almost like he could be Betty Boop's son. And Scrappy has a dog named Yippy.

• 18:46Sarah Marshall?

  Scrappy Boop. Yeah. Scrappy and Yippy Boop.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And Scrappy has a dog named Yippy, who would also sometimes appear in ads with him, because every good mascot needs a sidekick. And JCPenney puts Scrappy everywhere in their back-to-school advertising. Newspaper ads show Scrappy cheerfully skipping off to school, and the caption would read something like, "Scrappy says, come see Penny's back-to-school values." And then underneath Scrappy, it would list all these Depression-era bargains, like, "Girls' cotton slips for 15 cents," and "Boys' fancy socks for 10 cents."

• 19:22Sarah Marshall?

  I will say that when I was a kid, and I wonder if you have memories like this, I like, I remember the feeling of being super attached to like, a mascot, or a version of a mascot. And my specific example of that is that we had, we must have like, sent away like, proof of purchase for this, but I had like, a little stuffed animal version of Snuggle, the Snuggle brand fabric softener mascot. And to this, listen, to this day, I don't buy Snuggle, but when I see it in the store, I always like, have this little moment, you know, of like, sharing a moment with Snuggle, like, hmm, you know? And then I go buy Purcell.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I wonder if people around today that were around during the Depression, look at Scrappy, and they think, "Ah, man, I wish I had those fancy socks for 10 cents again."

• 20:15Sarah Marshall?

  I hope there's still a Scrappy fandom. But did you have like, an attachment to like, I don't know, like, a mascot character like that?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think. I don't remember being attached to a mascot. I remember being attached to the iconography of Nickelodeon, which was a big blimp, a big orange blimp.

• 20:38Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah. Yep, that was a great blimp.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  I remember wanting that blimp. I mean, to this day, I think orange is my favorite color, and I think it has everything to do with a Nickelodeon childhood. And I never got one of those blimps.

• 20:50Sarah Marshall?

  And they, they had little blimps, right? There was like, the idea that you could get a blimp somehow, maybe?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, those were 100% available, and I never got one.

• 21:00Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:01Sarah Marshall?

  We gotta get you a blimp. You gotta get yourself a blimp.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get myself a blimp.

• 21:05Sarah Marshall?

  Or someone has to. Someone get this man a blimp.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna get you dishware from the movie theaters.

• 21:09Sarah Marshall?

  Ah, yes. And then we can work on our campaign to get a movie theater to also give out dishware, which would be incredible. So, but that's the longer game.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:19Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, so we have our back-to-school mascots. I was thinking for a second that somebody had attempted to make a single back-to-school character, like, "Schooly the Schoolbook" or something, you know? But this is, this is much better. I think I was picturing, like, the animated DNA strand from Jurassic Park.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I guess Scrappy is a little bit like that. Scrappy was taken from this series of cartoon shorts that I, maybe Disney made, maybe not, that were going around in the early 1930s. So, basically, JCPenney licensed that character and took them into its own brand.

• 21:55Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, nice. Like MetLife with Snoopy.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Scrappy would often have these little speech bubbles directed toward parents, which emphasized thrift and savings. You know, like, "Thrifty mothers know that Penny's is the place." And it was only, I mean, remember, it was only a few years earlier that Macy's had started holding its annual Macy's Christmas Parade, and it was a big holiday hit. So, JCPenney also starts hosting back-to-school Scrappy parades, featuring Scrappy costume contests, and they gave out prizes, and they had costume contests for the, for dogs as well, who can dress their dog up like Yippy. So, they basically wanted children to get as excited about Scrappy as they did about Santa.

• 22:37Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. I mean, that, like, that's a tall order, but I do, I don't know, I feel like what we've been talking about so far gets back to this idea of like, if you want people to like, embrace something, you have to give them something for it. Like, if you want to con us into adopting a new capitalist holiday, like, you can't just order us to do it. Like, give me a parade, give me a plate, give me something. You can't just suddenly be like, "Liberty, bipperty? Is that anything? Huh? Skibitty? Skibitty, bippity? Liberty? Should've done liberty, skibitty, coward."

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Entice me. Give me a cute animal.

• 23:14Sarah Marshall?

  Entice me.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Give me a gecko, gecko. Give me a Scrappy.

• 23:17Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. "Thrill me," to quote Tom Atkins in Night of the Creeps.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  So, it didn't quite work with Scrappy. He didn't boost sales as much as they wanted. So, a few years later, JCPenney swaps him out for Mickey Mouse.

• 23:29Sarah Marshall?

  The children of America reject Scrappy.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  It's also, that name is just pretty on the nose for Depression-era parents.

• 23:39Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, money, but everyone's being Scrappy right now, and you can too.

• 23:44Sarah Marshall?

  Although, we're, we're living in, like, around the time, or not too long after, Skippy Peanut Butter is called that. I looked this up recently, because it's named after a cartoon boy named Skippy. So, it's like, it goes the other way, too. But now, Skippy, the boy, has been lost, and his peanut butter is all that remains. But I think Skippy was a bit of a dandy. So, yeah, it's hard to know what's gonna hit. Did you know also that for a long time, canonically, and I am not kidding, Casper the Ghost was not a dead little boy. He was a ghost because both of his parents were ghosts. That's true.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I didn't know that ghosthood was genetic.

• 24:24Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  I didn't know that ghosts gave birth to ghosts.

• 24:27Sarah Marshall?

  And then, isn't that nice to know that in the, in the Casper universe, you can, you can pass on and lose your physical body, and then you have a little ghost kid?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  That is a beautiful thing.

• 24:37Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  But that means Casper never really lived, which is a sad thing.

• 24:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. All right, uh, let's, we'll return to this. Let's put a pin in the Casper discussion.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Back to Scrappy. We'll come back to Casper.

• 24:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  JCPenney scraps Scrappy. They replace him with a new cartoon animal named Mickey Mouse.

• 24:58Sarah Marshall?

  Ever heard of him?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Who was invented only a few years earlier. Mickey Mouse didn't last long either. They replaced him with Popeye, the Sailor Man. And none of these mascots quite reached Santa Claus level, obviously. And it was a high turnover rate for this job. Being a mascot for school is not a good gig, I'd say. But nevertheless, all these ads, you know, they did help forge this new American shopping tradition, and it quickly became the biggest retail season after Christmas in the mid 30s. And really, back to school, this season wouldn't have happened without two things. One was the Depression, you know, of course, which created this need for a shopping season. And the second was the department store itself, which was this relatively novel thing at the time. And I just want to take

• 25:42Speaker 01

  a step back and talk about department stores for a minute, because they do have an interesting history, and it's hard for us now to appreciate the novelty of the one-stop-shop, you know, everything under one roof.

• 25:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. I think that probably we could appreciate that novelty all over again. I'm ready. But yeah, what was that like?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  I mean, instead of going to this, this store to get pencils, and that store to get hats, and that store to buy shoes, you would go to a department store and get everything at once. And we did have outdoor markets and bazaars, which had been around for centuries. And merchants would gather, and they would sell various goods and wares. But the department store moves this concept indoors and markets it to upper classes. You know, they had chandeliers and marble staircases. And these department stores start popping up in the mid 1800s in New York, and London, and Paris. The first big one in New York is called A.T. Stewart Marble Dry Goods Palace, which opens in 1846.

• 26:45Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, Dry Goods Palace. I like that.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Then a few years later, Macy's opens up, then Lord & Taylor, and Bloomingdale's, all of them within a few blocks of each other in New York. And it starts to change the way people shop, because shopping now becomes a kind of leisure activity for the upper class. You could go to the store and spend an entire day there, just browsing and wandering. I mean, if you add a food court and move it to the suburbs, it's basically a mall. And actually, by today's standards, like, the first department stores, they were relatively small. Macy's was one floor, some were three floors, but really, five floors was about the limit for buildings at the time, because that was about as high as anyone would want to walk upstairs. Then, uh, this man named Elisha Otis comes along. He's this factory

• 27:35Speaker 01

  worker from Vermont. And in 1852, he's trying to figure out a safe way to transport heavy materials and equipment to upper floors in his factory. And the standard method at this time was basically like, a large dumbwaiter. You place the materials on a wooden platform, you use pulleys to hoist it up. But factory materials were extremely heavy, and these pulleys and ropes would snap all the time. It was very unreliable. So, Elisha Otis invents this safety brake, which means if the hoisting rope snaps, the platform doesn't fall. The ropes catch onto these metal gear teeth, and the whole contraption just automatically comes to a halt. And so, what this invention does, it not only makes it safer to hoist

• 28:17Speaker 01

  heavy equipment up and down a building, but it makes it safe now to hoist people up and down, which is basically the invention of the passenger elevator. So, Otis patents it. He founds the Otis Elevator Company, which is still around. And buildings all over New York begin installing Otis's passenger elevators, and the public is just blown away. I mean, people are riding these elevators to the tops of buildings, only to ride them back down and then back up again, like it's an amusement ride. Tourists are making special trips to New York just for the elevators. There's this one British visitor in the 1860s, he writes home to his family, "I just rode on a vertical railroad."

• 29:00Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, that would be pretty fun.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  So it totally reshapes how people think of buildings and cities and urban living. It basically allows cities to grow vertically now. Before this, cities would only grow outward horizontally, which meant they were constrained by how much land there was. But now the elevator removes that constraint. Now you can start stacking the city on top of itself and department stores are among the first buildings to take advantage of this and they become some of the world's first skyscrapers.

• 29:31Sarah Marshall?

  Wow. Yeah. So it's just the technology that sort of builds the world we live in is, it seems like sort of being created day by day, kind of stacking up, like inventions stacking onto each other to make these places possible.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Right. And so, once shoppers are comfortable riding to upper floors, retailers could stock far more merchandise, they can grow their department stores. So Macy's, by 1924, it has 20 floors and Lord & Taylor has 11. And it used to be that department stores might have one floor for women and another floor for men, but now they can have a whole floor just for women's shoes and another floor just for women's handbags and another store, another floor just for men's ties. You know, the taller these department stores grew, the more granular each department becomes.

• 30:22Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. I mean, that is like a really interesting thing about consumer goods and stuff, you know, is that it's not that we have to build spaces big enough to house the things that we need, it's that we build bigger spaces and then we need more things to fill them. And I feel like that's true both in a personal dwelling sense and in a commerce sense. You know, it's like, if you, if you build it.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  If you build it.

• 30:46Sarah Marshall?

  Ladies gloves will come.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  If you build it, we will stock and they will buy.

• 30:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, exactly. And that is like, one of the interesting things about how shopping has kind of broken down in the past 10 years. Like, one of the things that I really miss from the pre-COVID world is the 24-hour Walmart experience, you know? That was just like, we're not gonna get that back, probably. And also, and then like, on, on kind of an opposite note, because Walmart and Target are kind of like slowly merging in a very interesting way. Because Walmart used to be sort of like, Walmart was being created and recreated in front of you, but it was always there and you could always get into it and you could always sleep in the parking lot. And Target was like, this much more sedate experience where like, you would come and

• 31:35Sarah Marshall?

  all of the aisles would be like totally stocked and it would be just like, very well maintained and like a pretty relaxing experience, you know? And now it's like, it's not that it's non-relaxing or like, I don't know, it's not like it's super stressful or anything, but there's like, there's not enough people working registers, there's, you can, people are getting stressed about getting their stuff wrung up, there's people restocking stuff all the time because they've cut, you know, they cut staff and then didn't rehire. And so have this sort of like, you know, just like, cutting corners on corners on corners and just sort of like, having to maintain the illusion of the sort of constantly

• 32:17Sarah Marshall?

  available, beautifully arranged products, like, having to be showing you the backstage action all the time, which I would argue a big part of the American shopping experience is like, agreeing that you want the discount and you're gonna go into the backstage area, like the basement or whatever, and like, get the slightly soiled stuff, although we don't, we're not as upfront about that now. Or that like, you want the illusion, but now I feel like there's this sort of like crisis in American, like in-person shopping where it's like, you're paying illusion prices for backstage experience, you know? And like, look, it's not the greatest crisis facing us, but it's an interesting one.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It is interesting to see how American retail ebbs and flows through different eras, through different generations and these things that you grow up expecting or assuming to be just the regular flow of things, the regular way that things work in stores.

• 33:17Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Turns out, one tiny little global pandemic shifts everything.

• 33:24Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Or I guess that this, or you know, the decline of the department store before that and, you know, the various reasons behind it. But, but the more you're talking about it, the more it's like, right, like, the point of the department store, like, there's a lot of different things about it, but one was that it was kind of shopping theater and that people were like, playing these roles, you know, and you would have also, you know, like the cosmetics and the perfume areas and people whose job it is to sort of like, they're not just salespeople, they're like consultants and they're here to help you transform and find the tools that you need to like conquer this next phase of your life and just like, you know, this, it being like, performing a role in, in this kind of customer-facing world and that being something that doesn't exist the way that it used to.

• 34:09Sarah Marshall?

  And it being, just very interesting to think about how we created that world and then sort of gave up on it at a certain point.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  And if you think of Walmart and department stores as being theatrical, like they're putting on a show for you, then you can also think of these individual shopping seasons as just another theater show. You know, this time it's Christmas.

• 34:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Running through December 26th, come see the Christmas show. And now it's back to school, running through September 12th. And, I mean, keep in mind, during the depression, when they're experimenting with all these artificial new shopping seasons, the concept of a shopping season hadn't really been created yet. There were seasonal trends, people shopped more around Christmas, but for the most part, Americans went shopping as needed. But I think that starts to change in the late 1800s. You know, the world is becoming increasingly industrialized, everything is being mass-produced, and now you also have these new shopping centers in the sky. And this is when you start to see the, the seeds of these new hyper-commercialized shopping seasons.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Of course, it starts with, with Christmas. In 1874, Macy's installs this enormous Christmas window display with thousands of dollars worth of decorations. Apparently, most of it is porcelain dolls, just a little creepy. But then, other stores start copying Macy's, they do their own big window displays, and then these windows kind of become attractions in themselves. They're like, the opening curtain of the theater production, or, or they're, they're the theater production in itself. It's like Saks Fifth Avenue, some people go to that just to look through the glass. And then, in 1879, Edison invents the lightbulb and we start getting Christmas-like displays. Now, department stores are all about Christmas lights.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Then in the 1890s, department stores start hiring Santa Clauses, which were originally just these roving breeders that walked around in red suits, talking to children. And you can see where it's all going. So by the 1900s, Macy's and Gimbel start putting on huge Christmas parades. And so by the 1920s, the Christmas shopping season is pretty established, it's pretty much what it is today with parades and men in red suits and white beards and lines around the block. And it, of course, comes just in time for the depression. So, in the 30s, department stores are now trying to do the same thing with back-to-school and they're doing their newspaper ads, they're creating their mascots.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  And then every September, they turn entire sections of their stores into these pop-up back-to-school departments. They would stay up for a few weeks and then go away. It was kind of like, like Spirit Halloween, but for notebooks and pens.

• 36:53Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And they called these pop-ups college shops because they mostly catered to older teens and college students. And in addition to school supplies, they sold casual clothing, like sweaters and tennis shoes. And these shops, they often set up these big cardboard displays, which would feature chalkboards and pencils and writing desks and all this back-to-school iconography that we're now so used to seeing. It was basically their version of Christmas decorations. And they would entice people to college shops by offering things like free Roomba lessons and free Coca-Cola, the non-cocaine kind. I mean, it was gimmicks upon gimmicks to get people into stores.

• 37:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And again, it's like, if, if you want to seduce me, don't just yell at me that I need to be seduced, you know? Give me some free stuff.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Good cocaine.

• 37:45Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. So, or, you know, or at least a soda.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:49Sarah Marshall?

  Because it's like, I mean, do you ever like, sign up for a rewards program now, you know, and they're like, well, for every hundred thousand dollars you spend, we're gonna give you 35 cents off a welcome amenity. And you're like, well, thank God.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  I'm ashamed to say I signed up for one yesterday.

• 38:06Sarah Marshall?

  I, look, I'm signed up for all of them. I, I'm gonna, if there's, if I can get a little bit of a boost, I will, but it's, it's a little bit insulting, you know, when they're like, if you fly across the country 25 times, we'll give you a cookie.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  But you also have to sign up for text messages and email notifications.

• 38:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  So three times a day, while you're eating your cookie, the one cookie, we're going to remind you.

• 38:38Sarah Marshall?

  Wouldn't it be amazing, like, what would the 1930s version of that be? Where like you look at a jacket, you know, in an department store, you don't buy it. You maybe pick it up for a second, but then you put it back. And then every morning at nine AM, a salesperson is knocking on your door like, hello, have you, do you want to look at this jacket again? You should really buy this jacket. And you're like, no, go away. And then every morning, I mean, that's like,

• 39:04Speaker 01

  But it's 40% off if you order now.

• 39:07Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, but like, I don't know if it would be totally psycho to do it in real life. Maybe you shouldn't do it online, even as a retailer. Anyway, that's my thought. I guess I cannot, I, it's, I cannot go on in this world where like you consider buying a product and then you get an email about it every day for the rest of your life. Or where you buy a product and then they email you every day as well. And you're like, listen, I do not buy slippers every week of my life. If I bought slippers from you, then I need to hear from you in three to four years. Please don't email me until then. Okay, so we, we're being seduced. We're being seduced into having a new season of spending a lot of money on stuff. And is it working?

• 39:50Speaker 01

  It is, it gets us through the depression. It gets department stores through the depression. Then America enters World War II. The clothes in these shops start to change a bit. These college shops start to have, you know, instead of casual baggy sweaters, now it's denim overalls and blue jeans and more practical durable items. And the chalkboard displays, they start to change to women practicing Morse code and working in factories. It's very Rosie the Riveter.

• 40:19Sarah Marshall?

  Good time for denim, I guess.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  It's good time for denim. And the selling point for these clothes becomes durability rather than thrift, which is what Scrappy was selling, because materials like wool and silk and nylon, they're all being used for the war effort. There's shortages. So the buzzwords for these clothes become things like tough, sturdy, built to last.

• 40:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, which is nuanced that would, would be lost on me, I think, without you explaining that. But of course, there, there is like a difference between like depression thriftiness and wartime thriftiness, where it's like, well, I guess buy these like really cheap plastic sandals. And then when they wear out, you can get another pair. And now it's like, oh no, we're using all of that stuff. If you're going to buy something, you're going to have to use it for a long time.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:04Sarah Marshall?

  Which, you know, I realize it's not all that cut and dried, because kind of, yeah, the way that it's like, you're not just being thrifty on a household level, but you're contributing to this sort of nationwide austerity program.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Right, they're figuring out a way to make back to school shopping feel like this patriotic act. And they're also renaming back to school clothing with these patriotic names. You know, instead of pants, they're calling them victory slacks and skirts are victory skirts. It's very much freedom fries during the Iraq war.

• 41:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, although, I mean, I, I fail to see how a skirt specifically could contribute to victory, but you never know.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  You never know. And again, this works, the strategy works. Department stores survive this wartime austerity, just as they survived the depression. And it's really thanks to these shopping seasons that they're promoting. And then after the war, of course, the 50s, the American economy starts booming and jobs come back. Incomes go up and there's a massive baby boom, which means there's a lot of new toddlers running around.

• 42:07Sarah Marshall?

  And they all need clothes every 25 minutes.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now Americans actually do have money to spend. And retailers start pivoting away from basic back to school essentials like books and pens. And they start pivoting toward cool, fun, trendy products. And in the 50s, there's a cool, fun, trendy product that takes over the market. Do you want to guess what that is?

• 42:33Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my gosh, and it's like school, is it a school supply?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  It is.

• 42:37Sarah Marshall?

  Huh, okay. Is it pens?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 42:43Sarah Marshall?

  I know that ballpoint pens are relatively, but they're older than that. Okay, um.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  I'll give you a hint, this is something, it is not used in the process of doing schoolwork, but it's used in the process of a break during school.

• 42:59Sarah Marshall?

  A break, is it the hula hoop?

• 43:03Sarah Marshall?

  Is it candy cigarettes? A break during school. Okay, uh, okay, I'm going to do one more guess. I am not going to get it. Um, is it the automobile?

• 43:18Sarah Marshall?

  No, that's not it. Okay, what is it?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  It's the school lunchbox.

• 43:23Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God, yes, the lunchbox. Wow, such an important tool for self-expression.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Do you remember having a trendy school lunchbox?

• 43:32Sarah Marshall?

  Oh yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  What did you have?

• 43:34Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and we were, and I didn't, I don't remember having anything with a character on it, because I had school like lunchboxes or lunch containers in the, you know, like, early to mid 90s, when it was like soft thermal containers and like bold block colors were like the thing. Yeah, without any particular theming that I can remember. Did you have a cool lunchbox?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  I remember having a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchbox. I remember having a Captain Planet lunchbox. And then I remember outgrowing the cartoon lunchboxes really quickly. I think by maybe second grade, I was already on to like the dark blue soft vinyl lunchbox. That was very, um, dark, dark blue soft vinyl is very me.

• 44:20Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, yeah, the soft vinyl lunchboxes of the 90s. It's also very hard to commit to identifying with a character for that long.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:28Sarah Marshall?

  You know?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, that's another part of the retail genius of this idea is that you outgrow a trend every year.

• 44:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  You're into Barney when you're six, and by seven, you wouldn't be caught dead with a Barney lunchbox. So it really creates this turnover. Again, they're not selling a tin lunchbox that's designed to last you 12 years. They're designing something that, I mean, it's supposed to be obsolete as soon as you grow out of it. So the reason these are coming about in the 50s, television is pretty new. There's a lot of cross branding. And, you know, so by the 50s, kids could get a Superman lunchbox or a Roy Rogers lunchbox, or Mickey Mouse, or Snoopy. And then they realize this is such a great selling point. They start putting these characters onto notebooks and folders. That's where you get your Lisa Frank, you know, a few decades later. They even put some of these characters onto dictionaries.

• 45:20Sarah Marshall?

  Nice.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  So fun fact, I actually own one of these dictionaries. It's a Barbie Pocket Dictionary from 1959. It has this red vinyl cover with a blonde woman on the front and all these sparkles and stars around her head. And it says Barbie Dictionary at the top. I know, I'm very cool.

• 45:40Sarah Marshall?

  That is very cool.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yep. Then by the 60s, everything shifts to space themes, because, you know, Sputnik and the Apollo missions. So now lunchboxes are filled with rockets and planets. And so again, back to school is becoming less about buying necessities and more about just buying the cool new branded thing. It's no longer, I need pencils, I need notebooks, I need a ruler. Now it's, I want a Star Trek notebook and I want a Batman ruler and I want a Beatles lunchbox.

• 46:11Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  And I still do want a Beatles lunchbox, by the way, if anyone is listening.

• 46:16Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:17Sarah Marshall?

  That would be nice. I would like a Remains of the Day lunchbox. Is that the one in Waiting for Guffman?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 46:27Sarah Marshall?

  And then it's, what's also interesting is that, and I don't, I'm not being entirely negative about this, right? Because I think one of the reasons that shopping works is because it's fun and because we like to acquire objects, you know, not just because we've been duped or because it's, you know, maladjustment or greed or whatever, but because on some level, you know, on some like most basic of all level, things are fun and nice to have. And also, we understand also that we need to collect and save them as sort of a survival thing. It doesn't really serve us in a lot of the ways that we do it now. But like, I don't know, I guess I don't want to come off as against stuff. I love stuff. I'm also aware that I have too much stuff and it's controlling my life a little bit more than it should be.

• 47:11Sarah Marshall?

  And so I'm in like a passive aggressive war with my stuff, but I also want more of it. But it's, there's something like, there's like, right, it cuts both ways. Where like a lunchbox is now no longer something that's like, you know, made of tin or some like extremely, well, I guess plastic also lasts forever famously, but something that is supposed to like, Be in your family and be passed down to other siblings and then to other generations. And instead that your lunchbox gets to be something that is extremely personal to you, that you're using as a tool of your own self-expression and like might become a hand me down or something, or that, you know, might end up owned by a child or used by a child, but like, doesn't really have that intention behind it.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Right. It is chosen, it's picked by you to represent you. It represents your taste, your interests.

• 48:01Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Something maybe integral about your character. I mean, as a child where you have very little agency, this is one of the things you can have agency about, how you represent yourself to your friends via, you know, if it's cartoons or if it's just the color of a binder, you are making this choice. And next year, you, you might feel embarrassed by last year's choices, but that's kind of the...

• 48:27Sarah Marshall?

  Almost the point.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Almost the point, at least as far as, I mean, it's a great sell from retailers, that they're selling you stuff as identity rather than

• 48:37Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  something more personal.

• 48:39Sarah Marshall?

  And they're selling you yourself, like they actually have you back behind the counter and they're going to sell you back to you.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Right. And then they're going to sell a different version of you back to you. And then that'll continue until you just have, you know, 30 lunchbox hand me downs that go into a Goodwill store or dumpster. It's, I guess that's what, that's the kind of consumerism, the kind of shallow consumerism that a lot of people withdraw from when they think of holidays, when they think of, what does Christmas mean to me? What does Mother's Day mean to me? It doesn't mean the revolving door of stuff. I mean, to some people it does, but I mean, when you get down to it, the Christmasification of back to school is about quick retail. Or what do they call it? Fast, fast?

• 49:26Sarah Marshall?

  Fast fashion.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Fast fashion. That's exactly it. So that's what starts happening in the 60s.

• 49:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Where your body is a brief middle ground between an object's manufacture and its long tenure in a Chilean desert or whatever.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  And that's what, yeah, that's what starts happening in the, in the 60s, when back to school shopping becomes less about necessity, more about desire, want and identity. And then in the 70s, that's when we get malls and the suburbs are expanding and malls are becoming these fixtures of suburban life. And the mall is, it's a counterpart to the department store, but it's different in a bunch of ways, like namely it skews a bit younger. It's also more of a social space. You can walk around with your friends. You can browse stores. Teens can feel more independent there. You know, it's no longer, I'm going to the store with mom to buy pencils. Now it's, I'm going to the mall with my friends to look at clothes and try on shoes and talk about boys and maybe eat a soft pretzel.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  So more and more back to school shopping becomes about teen styles and teen fashion and teenager independence in the 70s. Malls start staging September fashion shows to show off that year's back to school looks. Stores are increasingly selling the first day of school is this opportunity for reinvention. You know, it's the classic new year, new you strategy. Then in the 80s, back to school marketing starts making its way onto television. Suddenly there are all these back to school TV commercials. So I want to play a few of these for you, mostly because

• 51:00Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  old commercials are just such incredible time capsules and I really enjoy watching them.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Hey everybody, have you heard the news? There's a back to school sale at Payless for you.

• 51:10Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, boy.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Like pencils and notebooks, crayons and pens, watercolors, books, suit socks and shoes, scissors and erasers, anything you choose. Lunchboxes, pencil boxes, notebook paper, blue, typewriters, calculators, paper quarters, two, even got a scooter, gotta get the best.

• 51:27Sarah Marshall?

  You gotta get a scooter.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  You gotta get the best.

• 51:31Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, this is totally nasty boys.

• 51:39Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, you nasty boys. Oh my God. Well, that was great. That was a bop. I loved that. I have to go buy a scooter right now.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  I mean, they're basically, it's the same thing they were doing with all the mascots. They were just looking at what is cool with kids and using it to, to sell paper.

• 51:57Sarah Marshall?

  But like seven year old boys love Janet Jackson, right? It's like

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Clearly, yeah.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Okay. So the next ad is, is similar. It kind of follows the same formula. Rap is obviously very big at the time. So this one is from 1990.

• 52:15Sarah Marshall?

  Very nice.

• 52:24Sarah Marshall?

  Horash, Bucolboy.

• 52:28Sarah Marshall?

  Lee.

• 52:31Sarah Marshall?

  The original Arizona. Wow.

• 52:42Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 52:44Sarah Marshall?

  And there is just like, there's something eternal about ads, I feel like, that we really were good at in, in about this time of like, it doesn't matter what you're advertising as long as you show young people happily enjoying it together, or even better, enjoying themselves generally while incidentally holding or eating or wearing the thing. And, and people will get it.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  I think it's the same tactic they use now, like the product becomes incidental to the images you're seeing. You're seeing happy people.

• 53:13Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Or you're seeing like a 30 second tear jerking story. And then at the end you find out it's for a Subaru and you didn't see it coming.

• 53:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  It has nothing to do with the car.

• 53:25Sarah Marshall?

  But yeah, and also then we've kind of gone full influencer marketing, I think in many ways. And so it's like, if you see someone who's like apparently really happy and rich and living this lifestyle of abundance, like, you know, drinking a certain energy drink, then like, that's the one part of their lifestyle that you can afford to emulate. And like, maybe it'll work if you get that energy drink.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. This last ad is from 1996. And just a disclaimer, I know a lot of 90s kids may be re-traumatized when they hear this one, but I want to play it just to show how even in the 90s retailers are still trying to link back to school with Christmas.

• 54:05Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 54:09Sarah Marshall?

  I remember this one.

• 54:17Sarah Marshall?

  See, it's good to make ads for the parents because they're the ones who are driving to these places.

• 54:29Sarah Marshall?

  We have a happy dad for worrying about while his kids stand miserably in a Staples. It's a, look, we're being, we're being honest here and I appreciate that.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Maybe ads are becoming a little bit more honest at this point. Maybe they're getting a little bit of the, um, the gimbals, let's be truthful to everyone about our products, kind of strategy going. I know you're not happy that school is starting again. These kids are in despair, but we're, we're telling you what time of year it is. We're telling you what, what you need and, uh, maybe you'll trust us more for it.

• 55:05Sarah Marshall?

  This also reminds me that, uh, baby Leonardo DiCaprio is in an ad for Fred Meyer clothes in the 80s. Have you ever seen that one?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  No, I haven't.

• 55:15Sarah Marshall?

  Let's just do one.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Okay, send it.

• 55:18Sarah Marshall?

  This is not back to school shopping. He needs a, a nice sweater for the school dance, but you know.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Hey, come on.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  Hi honey, how was school? Okay. Hey mom, do you think I could get some new clothes? Any special reasons? It's just a dumb school dance. Come on.

• 55:39Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, it's just a dumb school dance.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  Come on after. No way.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Hi, wanna dance? Sure. I like your sweater.

• 55:50Sarah Marshall?

  She likes a sweater award.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  That works. I want that sweater now.

• 55:59Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I want to dance with the girl.

• 56:01Sarah Marshall?

  Look, that sweater works. That sweater is out there somewhere. Yeah. She likes the sweater.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all it took.

• 56:08Sarah Marshall?

  And, and he, and he knew that that was what he needed. He was like, mom, we gotta go to Fred Meyer. I gotta get a sweater. I will say, I have a friend who relocated to Portland from California, who has remarked many times that she finds it incredibly weird that, um, Fred Meyer, which if you don't know, is a big grocery store with a bunch of other sections, has a jewelry department, has a little jewelry store in it when you come in, which is just something that's normal to me, um, much like Bikini Coffee. And recently I had the divine pleasure of her texting our group chat and saying, does anyone know where I can get a new battery for a watch? And I said, Fred Meyer Jewelers.

• 56:50Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, so you know what is nice about this too is that much like with Christmas, we can market to both kids and adults because kids demand stuff and adults are the ones who control the money that gets it for them, but also you can get the kids to work on the parents.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's manipulative on many levels. You market to the kid. You tell your kids, go ask your parents. You tell the parents, just so you know, they're about to manipulate you. So figure out your answer. Get ready for it and just, just get them the sweater.

• 57:23Sarah Marshall?

  Get them the sweater. Do you want your son to be an incel? Get him the sweater.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Or do you want him to be the biggest movie star in Hollywood history? Get him the sweater.

• 57:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  All right. So the seventies becomes very fashion heavy with back to school and becomes very teenager targeted. This has a lot to do with, with who's watching TV, who's going to malls. And in the eighties, it starts to shift again away from wardrobes and toward electronics. So one of the first big trendy back to school gadgets of the eighties was something called the spelling ace. And yes, I know it wouldn't be a Gabe Henry episode if I didn't talk about spelling.

• 58:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yay. Thank God.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  So the spelling ace was this little pocket computer spell checker. It was about the size of a calculator. And if you didn't know how to spell a word, you would type it out as phonetically as possible and it would spit out the correct spelling. So like, let's say you were trying to spell the word giraffe. You could type in J E R A F and it would be like, uh, did you mean giraffe? And it would give you the spelling.

• 58:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I would like to have that, actually.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  I looked it up on eBay. I could get you one for about 15 bucks.

• 58:41Sarah Marshall?

  All right. Nice.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  It becomes one of the biggest selling back to school products of the late eighties. It also came with games like Hangman and anagrams, which means it was also one of the first handheld devices that students could sneak into class and play under their desk. So the spelling ace opens up this new category of back to school shopping, which is electronics. And after the spelling ace, the hot item becomes the graphing calculator, some of which also came with games. So there's, I think there's a theme building here. Like you can see where smartphones come from. It's this handheld device that can do a lot of good things for you, but can also waste a lot of time. And then personal computers start showing up and back to school advertising, laptops and tablets. And since then, everything's

• 59:25Speaker 01

  really been moving toward electronic and digital, which, I mean, it's good for retailers and it's bad for retailers. It's good because electronics cost a lot of money and stores famously love money.

• 59:39Sarah Marshall?

  It's their main love language.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  But I guess it's also bad because the more that technology grows, the more obsolete stores like Macy's and JC Penney become. I mean, most people do their shopping online now and physical stores are closing left and right.

• 59:54Sarah Marshall?

  As I have been complaining about, yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Which I guess that's the last bittersweet note, you know, these big multi-story department stores that helped create back to school and helped create Christmas and Valentines and all these other consumer rhythms that we're used to, you know, really the entire American shopping calendar, you know, they're all disappearing because the culture of retail they created, it just gradually stopped needing them.

• 1:00:19Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. Yeah. Right. And then it's like, we have this cultural idea that definitely is still, you know, a big part of commerce, but where like the places that you go and the sort of inducements to sort of make a season of it, aren't there anymore. And so we're just sort of expected to keep returning to the same thing out of habit. And I guess, of course, the kids do need clothes and pencils and stuff. But yeah, this, this move toward maybe like bigger ticket items when in the past, it was really like, you know, you would definitely, I'm sure, spend a lot more than you would like to on school supplies, but it would break down into a lot of small stuff, you know, and that maybe we're having, moving

• 1:01:04Sarah Marshall?

  in a very different direction now. But what is the, does this make you feel differently about just kind of the season generally in your memories of it, knowing, knowing everything that you do about how it was created?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  I still have nostalgic, fond memories of early September. I mean, bittersweet, again, because I hated school, but I do love transition periods, transition seasons in general. And I do remember liking walking through the aisles and looking at the different things I could be this year in school.

• 1:01:41Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  And it doesn't change it for me. I think it's, my experience is separate from the experience, the consumer push to basically just sell us products. And I, even though it came out of this like hyper consumerist, hyper capitalist idea of just selling us cheaper and cheaper, more and more mass produced things. I mean, my experience is still my own and I prize that memory of owning that blue vinyl lunchbox, even if it's in a dumpster somewhere.

• 1:02:13Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  So I think it's the same I feel about, let's say, Christmas, which is super commercialized, but I still love it for the memories and the traditions I have.

• 1:02:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Separate from the, the way it's pushed upon us and forcing us to spend money.

• 1:02:29Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Yeah. And I think it's maybe part of existing in a, not just a consumer culture, but a material world is figuring out where the line is and not trying to be a purist because that's not going to work. You feel like you get to decide what you're saying no to, you know, where like you allow yourself these sort of cheap pleasures that I think it's not wrong to need in order to get through the day and processing the information that we have about living in the world, but also to sort of to feel secure that you're maybe not going along with every trend out of the hope that this one is the one that's

• 1:03:12Sarah Marshall?

  going to work out and give you the feelings that you're promised. Maybe that's kind of how I feel about consumerism lately is that like, we're given these promises of the way that goods and services are supposed to make us feel. And the truth is that those feelings are fleeting. And so we get to decide what our needs are and what works best for us and not listen so much when we're told that the thing that we're going to buy next is going to be the antidote to this feeling of sinking uncertainty.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  And maybe it's also because as adults, I think our lives are dictated less by seasonal shifts.

• 1:03:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Besides weather shifts. And besides the whole new year, new you aspect of New Year's Eve, we don't have, or at least in my life, I don't have too many fresh starts throughout the year. It's just a 12 month, 12 months straight through. And I don't have a season based around September about starting somewhere fresh and meeting new people. It flows more. And I think because as a kid, you have very little agency around your life. Your life is really structured about seasons of the year, seasons of school, winter break, summer break. And therefore you're like, you have these markers throughout the year that signify starting new, looking different and becoming a new person.

• 1:04:38Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  I don't remember the last time I went browsing in a store and thought, who can I be this year? I just remember thinking, how can I dress to feel and look like myself? But as a kid, you're still figuring that out.

• 1:04:51Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Yeah. And maybe it's, on the one hand, it's nice to kind of have reached the point where you feel like you know who you are and what stuff calls to you in that way. And on the other hand, it's, it's nice to not get too limited in that and to kind of have those moments of being like, well, maybe this doesn't feel like a me thing, but maybe I can be the person I am when I have this hat on. Which is why we love to buy stuff to wear on vacation that then when you come home, you're like, what am I going to do with this?

• 1:05:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I don't know. I think there's something just like very quintessentially American about us loving the romance of a fresh start and sort of turning that into like this very well exploited capitalist holiday that we certainly are still living in in some version of every year, but that maybe we've taken the cultural feeling or like the emotional part of it is like the more lasting thing, you know, like I'm sure people are still shelling out plenty of money for school supplies, in fact, far too much, I just bet, but that like the feeling of like the need for the school supplies and the fact that like everything can start all over and start fresh again for you, just, you know, because you have this brand new eraser.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  I mean, there's something quintessentially American about the idea of reinventing yourself. You can be anything you'd like to be.

• 1:06:15Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  There's a kind of a pioneering instinct of just if we go westward, we'll discover a new land, we'll begin new people. There's always something mysterious around the corner. We can create whoever, whatever version of ourselves we want to be. We're not stuck with the traditions and the rituals of previous generations. We can create our own. We could pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, which are now 40% off at JCPenney.

• 1:06:45Sarah Marshall?

  And if anyone gets in our way, we'll kill them and take all their stuff because we're Americans.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, there's like the, the way that we're steeped in sort of like a new beginning, even at the cost of someone else. And so there's, you know, this like really sinister side of, of that. And also this very back to school-y side of it, I guess, you know, you're a, we're a nation of con men and you're always only one brand new eraser away from a new life. Gabe, tell us about what have you written lately that we can read?

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  So I'm, I'm working on a new book, which there will be news about that hopefully soon. I'm in the early stages where I don't like to talk about it because then I get superstitious. If I tell someone

• 1:07:35Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  what I'm working on, then all of a sudden I've put that idea out into the ether. It floats up into the sky and then someone else can pick it out of the sky and write it better and faster than I can.

• 1:07:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, listen, I believe that the pandemic happened in early 2020 because too many people at the same moment thought this is going to be my year. And that's, that's how that happened. So I support your superstition.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  We had reached peak threshold of hopeful writing projects and then the universe just sent us all backward.

• 1:08:10Sarah Marshall?

  Or just hopeful everything. Too many people were trying for a fresh start at once.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  And we got it.

• 1:08:16Sarah Marshall?

  I think I try so hard to be skeptical because deep down I am the most superstitious person who's ever lived, but anyway.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I would love to hear more about your superstitions at a future point.

• 1:08:27Sarah Marshall?

  Well, it's like, you know, I read license plates. If I see like certain state license plates or like certain words on like a long drive recur or like numbers recurring, you know, like that's something I kind of pay attention to. I pay attention to it more when I'm stressed and feeling out of control of my life, interestingly, or just, you know, the thing of like, like if you're thinking a word and someone says it in something you're watching at that same moment, or if you read something in the same moment that someone says it unrelatedly, or these sort of, these little sort of hinky moments that you experience.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Sarah Marshall?

  Like I completed an adult skating course and had like an adult one sticker that I put on the inside of my wallet and I still have it even though it's like all the writing has rubbed off of it completely because I simply must have it. I don't know. It's like, it's, it's linked with being an incurable pack rat as well. But it's just, I don't know. I just think that if I hang on to enough garbage, then nothing bad will happen to me. Is that so wrong?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  I don't think it's wrong. Do you know that I've been keeping receipts and old Metro cards in my top sock drawer since I was about nine?

• 1:09:39Sarah Marshall?

  See? And that's a great collection.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  I have receipts from pharmacies that no longer exist, receipts that say

• 1:09:46Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  toothpaste, $1.50, and it's so faded at this point, but I can see the date and I can remember, oh, I bought this on my way home from school in seventh grade.

• 1:09:57Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, right. It's like a mnemonic for the rest of your life. And yeah, when I find those things, I always feel so happy. I bought a book recently that like the person who had been reading it, this is a copy of the book Funny Money, which is about a bank collapsing in Oklahoma. And the guy had been reading it, had like a note from like the front desk at a hotel. It was like the LaGuardia Marriott or something like that, saying like his friends would meet him at like this bar at this address. And then like, I think a currency exchange receipt from like an airport in Montreal and like something from LA and like a boarding pass or something from another. It was like pieces of like

• 1:10:42Sarah Marshall?

  mid eighties paper ephemera from like airlines and airports and stuff that just like were sort of placed in this book because presumably he'd sort of been reading it throughout his travels, but it was just like, what a thrill. I really loved it. So hopefully I'm not just imposing all this trash on other people and they get to enjoy it someday, too. Sometimes I open a book and I find an old paper bus transfer from when I was reading that book in 2007. And that's nice because paper bus transfers don't exist anymore in Portland. And it's like, one day they were gone and we just kind of didn't ever really pay that much attention to them. And so it's only if they're sort of sticking around in a book

• 1:11:26Sarah Marshall?

  somewhere, somebody saved them for some reason that we would have any

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Sarah Marshall?

  recollection of them. I don't know.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Sarah Marshall?

  I'm very moved by tiny inanimate objects, I guess, is my point.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  I am too. I am too. And to bring this back to Christmas, I've been giving my sister this Christmas gift every year. It's, I'll find some kind of scrap of paper that represents some kind of experience we had during that year, she and I, maybe a receipt from a restaurant that we went to as a family on vacation. And I'll keep that receipt, put it in my pocket, and then for Christmas I'll frame it in this little like four inch by four inch wood frame. And it's just this little beautiful bit of family ephemera that then can go on a wall or go wherever, but it's because it has this frame around it, it has that much more significance.

• 1:12:16Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  And the rest of our scraps of paper of our lives get thrown away for sure.

• 1:12:21Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  But you keep one little thing and it's like keeping one little memory, not to get too sappy, but it is a, a special Christmas gift that, that costs about $15 and it means a lot.

• 1:12:33Sarah Marshall?

  It's a high sack show, you know?

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And then also it's like, right. And that's the thing too. We're buying something as such a fraud activity now because so many objects are brought into your life without your consent anyway, because through like random, you know, clutter and ephemera. And so I guess kind of, I don't know, choosing to elevate some of that into something special. I like that, too.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:11Sarah Marshall?

  And that is our episode. Thank you to the people who helped make this show. Miranda Ziegler is our producer and editor, and Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. We'll see you in two weeks.