CHAPTER 1MR. POTATO HEAD
AMERICA’S TOY
We love toys. New toys, old toys, big toys, small toys.7 Toys that need batteries, toys that only require your imagination. It doesn’t matter to us. We love toys the way milk loves cookies.
We talk to each other about toys more than any other topic besides maybe those Nazi jerks and earth science.
So far, we’ve done episodes on Etch A Sketch, Silly Putty, Play-Doh, action figures, Slinky, Barbie®, Rubik’s Cube, Easy-Bake Ovens, E.T. the video game, and probably a whole lot of others we’re forgetting right now. Like sugary cereal and puppies, even when a toy is bad, it’s still great. Yet somehow, we have never talked about Mr. Potato Head.8
Those of us who were raised in the United States are all probably familiar with the same basic version of Mr. Potato Head: the smiling, quasi-legless russet potato that, when fully assembled, looks like a teacher who thinks his cheesy smile will convince you to like taking tests.
But he didn’t always look like that. For the first decade or so of his life, Mr. Potato Head wasn’t even really a potato. He was barely even a mister.
He was an oddly configured, 30-piece “funny face man” kit that cost 98 cents and required buyers to provide their own potato—an actual potato—to use as the head. Potato in hand, a 1950s kid could attach said funny face and build said man.
And if they didn’t have a potato? Not to worry: “ANY FRUIT OR VEGETABLE MAKES A FUNNY FACE MAN.” Or so said the manufacturer, Hassenfeld Bros Inc., who printed those words on the top of every Mr. Potato Head box as a way to market the toy’s versatility.
It worked too. The Rhode Island–based company sold more than a million units their first full year in production, making it Hassenfeld Bros’ first major success in the toy business. Eventually they condensed their name and became Hasbro—the largest toymaker in the world. And we can assume the potato farmers of America appreciated their efforts.
This very food-focused approach might have been the end of the brothers if they had gone for it only a few years earlier. It nearly proved to be for Mr. Potato Head’s inventor, George Lerner, when he first went out looking for a buyer. Lerner originally called his invention “Funny Face Man”—thus the tagline on the side of the original Mr. Potato Head box—and spent the better part of the next three years struggling to gin up interest from toy companies. This proved to be a Herculean task because, at that time, the average American looked at using a potato for a toy as a shameful waste of food.
It’s weird to think of a world where Mr. Potato Head never existed, because you could make a pretty strong case that Mr. Potato Head is the toy of the American century. In fact, we’ll just say it: Mr. Potato Head is the toy of the American century.9 That’s right. A legless potato person, who started out as plastic parts with pins for kids to stab into an actual potato, isn’t just some disposable, forgettable distraction. It turns out he is a reflection of America’s recent history and culture. As Mr. Potato Head went, so went the country (or vice versa, but let’s not split hairs). You could even say Mr. Potato Head is America.
Our theory might sound a little half-baked,10 but the timeline of events says otherwise. Get a load of this:
1949
George Lerner invents “Funny Face Man” and it nearly dies on the vine because people are still worried about the availability of food. Keep in mind, this is only four years after the end of World War II. Food rationing is still fresh in their minds. This is also the year the Cold War really kicks into gear.11
It is true that the United States did win World War II and that life in America is good by this time, but it isn’t “turn your root vegetables into toys” good. If an adult is going to give a potato to their child in 1949, it’s going in that child’s mouth, not in their toy box.
1951
Lerner finally finds a buyer: a cereal company that wants to give the “funny face” kits away as prizes in their boxes of cereal. And, really, who doesn’t look at a box of yummy breakfast cereal and think “I want to play with a potato!”?
But before the cereal company can put any prize-filled boxes on store shelves, Lerner meets with the Hassenfeld brothers up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The Hassenfelds had made all their money to this point by producing things like pencil cases and toy medical kits that let kids play doctor. They see the fun in this “Funny Face Man,” so they buy the idea back from the cereal company, rename it Mr. Potato Head, and give George Lerner a cut of every sale.
1952
Now things really start to shift. Television begins to invade American homes. Just three years earlier, fewer than half a million television sets were purchased. But by the end of 1952, 26 million homes have a TV. And they couldn’t have come at a better time either. This year the polio outbreak is the worst in America’s history, driving most kids indoors, particularly during summer, when polio is thought to be most vicious.12
Remember, they had no internet back then. Recognizing an opportunity, Hassenfeld Brothers decides to run TV ads for Mr. Potato Head. Not only is Mr. Potato Head the very first toy to be advertised on TV, the Hassenfelds pioneered a new advertising strategy: advertise directly to children, urging them to beg their parents to buy the toy. Today this strategy is so widespread it has its own name: “nag factor.”13
1953
The Hassenfeld brothers decide that Mr. Potato Head needs to settle down. So he marries Mrs. Potato Head and they honeymoon in Boise, Idaho (which, for potatoes, is like Disney World and Disneyland mashed into one).14 It’s not long before they set down roots and have a couple of kids, a boy and a girl named Spud and Yam. It’s a fitting, starchy, all-American choice for two reasons: 1) We’re smack in the middle of the Baby Boom,15 and 2) America’s new favorite toy couple now mirrors America’s favorite TV couple, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, who start the year by having a baby in an episode of I Love Lucy. The episode is watched by nearly three quarters of all homes that have TVs.16
EARLY 1960s
Eventually the 1960s arrive, as most people expected them to. It is a decade defined, at least in part, by terms like “consumerism,” “materialism,” and “conspicuous consumption,” which is technical talk for people wanting more, more, MORE!
And what are Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head doing? We presume they’re buying lots of stuff, just like every other upwardly mobile middle-class American family. They buy a boat. Then a plane, a train, and an automobile. It’s like something out of a movie!17
MID-TO-LATE 1960s
It takes twelve years, but Hasbro finally leaves behind its bonehead “no potato head in the Mr. Potato Head box” policy and starts producing separate plastic heads and bodies with prefab holes for the parts. It’s the first step toward the Mr. Potato Head we know today.
The decision to move toward plastic is due partly to complaints—go figure, parents were tired of finding moldy potatoes under sofas—and partly to injuries. Itty-bitty body parts and sharp pins aren’t exactly toddler-proof!18 So Hasbro solves both problems with one word: plastics.
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