Recently The Guardian posted the number 486 million dollars.* That is how much the famous smiley face figure earned the Smiley Company last year from products blazoned with the yellow face.
The company has 458 licensees in 158 countries for its trademarked version of the face. The company, needless to say, is celebrating its fiftieth year in business happily.
According to The Guardian, the smiley has been around in one form or another since the 1950s.
A yellow and black one first showed its face in 1961, when it was printed on a promotional sweatshirt by the New York radio station WMCA to promote the news-talk show Good Guys.
I can’t speak to that origin of the WMCA sweatshirt, as I wasn’t tuned into that station until later in the decade, when WMCA and WABC-AM were the two biggest rock-and-roll stations in the Big Apple. They competed mightily against each other, attempting to be the first station to broadcast the newest recording by the Beatles and other mega-rock groups.
I mainly listened to Cousin Brucie and his colleagues at WABC. However, I did defect to WMCA for its overnight show hosted by DJ Dean Anthony. Anthony’s shtick was to play a game called Actors and Actresses, the object of which was for listeners to call in to the station and try to identify a thespian by his or her initials. Was CC Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chase, Charles Coburn, or someone else? Anthony worked from a list that was submitted by a listener—who, for his or her efforts, was awarded a WMCA Good Guy Sweatshirt.
In the fall of 1967, I submitted a list that was selected by Anthony, and I duly received a Good Guy sweatshirt—which, 55 years later, I still have (although it has shrunk a great deal and now comes down barely to waist level).
Now, the interesting thing is this: On the night that Anthony featured my list, my brother, who had been gallivanting around town until the early hours of the morning, called into WMCA and, without knowing it was my list, was able to name a lesser-known British actor, whose identity had stumped many other callers.
*
And what has a half-century of change brought us?
WMCA now features “a Christian radio format consisting of teaching and talk programs.”
WABC has a daily show hosted by Rudy Giuliani.
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1) You found it! and 2) That's very funny about Alan guessing correctly. What did he win for knowing the answer?
ReplyDeleteHe didn't win anything. But he had a nice discussion with Dean Anthony.
ReplyDeleteProgress is our most important product! From Bruce Morrow and Dan Daniel to Rudy...It is to weep...
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