Gross National Products

Clacking teeth. Rubber octopuses. Exploding lighters. Believe it or not, some people build companies around this stuff

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THE TWO-STORY BRICK STRUCTURE that Chicago's H. Fishlove & Co. calls home is typical of the cheerless survivors from the smokestack era that ring our metropolises. Inside, the occupants -- small manufacturers, machine shops, jobbers, and such -- contribute their little somethings to the gross national product. In the case of the Fishlove factory, however, the little somethings are gross national products: for 73 years, H. Fishlove has been one of the country's prominent names in gags and novelties.

The 1970s saw family-owned Fishlove's expansion, such as it was, flatten at about $2 million in sales, due not so much to rising standards of humor but to the third generation's lack of interest in pandering to it. The company was recently sold to Fun Inc., also deep in novelties. The Fishlove-Fun axis promised more of the same -- only better, inasmuch as one of the new owner's first moves was to replace the production line's archaic gluing stations with ultrasonic welding equipment. Now, emitting a high-tech shriek that also serves to clear the neighborhood of stray dogs, slick electronics bind together the five parts of Fishlove's most renowned product, a set of plastic clacking teeth.

The capital infusion yielded two immediate benefits: not only can Fishlove move more units out the door every day, but, due to the sophistication of the tooling, quality has been raised safely beyond the scope of overseas cloners. Even if connoisseurs have to spend as much as $4.95 at the local joke store, they can rest assured they have acquired the finest talking teeth the world has to offer. On a single windup of its proprietary clockwork motor, Fishlove's heavy-gauge choppers can keep chattering for the better part of a minute. Gum your heart out, Taiwan.

At that, the yakking teeth -- a Fishlove original, conforming to founder Hyman Fishlove's refusal to market anything that wasn't internally developed, which is followed to this day, though no one knows why -- isn't the company's most popular product. That distinction belongs to a pool of multicolored latex the size of a dropped egg, with a consistency you'd rather not read about here. Introduced around 1960, some 40,000 units of the Whoops, "a revolt of the stomach so real it fools everyone," are purchased annually. Which means that more than a million blobs of accurately simulated vomit are hanging around, poised to trigger a few laughs from sidewalks and car seats.

The Whoops and its ilk are key to Fishlove's business longevity. "It's the kind of item you strive for: steady volume year in and year out," explains Fun (and hence H. Fishlove) chief executive officer Graham Putnam, a veteran of the novelty and magic industry with an M.B.A. in marketing. Whoops undoubtedly is outsold by others' similarly off-putting artifacts, "but if an item is superpopular," Putnam rationalizes, "it can be a disadvantage, because there will be a lot of competition from overseas."

For instance, the generic whoopee (no relation) cushion -- an air-filled bladder designed to emit a Bronx cheer when sat upon -- outsells the Whoops probably 10 to one, but the U.S. supply comes from foreign lands. The hard realities of cushion making won't let novelty makers like Fishlove manufacture them competitively despite the steady demand, because getting the razzberry right requires hand labor, and that's expensive, domestically. Hiring local whoopee specialists would drive costs through the roof.

Working latex is labor-intensive, too; each one literally unique, Whoopses are fabricated especially for Fishlove by a low-cost cottage industrialist secreted in the hills of Arkansas. The Whoops market is just right, as far as Putnam is concerned. "It's not appealing enough for people to jump into," he says, "so we can continue to produce it unbothered."

Ditto their Brush for Baldheads, a wad of terry cloth that has been turned out by the annual thousands for six decades running. And the same for such venerable Fishlove inspirations as the Magic Bar Tap, a liquid-spouting phony faucet protected by two patents; the Peter Meter, a half-scale ruler "for the man who has nothing!" (said to be one of the founder's favorites); the realistically melting ice-cream stick "to be left on sofa"; Mr. John, a lifelike urinal that "attaches to any wall"; the Snoz, a false nose "nicely finished to look natural"; and the swollen finger, with its "bloody looking bandage at connecting end."

Indeed, of the company's 100 or so offerings, many dating back well before VJ Day, only the giant toothbrush, comb, and sunglasses are currently attracting Far Eastern competition (although for some reason, Fishlove's similarly elephantine olive, knife, and fork aren't). On the other hand, a few erstwhile favorites are suffering agonizing deaths. "Some of the items in the catalog really aren't selling," Putnam concedes. And since Fishlove can't liquidate inventory through what might be called normal channels, inasmuch as it won't move at any price, "we keep them listed until they run out," says Putnam. Fortunately, there's adequate shelf room in the 50,000-square-foot plant.

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