Like pornography, which Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said he couldn't define but knew when he saw it, a fad is generally recognizable once it's rolling like a great sales avalanche. Out-the-store, round-the-block lines are a good sign. So, these days, is a big buzz on electronic mail. The 3-D-illusion fad was clearly gaining momentum when the downtown branch of the New York bookstore Shakespeare & Co. sold virtually its entire initial order of the first Magic Eye book -- to its employees, before the book even hit the shelves.
A FOLLOW-UP ON FOUR FABLED FRENZIES
Cabbage Patch Kids
What began in the mid-1970s as a hand-stitched quilted sculpture selling for $100 overwhelmed the 1982 Christmas season after the doll's creator, Xavier Roberts, granted Coleco Industries a license to produce a smaller, mass-market version. Closing his broadcast one night, CBS anchorman Dan Rather did his part in fanning the fad. "They're cute. I'll take two." The following year, when supply came more in line with demand, American kids "adopted" more than 3 million Cabbage Patch Kids at $20 to $30 each.
End of story, right? Wrong. Though far from the media spotlight, Cabbage Patch Kids, under the current license holder, Hasbro, are now entering the world at an even more prolific rate than a decade ago. More than 75 million have been sold since 1983. The handcrafted version, still available for adoption at Roberts's BabyLand General Hospital, a popular tourist attraction in Cleveland, Ga., currently sells for no less than $190. Signed, special-edition dolls go as high as $650.
If a fad is here today, gone tomorrow, then perhaps Cabbage Patch Kids is not a fad but an ongoing fancy.
Wacky Wallwalkers
Ken Hakuta, who struck it rich with a tacky-to-the-touch rubber octopus and anointed himself Dr. Fad, extended the life of his Wacky Wallwalker by taking it off the market. A must-have item in 1983, when he had as many as 350 workers turning out Wacky Wallwalkers in a Korean factory, Hakuta stopped production in 1985 and then milked the fad dry by selling more millions to the Kellogg Co., which included them as premiums in cereal boxes as recently as 1991.
He disconnected his 800 fad line (which at its peak was taking more than 400 calls a month) earlier this year, hosted his last fad fair in 1992, and stopped producing his syndicated Dr. Fad's Show, though it's still televised in reruns in 13 countries. These days Hakuta runs Tradex Corp., based in Washington, D.C., and designs and manufactures small premium-style science toys. People still come to him with all sorts of ideas. He hasn't seen a second fad in the rough yet -- except perhaps when speaking at grade schools. "Maybe only 25% of third to sixth graders know what a Wacky Wallwalker is," says Hakuta. "When that percentage falls a bit lower, I might consider bringing them back as a nostalgia item." Maybe, he says, on the Home Shopping Network.
Trivial Pursuit
What board game flopped at the 1982 Toy Fair and went on to take the country by storm, selling about 20 million copies in 1984 alone? The answer, of course, is Trivial Pursuit, which made millionaires of Canadian buddies Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, and Haney's older brother John. The fad year long over, the game and its offshoots (travel packs, a children's version, and annual year-in-review editions) continue to sell more than 1.5 million units each year in 19 languages.
The game's inventors wrote their last question long ago but have had a hand in developing a CD-ROM version due out soon. They have resisted the temptation to create another game, preferring to indulge themselves in such projects as golf courses, racehorses, a junior hockey team, and part ownership in the Skydome in Toronto.
The Pet Rock
More so than any other product, the Pet Rock seems the quintessential fad. Dressing up a barroom quip, a clever California advertising copywriter sold some 1.5 million ordinary beach pebbles at $4 a pop, proving packaging is all. Hearing his friends complain about how expensive it was to care for their dogs, Gary Dahl joked about his pet rock and was soon writing a spoof of a dog-training manual. The fad broke in October 1975 and was dead as a stone the next February, giving Dahl an Andy Warhol-like five months in the spotlight. He had to give away tens of thousands of unsold Pet Rocks.
That didn't stop him from trying for act 2. He broke even on 100,000 Sand Breeding Kits (male and female vials of sand that could be mated to produce deserts or kitty litter), lost money backing Red China Dirt ($5 tubes of soil allegedly smuggled from communist China), and for a time ran a consulting business to evaluate and fine-tune other people's fads-to-be. "I must have looked at two a week for 18 years," says the 57-year-old Dahl, who now produces TV commercials and videos for corporate clients and whose unlisted telephone number does not keep the hopelessly hopeful from his door. "I'm not sure I can define a fad, but I know what won't sell. I received a box of it yesterday: a condom for your floppy disk -- to protect against computer viruses.
"My advice to those who succeed with a fad? Enjoy it while it lasts. The Pet Rock was fun, but I let it go on a year too long. I wanted that next year. I believed my own publicity, and I think my ego got in the way of my common sense."
