Kris,
Your email on Smiley faces jogged my memory since we attended the same Jr.
High, back in East Peoria. I seem to remember not only you, but old Mr.
smiley face as part of that 2 year experience is the late 1960s. (other
popular icon in Jr. High: Sonny and Cher - I mention this because perhaps
some of you remember at Sonny Bono's funeral, Cher compared him to the
smiley face button? )
So, an any good archaeologist would do, I went back through some personal
memorabilia to look for dateable examples of smiley faces, and found them
displayed on the cover of an April 1972 Mad Magazine that I had filed away,
and one on a 1972 McGovern presidential campaign button. (I was a very young
campaign worker that year in his headquarters in Pekin, IL). There is also
a smiley face sticker on the little red tool box that Ron Michael gave me at
my very first field school in 1971. I seem to remember smiley face buttons
earlier, but can's dig up any examples from my personal stash. (and yes,
I do tend to hoard things - don't all archaeologists? ).
Here's another contextual image from 1972, the Bill Cosby show.
http://www.tvparty.com/cosby2.html
So I searched the internet for the examples mentioned above, and found a
couple of interesting web pages, concerning trademarks and commercial art
work. I'll paste them below, and please forgive me if I'm repeating what
has already been said.
Taking the trademark law approach, I found the statement that " By the time
Ball thought to copyright the design in the 1970s, his happy face had
already been reproduced at least 50 million times, making it part of the
public domain." (but that didn't stop a Frenchman from trademarking it in
France). So, old smiley must have been around for a while, but appears to
have peaked the first time about 1971 or 1972, with later cyclical revivals,
the most recent being a Walmart advertising campaign.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2006/07/latest_chapter_.
html
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/07/business/fi-smiley7
http://www.creativepro.com/article/heavy-metal-madness-put-a-happy-face
Linda Derry
-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of K. Kris
Hirst
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 10:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: re "happy face" pins
I have to agree with Anita here (not that that's unusual, but for me to say
anything nice about Wikipedia is pretty dang rare indeed). Wikipedia has
become far more useful since they started adding citations. So the "smiley
face entry" includes a link to a Christian Science Monitor story on smiley
faces history:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1004/p15s01-algn.html
And in it is "David Stern, the University Federal Savings & Loan launched a
very public marketing campaign in 1967 centered on the Smiley Face" etc etc
K. Kris Hirst
Guide to Archaeology
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