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FADS OF THE 1950s

Davy Crockett

As in any other decade, a series of brief fashions in dress and pastimes captured the public's imagination during the 1950s. Many of these fads were inspired by what Americans saw on television, which most of them encountered for the first time during the decade. In 1955 children and adults alike were swept up in the merchandising blitz surrounding Walt Disney's television series "Davy Crockett." Four million recordings of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," the show's theme song, and fourteen million Davy Crockett books were sold to eager fans. Little pioneers wore replicas of the coonskin cap their hero wore, so that the price of raccoon tails shot from twenty-five cents to eight dollars a pound. Some three thousand items of merchandise were licensed to cash in on the popularity of the Tennessee woodsman, including lunch boxes, bath towels, ukuleles, and women's underwear. Minor sports such as professional wrestling and roller derby were also extremely popular during the decade primarily because of exposure on television. The new medium itself, in fact, was something of a fad during the 1950s because of its novelty, and early stars and shows fascinated the public as few have since.

Dance

Dance crazes of the 1950s were also influenced by television. Young people watched Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," which debuted in 1957, to learn the latest steps. The stroll, a line dance with hand clapping, was especially popular. For their parents, "The Arthur Murray Party" was broadcast weekly throughout the decade; dance instructor Murray popularized several ballroom dances, including the cha-cha and the merengue.

College Fads

College students, always on the lookout for new fads, latched on to quite a few. Panty raids were popular during the 1950s and were, as Peter L. Skolnik puts it, "generally greeted with equal enthusiasm by the raiders and the raided." Only occasionally did the raids get out of hand and turn into full-scale riots. Mostly they were harmless fun. Collegians also stuffed themselves into cars (a variation of the telephone-booth stuffing of old). In 1959 "hunkering" was a popular campus fad: students squatted on their haunches to study or just hang around.

Advances in Toys

Many new toys, some made possible by technological advances from World War II, competed for the attention of the country's youngest consumers. The success of western movies and television shows led to heavy sales of toy guns, holsters, and spurs, to the tune of $283 million. Thirty million children wore propeller beanies in 1952. Slinkies, wire coils that walked down stairs "alone or in pairs," were popular toys during the decade, as was Silly Putty, a moldable glob of silicone, thirty-two million of which were sold between 1949 and 1954.

Hula Hoop

The most popular toy of the decade, however, among children and adults was the hula hoop. Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr, owners of Wham-0 Manufacturing, introduced the hoop in 1957, inspired by an Australian variety of calisthenics. Soon people every-where were swinging the plastic hoops around their hips. Some one hundred million of the hoops were sold around the world in 1958, not all by Wham-0, which had difficulty patenting such a simple toy. The Soviet Union condemned the hoop as exemplifying the "emptiness of American culture," and Japan outlawed it, but everywhere else, and in America especially, few missed out on the fun. More-skillful hoopers learned to spin them on their arms and legs or around their necks, or to spin more than one hoop at a time.