I never saw any strange local fads in my hometown, but Roy Fox mentions a strange one in his book Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids. It seems that in a central Missouri town “100 miles from an urban center (St. Louis or Kansas City)” (21), the “in” thing to do at one time was to-I am not making this up™-EATING the wrappers of Cinnaburst® brand chewing gum. Fox believes this was done for two reasons-it became “the great thing to do”(101) in a small town. The other reason was because of a current advertisement for the gum which feature parents worrying about their children chewing the gum, as if it was a drug of some sort. “Eating wrappers continued the same theme of shocking parents with nonconformist behaviors”(102).
Are there any local fads you remember or have heard about that are just as strange (or stranger) than eating gum wrappers?
[sub]Works Cited:
Fox, Roy F. Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0-275-97101-5.[/sub]
You know those little candy dots or buttons that came attached to a paper roll? We were advised that eating that paper was the thing to do. So we did it.
When I was in middle school (mid-80’s), the fad for a time was eating pucks of Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax (despite the “do not eat” warning label). I never figured out what landlocked kids in the midwest were doing with surfboard wax.
In middle school, the fad was chewing on toothpicks soaked in cinnamon oil. I thought they tasted like crap and burned the hell out of my mouth. But hey, it was a small price to pay to avoid being a non-conformist.
When I was in grade school (Topeka, KS) we ate the Cinnaburst wrappers 'cause there was supposedly extra cinnamon flavor in them. We also made little people out of paper clips and pencil erasers and kept them in our lockers, but I don’t remember why. We used to get “married” under the jungle gym and you wrote your “husband’s” name on the bottom of your shoe. In my 4th grade class the girls had a card game (I think it was 21) going during recess and everyone brought things to bet, like charm bracelets and Baby Soft perfume and stuff. That one was actually lots of fun.
We used to do the same think in Jr. High (back in the early 80’s). (Vicksburg, MI) After about a week, they got banned by the administration. I never got into it myself. Never cared much for it.
Well, I grew up in a suburb of KC, and Cinnaburst wrappers were consumed by my peers at Liberty Junior High School. I tried it once - tasted too much like paper. This would have taken place maybe 10 years ago.
I guess tight-rolling jeans wasn’t local to my middle school, but it was stupid.
This was big in my school as well (Pontiac, MI). We also had the fad of bringing in baggies full of pre-sweetened kool-aid where you lick your finger then stick in in the kool-aid, then lick off the kool-aid that got stuck to your finger. Everyone in class walked around with a colored finger for about a month, then the fad ended.
