Collectiblog

I’ll never forget the first Happy Face button I saw. My father came home wearing the tiny, 1/4 “ pin, I’m guessing, in 1969.  I remember being instantly drawn to it, and asked where he got it. He said they were giving them out at Norm’s, a L.A. coffee shop known for its bargain prices and Googie-style architecture. It was a pivotal moment in my cultural development. It’s been said that the ubiquitous icon has been traced back as far as graffiti in ancient Rome, though something about the post-mid-century edition struck a chord with me as well as millions of others, becoming a fad of phenomenal proportions in the early ‘70s.

Freelance Graphic designer Harvey Ball gets the credit for creating the yellow smiley as we know it today. He slapped the design together in about 10 minutes when asked to create an icon in 1963 for State Mutual Life Assurance company after it acquired Guarantee Mutual of Ohio and company morale plummeted. Employees were given pins in hopes that they would smile as they did their job. It must have worked, as the un-trademarked idea was used again several years later at Washington Mutual in 1967, when the Seattle Bank wanted to attract customers that seemed to be avoiding it because of the loitering hippies in the area.

By 1970, the idea of the little yellow lapel pin had spread around the world.  The image exploded in popularity when two entrepreneurial brothers, Murray and Bernard Spain, decided to market the image on everything from pins and badges to t-shirts and coffee mugs and posters, adding the caption “Have a Happy Day.” What Harvey Ball had created for a mere $45 had exploded into a multi-million dollar industry with an estimated 50 million pins sold worldwide by 1971.

I started collecting Happy Face pins when they appeared in the gumball machines at our local Safeway. Each time I went to the store with my mother, I’d drop a dime and pick up another pin. The originals were the simple round-eyed, semi-circled smile. Over a short period of time, they evolved to a variety of different expressions including ones with glasses, ones with open-mouth smiles, ones with teeth and others with a black eye (which became popular in the late ‘70s with punk rockers). I proudly wore a yellow happy face t-shirt in the third grade and gleefully hung a “Have A Nice Day” poster in my bedroom right net to my black-light poster of The Beatles.

Over the next coupe of years, there were so many products made it would be impossible to guess the quantity. Over the years, I’ve picked up the cookie jar, an alarm clock band aids, purses, rings, puzzles, salt & pepper shakers, shoes and believe it or not, a barf bag from an airline (not meant to be ironic, but I suppose meant to make you feel less self conscious?)

One of my absolute favorites is a rather unsettling Pee-Wee doll wearing a happy face tunic with a flesh-colored head in the shape of the smiling, spherical icon. In a stroke of genius, the tranquilizer Melloril used the Happy Face on coffee mugs advertising their product, the humor of which was not shared only by me, but apparently by the person who stole it from my personal collection as well.

As with all fads, the need for the Happy Face pin passed and was slowly replaced with other not-quite-so popular attempts at gaining the national spotlight. Soon the icon du jour became fuzzy feet (you had to be there) and “Hang In There, Baby” posters (you know, the ones with the dangling cat) which were rapidly eclipsed by another huge but momentary fad - the Bicentennial merchandise landslide that started in 1975.  The disco era kept smiley on for a while, but over time, he returned and has proved to be the most enduring icon of the modern era, as can be proven by the sheer abundance of items new and old which sport the unflappable, ever-grinning image.