Wikipedia defines a fad as “something that becomes very popular with a small group of people for a short period of time.  A fad is unpredictable, short lived, and without social, economic, and political significance.”  However, I have created a shorter, more poignant definition for the word fad by using a backronym.

“What is a backronym?” you ask.  Well, it’s just another little invention of my twisted–yet brilliant–mind, destined to end up in some future edition of the English Dictionary with another one of my lingual derivatives: Deppraisal.  We all know that an acronym is a pronounceable abbreviation formed by using the first letters of each word in a phrase or term.  Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus is better known as SCUBA.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is commonly referred to as NASA.  Inversely, a backronym takes a word that is just a word, breaks it down into its individual letters, and births other more, descriptive words in order to define the original word.  For example, several weeks ago I posted a deppraisal which slandered Avon collectibles.  In that article, I said that AVON (A-V-O-N) stood for All Very Odorous Nothing.  Do you see?

All right then, let’s get back to fad.  Fashionable And Doomed.  That backronym describes a fad rather well… Fashionable and Doomed.  There were many items that I can remember in my lifetime that were fashionable and destined for doom.  Several of these items often pop up in estates that I liquidate.  Yet, when they are brought to auction, they are usually damned to be sold within boxlots.  For as they were only fads, they were short lived and without social, economic, or political significance.  And despite the fact that the following items were able to realize higher prices in the Idiots’ Black Market immediately after being ripped from retail shelves, well… they ain’t worth squat now!  I now present to you the Top Five Fashionable And Doomed items of my lifetime:

5. Gone with the Wind Collector Plates

The television ads from the late 1980s said that these plates depicting Scarlett, Rhett, and the Evil Yankee would only go up in value.  If you bought these plates because you like Gone with the Wind, and you enjoy displaying them, then you’re fine.  However, if you bought these plates in the hopes of getting a return on your (cough) investment, then here’s what I want you to do:  I want you to take every one that you own, and smash it to bits.  If an ounce of gold doesn’t emerge from within each one that you break, then you got screwed.

4. POGs

Here we go with acronyms again.  The first game of pog originated in Hawaii in the 1920s and was played with bottle caps from a commercial drink made from passionfruit, orange, and guava.  P-O-G.  Exploitation in the 1990s turned this pauper’s game into a marketing phenomenon.  Parents opened their wallets to buy their kids over-priced cardboard circles with cutesy cartoons on them.  I didn’t then, nor do I now know how to play or understand what the bid deal was.  Eventually, pogs began to be touted as collectibles.  Now, they work wonders with wobbly tables.  The backronym of POG: Parents Outlandishly Gullible.

3. Cabbage Patch Kids

Quite possibly the ugliest dolls ever assembled in a sweatshop, Cabbage Patch Kids took the early 1980s by storm.  These puffy little pug-nosed dolls drove hissy parents into fistfights and deluded a whole generation of children into thinking that babies and sauerkraut came from the same place.

2. Tickle-Me-Elmo

This mentally and linguistically challenged muppet from Sesame Street found true fame when toy makers made a plush version of him that took a fit when it was touched.  It sold on the store shelves for about $30.  It wasn’t long before inventories fell short.  Once again, fists and bullets flew between competing parents, who just had to make sure their whining brats had one for Christmas.  Those who lost the melees in the malls must have been suffering from severe concussions, because they then went on eBay and paid as much as $700 for a toy that their three-year-olds played with for five minutes before tossing it aside.  Online auctions propelled Tickle-Me-Elmo far beyond the monetary stupidity of Cabbage Patch Kids.  God bless the Interenet.

1. Beanie Babies

For God’s sake!  These were socks taken from shirtless Chinese children and stuffed with beans.  That’s right.  They were nothing more than bean bags.  Yet, people payed hundreds, even thousands of dollars for ones that were “rare” or “retired.”  Are you kidding me?  Do you know what people use to play hacky sack?  Bean bags!  So, if you were one of those that payed $500 for Marvin the Manic-Depressive Moose, rest easy knowing that your now worthless bean sack (which, by the way, was always worthless) could easily find a happy home with a bunch of kick-happy, burned-out, Neohippies.

They were all fashionable.  They were all doomed.  They were all fads.  There will be more like them.  Use your sense and watch your wallets.

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