Among other assorted items, a pair of golden slippers grace the cover of Wendy Woloson's Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America. As in the eponymous nineteenth-century tune, these golden slippers appear as an enticing object of desire. Yet, the slippers advertised in the 1964 Spencer Gift catalog were hardly as glamorous as they appeared: made with Suedine foam and selling for $2.95 a pair, they were likely cheap “crap.” This makes them a perfect example of the phenomenon at the heart of Woloson's insightful and entertaining study on the growing dissemination of cheap and shoddy goods in America's consumer economy. Consumer historians have spent the past decades tracing the way modern societies have set out to amass an “empire of things” (Frank Trenmann). Woloson asks why so many of these things have been low-quality “crap” that fails to live up to our expectations?
“Crap,” as Woloson defines it, is not simply characterized by low prices or poor quality but pertains to goods that are insincere, dishonest, and even cynical. Gadgets, merchandise, collectibles, giftware, and novelty items—the variety of goods that fall into this category is broad. In her richly illustrated book, Woloson traces the spread of these items since the nineteenth century, looks at the companies that made them or facilitated their distribution, and probes into the motivations of the millions of consumers who bought them. Thus, the study has much to offer to historians of business and marketing, assembling often obscure cases of retail emporiums, novelty producers, or collectible manufacturers such as the Franklin Mint. Based on a wide variety of source materials, ranging from catalogs and advertisements to company records and professional manuals, Woloson's research leads us into previously neglected markets for carnival goods or intentional collectibles such as commemorative plates. Marketing ploys and merchandising campaigns contributed greatly to the spread of such “crap,” but so did consumer desires.
The first few chapters probe our desire for cheapness and the hunt for a good bargain. Peddlers and variety stores knew how to stoke our appetite for cheap and plentiful consumer goods already in the early nineteenth century. After the Civil War, five-and-dime chains such as Woolworth made this “cheapening mania” ever more systematic, and consumers increasingly embraced the giving of cheap gifts at various occasions. Chain stores employed psychological strategies to encourage the “thrill of the hunt” for a good bargain, and early on they looked overseas for an endless supply of shoddy toys and decorative items from places such as Germany and Japan frequently produced by child labor. Making good profit off of small margins, these chains paved the way for present-day dollar stores and discounters like Walmart that specialize in cheap goods made abroad.
Gadgets and their promise of perpetual innovation have been another source of crappy goods. Two chapters chronicle the long history of American inventions from household innovations to multi-tools that fell short on their promised utility, quickly broke because of inferior materials, or simply turned out to be humbug on closer inspection. Still, Woloson demonstrates, consumers eagerly followed the lure of technological modernity or “better living through gadgetry” in part because of elaborate marketing schemes. Salespeople knew how to make a spellbinding demonstration, and sky-mall catalogs and TV infomercials successfully advertised the next great thing: a Five-in-One Fryer, a Miracle Brush, or a ShamWow cleaning cloth.
Free stuff and the appeal of getting something for nothing stand at the center of the book's next section. Woloson surveys a diverse array of goods often overlooked: cheap promotional giveaways, carnival prizes, and merchandise produced purely for marketing purposes. Engraved pens and other business gifts designed to build customer loyalty also fall into this category. They supported a small cottage industry of engravers and printers during the mid-twentieth century that emblazoned rain hats or desk sets with corporate logos.
Other chapters focus on consumer desires to collect or to belong, using cheap goods to become part of a community and to interact with others. Woloson traces the rise of specialized gift shops and of collectible manufacturers that frequently manipulated consumers into attaching value to essentially worthless mass-produced collectors’ items such as Hummel figurines or Beanie Babies. Case studies of the marketing of “authentic” plates and coins since the 1970s and of the Market BradEx, a faux trading floor for collectibles devised during the 1980s, impressively demonstrate the lengths to which marketers went in order to bring cheap crap to the people. Yet, as a final chapter on novelty goods suggests, in many cases the market simply provided what (some) consumers apparently had long been waiting for: itching powder, false teeth, and fake vomit tapped into desires to prank (and frequently demean) our fellow human beings. In the end, Woloson makes clear that the history of crap is no joke but had serious implications ranging from environmental waste and labor exploitation to a material culture based on insincerity and cynicism.
To be sure, there are limits to using “crap” as an analytical category for the history of business and consumption. The short introduction does not provide an elaborate theoretical framework, and when it comes to, for example, those collectibles or gift items many cherish as home decoration, quality or the meaning of goods ultimately remain as subjective as any argument about taste. Who is to say what is truly “crap”? It is also not always clear as to how far this really is as genuinely an “American” story as the book suggests. Obsolescence and a penchant for cheap goods were certainly prominent in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American consumer culture; however, not only did other countries produce much of the shoddy stuff available in the United States, but they were often equally happy to consume it.
Still, Crap is well researched, insightful, and humorously written—a great read for business historians and a broader public alike. Woloson not only critically engages the proliferation of crappy products, but she also manages to convey the sense of wonder and delight they projected for millions of consumers. These goods responded to real needs, we come to understand, and yet “crap” failed us in so many ways.
