{"id":3301,"date":"2022-01-10T23:30:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T06:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/?p=3301"},"modified":"2022-01-11T00:06:49","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T07:06:49","slug":"when-scrappy-brought-good-things-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/10\/when-scrappy-brought-good-things-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"When Scrappy Brought Good Things to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For years, I\u2019ve known about the Scrappy lamp\u2014a fine little plastic table lamp with color decals of Scrappy, Yippy, Margy, and Oopy on its shade. There are two of them in the Scrappyland archive, and at least one of them still works, though I wouldn\u2019t recommend leaving a 1930s electrical device plugged in except under constant supervision. What I didn\u2019t know was the backstory behind the lamp\u2014including the fact that it was a product of what might have been the largest company ever to hitch its merchandising wagon to Scrappy<\/p>\n

Then Scrappy merchant extraordinaire David Welch alerted me to something he was selling on eBay: ads from a 1930s magazine for the premium industry. They were from General Electric, and touted lamps made of a Bakelite-like GE plastic called Textolite. And they spotlighted \u2026 the Scrappy lamp.<\/p>\n

Did that mean that the lamp was designed to be given away? Well, it was. Or at least I found a 1940 article about a bowling tournament in Meriden, Connecticut where Scrappy lamps seem to have been doled out as last-place prizes. I hope the recipients were pleased nonetheless.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s not to say that the Scrappy lamp was manufactured purely for giveaway purposes. Here it is being sold for a buck, which was real money back then\u2014about $20 in 2021 dollars.<\/p>\n

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And here it is marked down to the irresistible price of fifty cents.<\/p>\n

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Whatever the price or lack thereof, the Scrappy lamp remains pleasing. GE\u2019s ad copy about Textolite\u2019s durable nature may help explain why quite a few of the lamps have survived in nice shape; at any given time, you can probably find one or more on eBay, should this post leave you coveting one.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t seen the lamp in person, here\u2019s a closer look courtesy of photos from a 2017 auction.<\/p>\n

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That particular Scrappy lamp came with a bonus I\u2019d never seen until I put together this post: the original box, with elaborate artwork depicting Scrappy (praying, with a picture of Margy on his wall) and Margy (reading, with a picture of Oopy on the wall). Yippy somehow made it into both scenes. And so did the Scrappy lamp.<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t remember ever having heard of Textolite before, and indeed had forgotten that GE was ever in the plastics business. Then I remembered that Jack Welch, who eventually became the company\u2019s fabulously successful (though in recent years reputationally damaged<\/a>) CEO, got his start in the plastics division in Pittsfield, Mass, the address mentioned in the Scrappy lamp ad. In his memoir Jack: Straight From the Gut<\/em>\u00a0he even mentions his difficulty selling Textolite in the 1960s, though by that time GE was applying the brand to its lackluster answer to Formica.<\/p>\n

Like J.C. Penney\u2014which also embraced Scrappy in the 1930s<\/a>\u2014GE is still with us, but a shadow of its once-mighty self. The company (which sold its plastics business in 2007<\/a>) recently announced plans to\u00a0split itself into three parts<\/a>, ending its long run as as one of the U.S.\u2019s most iconic industrial giants. It just goes to show: Ending a relationship with Scrappy is always bad luck, even if it takes seventy or eighty years to catch up with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, I\u2019ve known about the Scrappy lamp\u2014a fine little plastic table lamp with color decals of Scrappy, Yippy, Margy, and Oopy on its shade. There are two of them in the Scrappyland archive, and at least one of them still works, though I wouldn\u2019t recommend leaving a 1930s electrical device plugged in except under … Continue reading When Scrappy Brought Good Things to Life<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artifacts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2D9Zl-Rf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3301"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3315,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions\/3315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}