10.17.2007
Re-deranging your house
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Kim Boyd and company President Ralph Hoenle with some of the Halloween novelties their company, Johnson Smith Co., sells through their catalog. The brother and sister sell holiday related seasonal novelties. photo |
As kids, Ralph and Kim Hoenle grew wary of the surprises Dad brought home from work.
“We always knew whenever my dad brought something home for us and said, ‘Here, what do you think about this?’ We wouldn’t touch it, because invariably it would shock or buzz or beep or squirt water,” says Kim, now Kim Hoenle Boyd.
She and her brother have since taken over the Johnson Smith Co. in Bradenton from their father, Ralph Hoenle Sr. The mail-order catalog company has been hawking whoopee cushions, joy buzzers and X-ray glasses during much of its near-century of life. Along the way, its ads in children’s magazines and comic books won legions of young fans, among them the late TV talk show host Johnny Carson and Jean Shepherd, who wrote “A Christmas Story.”
The classic Johnson Smith Co. catalog, featuring everything from practical jokes to practical housewares, was “the Rosetta stone of American culture,” Shepherd wrote.
The Halloween 2007 edition of “Things You Never Knew Existed” shows that some beloved traditions do continue. For All Hallows Eve this year, ghoulish customers can order a severed hand and foot roasting on a barbecue grill; a blue-veined “It’s Alive” baby puppet; and the Gruesome Little Brother Wig, a shriveled, screaming, latex fetus that appears to grow out of the wearer’s head.
This catalog is not for the wreaths and mums set.
Halloween and Christmas mark the busy season, when workers load 12,000 to 13,000 boxes a day onto trucks. This time of year, as the brown cartons snake along conveyor belts at two huge plants in Bradenton, employees load them with moaning eyeballs, severed heads and rubber skeletons.
The gimmicks that helped make the company’s reputation remain steady sellers. A new generation of whoopee cushion — remote controlled — is hot, says Hoenle. The company offers an array of flatulent characters, from gnomes to teddy bears to Christmas angels.
It’s the stuff kids have loved forever, even if their parents haven’t.
A boy once wrote a letter demanding the company send no more catalogs. “Your products are awful,” he wrote.
“Four days later, we got a letter that said, ‘Please ignore my previous letter,’” Boyd says, relishing the oft-told tale. “‘My mother made me write that. Please keep the catalogs coming.’ ”
The company was founded at the turn of the 20th century in Sydney, Australia. British-born Alfred Johnson Smith sold rubber stamps and imported novelties.
He expanded the joke lines when he moved the company to Chicago in 1914 — and later, Detroit — to take advantage of the huge American mail-order market. His first catalog featured 64 pages of puzzles, tricks and novelties. By 1922, the catalog had grown to 400 pages. It hit 738 pages just before the Great Depression, then leveled off at about 500 pages.
Business suffered during the Depression and World War II, but people still asked for the catalogs to brighten their mood, Hoenle says. Some would write, saying, “I can’t order right now, but when things get better, I will.”
Looking to re-derange your home for Halloween? The Johnson Smith Co. may have just the thing. Here are some sick-knacks for ghoulish celebration.
- Tight-knit family: Freak out the party with the Little Brother Wig, $17.98. “Poor baby brother got the raw end of the deal at birth,” the ad copy declares.
- The mind wanders: The Crawling Brain, $12.97, “moves forward humming merrily, then stops, insane muttering coming from its sharp-toothed mouth.”
- Entertain like a carnivore! The Family Butcher apron, $14.98, and Meat Eater Mask, $34.98, perfectly complement the Body Parts BBQ.
- Borrow a cup of eternity? In this T-shirt, $15.98, you can flaunt your bond with the apocalypse.