A Fast Buck on Sputnik/part 2

And if cinematic cynics have found a gold mine, can TV’s prospectors be far behind? The frantic phone calls of TV programmers have forced Tom Corbett, Space Cadet out of interplanetary retirement (TV buffs lost interest in “science” in 1952); new cosmic episodes are already in production.

Official Films caught the eye and contractual pen of eight station policymakers within a few days of a direct mailing about Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Zev’s Science Fiction Theatre is also getting a new Kremlin-inspired whirl. (It must be reassuring to the Russians, if they read Variety: Tales of Tomorrow, Space Patriot and Space Fuzzies also suddenly have new futures.) Tin Pan Alley has its own crash programs to fill what Thoreau called the “broad, flapping American ear.”

The U.S. Copyright Office reported that by November 7 at least three patriotic songwriters had come to their country’s defense in the dark hour of Sputnik‘s ascendancy. Sam Manning of New York City was the first to file an appropriate ditty: Bee Beep, Bee Beep-Round and Round the Sputnik Goes. This, a mere five days after, blasting off. Gerald Englerth reflected five more days for his creation:

I’m flying all around the world With my crazy satellite girl Well, ever since the satellite’s birth, We’ve been circling around the earth. Or this deathless couplet: I say the fun has just begun We’re on Sputnik No. 1.

A certain pseudonymous Peter Prokovieff Philbrick Shultz was next with Sputnik!--Tango di USSR, but this freedom fighter’s blow for culture was actually registered with another star-shine patriot, a C.H. McEntyre of LaCanada, California. May his fiddle hold up under the intense heat. Englerth, in a veritable fit of creativity, has already confessed to Puppnik, celebrating another Soviet phenomenon--but with the same good old American doggerel.

The Wall Street Journal reported (Nov. ,6) ‘that the toy makers were jumping into the Sputnik’s orbit too. Or, as the reporter put it: “Enterprising U.S. companies hope to push their sales to higher orbits by exploiting Russia’s Sputnik I and IT.” Numerous manufacturers have launched “crash programs to get out new products either Sputnik-shaped or, Sputnik-named.” The inventory of such national-security projects includes, at this early date, play helmets, bubble gum, balloons, Christmas candy and sequin ‘decorations for ladies’ dresses shaped like the orbiting artificial stars. Books, telescopes, globes, cats and pickles are among the commodities receiving a boost from the agency branch-office in Moscow.

The approaching Christmas season always has its own special anxieties for the ambitious toy man. But charitable Russian atheists have conveniently timed their rocketry to give an extra push to our commercial Saint Nicks, who are sweating more from fat inventories than from pillowed, red-flannel suits. Observes Irving Cohen, senior vice-president of the Ideal Toy Corp.: “We’re quite thankful 10 the Russian scientists for their timing.” Ideal moved up release dates on a “Satellite Launcher Truck,” a $4.98 contraption which shoots discs forty-five feet into the air, and a $7.98 Sky Sweiper which projects images of aircraft, (and now Sputniks) onto the wall to be dispatched with suction-tipped missiles from the game’s twin-rocket launcher.

Truly an ideal boy’s game in a man’s world. Or to put the same childish values into merchandising categories, the same company’s books show 200,000 satellite launchers shipped since Sputnik, against an anticipated 100,000. Progress depends on the orbit you’re keeping, Ideal was able to make its contribution to America’s growth by working its staff till 2 a.m. for three nights after the Soviet launching. (We had our space toys on the market forty-eight hours after Sputnik started circling.”

There are other hustlers for the public welfare in the American business community. Park Plastics, Linden, N. J., simply taped the word “Sputnik” in the appropriate places on its satellite battle stations; it also added a throaty beep sound to its toy. Now that ought to interest a lot of youngsters in algebra and physics. To take care of expected retailer demand, Arthur Lange, company president, thoughtfully moved eighty people on the water-pistol production line over to the space-toy department.

Coleco Toy Products of Hartford, Connecticut, has ‘already made 80,000 space helmets to cover the empty heads of America’s pre-adolescents ‘good insurance that they will be too hopped up to get anything out of their math and science classes. It all started (two spring wires for antennas and painted-on stars) at the Monday lunch after Sputnik. By nightfall, plans had matured; four days later around-the-clock production was under way.