Many fads swept through America’s popular culture when I was a boy–remember hula hoops?–but Walt Disney ignited the biggest fad of them all in 1954-55: the Davy Crockett fad.
Actually, that was only the second Davy Crockett fad. The first was during Crockett’s own lifetime, in the 1830s and 40s. Congressman Crockett was one of our first celebrities. All sorts of rubbish was published about him, some with his consent, some not.But Disney’s Davy Crockett fad–wow!
It was huge. Coonskin hats. T-shirts. Color comic strips in the Sunday paper. My Grandma bought me a Crockett marionette–well beyond my boyhood skills. And these chintzy cardboard log cabins: send in a zillion proof-of-purchase labels, and the company sent you a cabin. It fell well below our expectations. Who needs cardboard cabins when you’ve got Lincoln Logs?
And everybody knew and sang the Disney series’ theme song: “Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the Land of the Free./ Raised in the woods where he knew every tree, and killed him a b’ar when he was only three…” Etc. I wish I still had that record. I think it was by the Rhythmaires.
Don’t get me wrong. Crockett was an admirable man. He’s still one of my heroes. But in 1954 he was everybody’s hero! All this and President Eisenhower, too.
Nowadays the Internet swallows fads whole. I was a kid and I thought fads were fun. The teen next door swirling his hula hoop around his hips while he walked up and down the porch stairs. But the Crockett fad was even bigger than hula hoops.