Lead-Based Memories: Vintage Drinking Glasses

I want to talk about these Alvin and the Chipmunks glasses, but before I go I have to set up this bit by explaining the plot of A Canticle for Leibowitz, a book written by Walter M. Miller Jr and published in 1959.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a funny book and you should read it, but let’s assume you haven’t and you’re not going to in the next few minutes. The book takes place after a nuclear war happens. Scientists and engineers and educated people are blamed for creating the technology that enabled the war and so educated people are murdered which leads to “The Simplification.” Read into that what you will. Anyway, this electrical engineer, Isaac Leibowitz, manages to escape detection and hides a bunch of blueprints and technical documents away in a bunker. Fast forward hundreds of years and we discover that monks have been transcribing the blueprints for centuries, even though they have no idea what they are. Compare this to real monks who used to transcribe Latin documents even though they could not read them. Anyway, there’s a whole funny bit where the monks don’t understand what they’re seeing and since the blueprints have white letters and diagrams on blue paper, they literally make copies by drawing all the blue parts on other sheets of white paper, leaving spaces where the letters and diagrams are. Like I said, it’s a good bood. It was relevant in 1959 and perhaps even more so today.

Anyway, back to the Chipmunks — and not specifically the Chipmunks, but all of those drinking glasses adorned with cartoon characters and slathered in lead-based paint. Yeah, I’ll get into that, too.

So as you probably know, David Seville was the leader of the Chipmunks — that’s Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. Alvin was the snarky one, Simon was the tall nerdy one with glasses, and Theodore was the pudgy and cute one. You may or may not know that David Seville’s real name was Ross Bagdasarian. In 1958, under the Seville name, Ross recorded the “witch doctor song” — you know, “ooh, eeh, ooh aah ahh,” and so on. By fooling around with the knobs on a variable speed tape recorder Ross realized if he slowed the tape down, his voice would become high pitched when played back at normal speed. So, in early 1958 we got the novelty Witch Doctor song and in late 1958, after learning he could harmonize with himself, we got the Chipmunks and their “Christmas (Don’t Be Late)” song with Ross doing all the voices.

BTW, if you’ve never listened to the Chipmunks at the original speed, it’s both creepy and beautiful.

Fast forward 20-25 years and the Chipmunks resurfaced in 1983 as a Saturday Morning Cartoon. The show was a typica Saturday morning show with lots of cover runes thrown in (singin’ chipmunks gotta sing, yo). Along with Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, we also got the Chipettes: Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor, each one essentially a mirror image of one of the Chipmunks. Since we’re going down rabbit holes, the Chipettes were discovered by an Australian orphan named Olivia who, with help from a kangaroo named Wendy, escaped the evil orphanage and found their way to New York. No, I’m not making that up. Anyway, you have to think that three male singing chipmunks and three female chipmunks who also sing and look just like the other three were bound to eventually cross paths, and they did. You wouldn’t think that would be enough to squeeze eight seasons out of, but it was.

”A canticle is a sacred hymn or song of praise with words taken from the Bible (excluding the Book of Psalms). The term comes from the Latin canticulum, meaning “little song”. These chants are traditionally used in Christian liturgical services like morning or evening prayer.” -Google.com.

I guess technically that intro doesn’t count as a canticle but, you know, it’s catchy.

Anyway.

About our years before Star Wars hit theaters, several fast food chains began selling promotional drinking glasses with Looney Tunes characters on them. While they weren’t definitely the first, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut began selling the glasses in 1973, and were the earliest national food chains to do so. Prices varied depending on the region between 39 cents and 69 cents, when purchased with a meal and a Pepsi. In 1977, McDonald’s released glasses featuring Ronald McDonald, Grimace, and all the gang, and that same year Burger King released the first wave of Star Wars glasses. They cost 59 cents when you purchased a Coca-Cola.

Every fast food restuant sold multiple waves of glasses with all sorts of tie-ins, and in 1986 it was Hardee’s that grabbed the Chipmunks license. They offered four different glasses: one for each of the Chipmunks and a fourth with all three Chipettes because if you do the conversion rate a chipmunk from Australia, especially one smuggled into the country by an orphan and a kangaroo, are only worth 1/3 of a regular chipmunk.

I guess if you weren’t there I should mention that you couldn’t just walk in and buy all our glasses. They offered a different glass each week, so if you wanted all four Chipmunks glasses you were having a hot ham and cheese or a mushroom and Swiss four weeks in a row, and dropping an extra 69 cents to get one of those glasses.

By the time I was a teenager, our cabinets were filled with Chipmunk glasses, and Smurf glasses, and Muppet glasses, and Flintstone glasses, and Happy Days glasses, and Dukes of Hazzard glasses, and Fraggle Rock glasses, and Care Bears glasses, plus all the other ones I previously mentioned. And it wasn’t just my cupboard, it was everyone’s cupboard. My grandma drank iced tea out of am E.T. glass. I drank Kool-Aid out of an Temple o Doom glass. I’m not saying they weren’t fun, but they weren’t collectibles. They were one level above red Solo cups.

Everybody’s cupboard looked like this.

Sometime around 2010 I went on a trip for work and had some time to kill so I found some local thrift stores and found a bunch of E.T. glasses there for $4 each and I laughed and laughed because that price was so high. Today of course most people would kill to find these for sale for $4. Those Chipmunks glasses I posted a picture or were $5.95, and that’s cheap. Today I see these types of glasses sell for $10-$15 regularly.

So, what happened to these glasses? Well as you know, the paint they used on them was lead-based, and lead is bad for humans. Now I have read that a person would have to scrape all the paint off of lots and lots of these glasses and comsume it all to have any ill effects, but logic-be-damned. McDonald’s was in the middle of selling Shrek glasses when the bad press came, McDonadld’s issud a recall, and more less that was the end of an industry.

There is nothing I love more than eating raw cookie dough. Nothing. Noth-ing. And when people started saying you could get sick from eating raw cookie dough, I laughed. I still eat it and have told my wife if I get sick and die from eating raw cookie dough, she has permission to put a picture of a cookie on my tombstone. Same goes for these glasses. I was drinking diet Dr. Pepper out of a Showbiz Pizza mug yesterday. 40+ years and the lead hasn’t got me yet. I’d drink cookie dough out of one if I could.

So where does that leave us? I hate to tell you this, but we’re those monks from A Canticle for Leibowitz. We’re those monks spending too much money on stuff that restaurants were giving away for pennies to try and get kids to eat more McNuggets. If I had any brains at all I’d remember that the next time I went to a thrift store or antique mall and saw one of those glasses for sale.

But I won’t…