Strange Fads, Part 1 – Pet Rocks

The reasons why fads come and go are varied. For some people, they outgrew what was popular at the time, such as the fashion of a certain decade. For others, they moved up the ladder, like from toy cars to real ones. And for even more people, they had come to the realization that the fad simply did not make sense.

One of the fads that I found to be mind-boggling was the one involving Pet Rocks. I found it strange that anyone would actually buy in to this fad. But what I found even stranger was that 1.5 million of these things were actually sold. And in about a six month period after the first rock was sold, the guy who thought about it became a millionaire.

Pet Rock

Pet Rocks actually started off as plain rocks. But in a short amount of time, the newer ones being sold evolved to have faces painted on them.

They came in a box that had holes so the rocks could breath, straw that acted as a nest so they could sleep, and a 32-page pet training manual which instructed people on how to make their rocks sit and stay. It also instructed owners how teach their Pet Rocks to attack, presumably with a helping hand from their owners.

Costing mere pennies, each Pet Rock was sold for as much as US$ 3.95 before coming down to about US$ 2 after the 1975 Christmas season was over.

Strange Fad

I was a very young child when I first heard about this fad. And even at that time, I could not understand why it was so popular. Our backyard had rocks of exactly the same sort for years and I never heard of them doing anything other than to sit in the soil and do nothing.

Then one day, a guy in a bar thinks that a Pet Rock would be a great idea. And from a financial point of view, he was probably right because he made at least US$ 2 Million from it.

And just when I thought it wouldn’t be a big hit, news about relatives joining the craze began to trickle in. People who used droppers to provide their Pet Rocks with daily doses of water was strange. Then there there were people who would stroke, bathe, and even talk to their Pet Rocks as if they were alive was even stranger.

They say that hindsight is 20/20. And when the topic of Pet Rocks came up recently, I was surprised to learn that quite a few of my relatives bought them, with majority being adamant that it was a great fad. But after a few glasses of wine, these same individuals admitted to buying them without thinking because everyone else was doing so. It was only after finishing a bottle of wine, that they finally admitted to vowing never do it again.

Final Thoughts

The rights to Pet Rocks were sold in 2012. but they never gained the same popularity as they did back in 1975. Then again, who knows? A generation or two from now may see the resurrection of this strange fad. And instead of painting faces by hand, we might see Pet Rocks created with 3-D printers of with faces that are etched through Lasers.