A Plushie from the Elks Lodge

 

(I apologize for the smudge photos. I just had my phone outside in the cold, shoveling snow.)

The Elks Lodge is a fraternal order, not unlike the Masons and the Knights of Columbus, that has enjoyed more than 150 years of service throughout the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the Elks engage in community outreach and drug awareness programs, among many, many other acts of charity. 

As an interesting side note, I found out on Wikipedia that their anthem is the signature tune of New Year's Eve: "Auld Lang Syne." Which brings us to this plush elk, which I found at the Family Discount Outlet on Milwaukee Avenue. He's all dressed up for the big night, when the clock strikes midnight and the date changes from 1999 to 2000. His cummerbund bears the Elks logo with "2000" underneath it, as well as the slogans "ELKS CARE, ELKS SHARE" and "SAY NO TO DRUGS." 

I assume these were given out at some kind of a kid's event.

Future Farmers of America Beanie Bear

 

An oddity, this! I found it several years ago at a fall bazaar hosted by Palos Heights' Animal Welfare League. It's a Beanie Bear produced for Future Farmers of America, a government-sponsored organization devoted to teaching American children in the ways of agricultural education.

I have NO other information about it. Perhaps it was made available as a premium at an annual convention, and this is only the 2000 edition?

Annalee Mobilitee 2000 Doll

 

This is an Annalee Mobilitee doll made to ring in the new millennium. The Annalee companee (tee-hee-hee) started producing felt dolls with distinctive, whimsical faces in 1934, in New Hampshire. Their output includes elves, rabbits, and other miniature characters, and this one is a white mouse with a top hat and round champagne goblet. He's sitting in an ice bucket atop a throne of ribbons and streamers.

I found it at Three Sisters Antique Mall in our very own Blue Island, IL!

A simple gift bag.

I've had this gift bag ever since the Museum started back in 2012, but it never seemed to make its way onto the blog...until now.

It's a simple black bag with a satin texture, silver stars, Milky Way-esque spirals, and a "warping" starfield like Star Wars' hyperdrive effects in the background, evoking the idea that the 21st Century will involve new frontiers and exploration to further into space than we had ever dreamed.

All around the foreground, "HAPPY NEW YEAR 2000" is presented in futuristic, MICR number-inspired fonts, invoking greater use of computers than ever before.

There's not much else to say here, really.

The Pillsbury Doughboy

 When you think of baking, the first name that probably comes to mind is Pillsbury. Their ready-to-bake dough products have been well-known on supermarket shelves for as long as I can remember. I even managed to get their Crescent Rolls onto our Thanksgiving table for a few years on the strength of an ad campaign in which the Pilgrims had them on their table! 

Grandma once told me a story about when she was in Chicago in about the mid-60s. Some gentlemen took her into a small room and played on a film projector the first commercial to feature their mascot, the Pillsbury Doughboy. After that, they asked her on a survey card what she thought. She must have liked him a great deal, because he went on to much fame and fortune! And he even went on to ring in the new millennium.

Picture reproduced from a Mercari listing

There he is, now wearing a nifty little "2000 Millennium" shirt along with his chef's hat and neckerchief. Debuting on television screens in 1965, the Doughboy has been a familiar face on cans of dough, bags of flour, and boxes of waffles for almost a century. 

"Hoo-hoo!"

The Sacagawea Dollar Coin

 

Images reproduced from usmint.gov

Ask the average Joe on the street what the coins of America are, and he'll tell you: penny, nickel, dime, quarter. But what he may not mention are half-dollar and dollar coins, which depicted John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower respectively, and were a fair sight larger than the quarter, making them impractical as pocket change. I sometimes got them at my job from our older clients.

Well, in the mid-70s, the US Mint discontinued the Eisenhower, replacing it with a smaller dollar coin depicting women's suffragist Susan B. Anthony, whose tireless work enshrined women with the right to vote following the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

I remember in fifth grade that someone brought one of these to school, and there was a week-long search when they'd mislaid it.

The year before that, about 1997 or so, I was on a volleyball team--this was fourth grade. While we were doing our thing, PBS was running a Ken Burns miniseries documenting the Lewis and Clark expedition following Thomas Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon. 

And leading Lewis and Clark on that expedition was a young woman named Scagawea, who navigated them down the trail while carrying her infant on her back...and who, in the year 2000, got her very own dollar coin, which you can see above.

She is only the second woman in American history to grace a coin, and there was no better choice for the new millennium than a guide, an explorer, to show us a new way forward while honoring Native American contributions to our historical tapestry...something that America's culture downplays to its peril... 

Sears Wish Book, 1999 and 2000 Editions

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our 200TH POST!

The Sears Wish Book. That most anticipated of direct-mail publications, rivaled only by Fingerhut's  and J.C. Penney's annual volumes of Yuletide delights. Every year, it was like holding the key to Aladdin's Cave of Wonders in my hands, packed as it was to the brim with all the most fabulous presents a kid could open on Christmas day...or dream of opening.

Sears began as Sears, Roebuck, and Co. as a mail-order catalog at the beginning of the 20th Century, and later moved on to brick-and-mortar retail locations. For decades, Sears called the Windy City its home, and the skyscraper which once bore its name served as a broadcasting antenna for all of Chicago's television stations. 

More than that, though, Sears represented stability. Ever since I was very little, Chicago Ridge Mall had Sears as its most prominent anchor store, and Dad used to get our cars checked up and repaired all the time at their auto center. The company made a good name for me by subsidizing children's fare on PBS like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and also by backing the North American leg of Phil Collins' Both Sides of the World tour in 1995. 

This past year, when the Chicago Ridge branch closed for good, the world felt a little less stable. Walking into the Spirit Halloween pop-up this past October felt oddly ghoulish in a way that it normally doesn't: Sears' corpse was still comparatively warm. In truth, we all know that the company's days were numbered following reports of competition within the company, its stores, and its subsidiaries--K-Mart's demise heralded the first tolling of the bells--but it's still saddening. 

All right, let's get to it and rekindle some nostalgia with the 1999 and 2000 volumes. I chose 1999 because it seemed more likely to have some Millennium-themed goodies, and 2000 because it might hold more of the same, but as leftovers. 

Here is the most relevant section from the 1999 edition.

We've already covered a lot of this stuff, so I will point out the most interesting things.

First is a teddy bear with a digital countdown clock, which automatically gives it far more personality than the Countdown clock I previously posted.

Next are a child's backpack, digital organizer, stationery set, and activity book set, with a scrapbook similar to an earlier book I posted. The organizer is interesting for being somewhat passé in the smartphone age.

Third is an Oregon Scientific countdown clock. It does not seem to be Millennium-themed, but has many bells and whistles such as a backlight, snooze, and countdown bar graph.

Fourth are Monopoly Millennium and Millennium Princess Barbie, which made it into Happy Meal form. The Monopoly game will be a video review.

Fifth is Trivial Pursuit Millennium, which I covered in mid-2013.

Finally, and far more interesting, are Minnie Mouse and a Millennium Cabbage Patch Baby. I can feel a separate entry for Cabbage Patch Kids coming on.

This Wish Book is for Christmas 2000-2001. The Millennium itself had already come and gone as a marketing fad, so this one doesn't have a dedicated section. More than that, it doesn't have an awful lot of 2000-specific stuff. What little there is is relegated to "the first coin of the new millennium." For example, one of then is a full-color version of the Sacagawea Dollar Coin...which just happens to be our next article!