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This advertisement for Madame Alexander’s Millennium Doll appeared on the back of Dolls’ January 2000 edition. The doll itself introduces a new theme to the Museum’s shelves: space travel. Dressed as an appealingly retro spacefarer from the ‘50s, she wears a silver hood with a representation of our Solar System on it; at the center is “2000.” Her astro-dress is primarily silver with gold trim.

This doll is a lighthearted take on the Millennium proceedings. It looks to the future through the lens of 1950s/early 1960s visions of what the future, and the year 2000, might look like. Obviously, little has changed, but this doll is a cute nod to the idea that everyone would wear impractical fashions in everyday life.

In the final analysis, it’s a piece of affectionately-ironic retro kitsch, and it’s one of the most cheerful takes on the Millennium that I’ve encountered.

July 28, 1999: FDA OKs First of New Type of Drug to Fight the Flu

July 28, 2000: The Napster case: a test case where intellectual property rights protection stands against the freedom of consumers to copy for their own private use

Presenting...The Millennium Beanie Baby!

Yes, it’s true: I finally have the vaunted Millennium Beanie Baby! It cost $2.00 at the Salvation Army Thrift Store on 87^th and Cicero; astonishingly, it still has its tag and the bow around its neck. You sometimes see them on eBay for upwards of $25-30 depending on the condition.

Millennium is a small, magenta bear; on its chest, you can see a symbol of Planet Earth with a sunrise next to it and “2000” on the lower edge of the globe. Its ear-tag lists its birth date as January 1, 1999, which is interesting because it's the New Year's Day before the turn of the millennium. (I get the feeling that to be "born" on New Year's Day 2000 would have seemed a bit gauche.)

I find the combination of themes present in the overall bear unique. First, there’s the world globe, which I’ve documented in several other items. This time, we have a new theme, that of the morning sunrise, whose position behind the globe gives it an almost halo-like effect. The addition of “2000” completes the image, but before I summarize it, let me also state that the overall image is set diagonally and flawlessly balanced on the bear’s leftmost side...exactly where the human heart resides.

Its coloring carries symbolic weight, too. Magenta is an offshoot of purple, a color that unites red and blue. Besides being two out of three primary hues, red and blue represent warm and cool. Interestingly enough, though blue and red are opposed, they are not discordant in the same way that red and green are. Put those two side by side, and it just looks bad.

Back to magenta. As I was saying earlier, magenta is a slightly warmer offshoot of purple. Per Wikipedia, purple symbolizes, among other things, individuality, unconventionality, and uncertainty. These traits can be interpreted as negative, but magenta represents their lighter, warmer, and more comforting side.

From all that, the message is clear: The year 2000—and, by extension, the turn of the millennium— will bring about love (the heart), harmony (the image’s perfect balance), unity (the world globe) and a brand-new start (the morning sunrise). It will be an uncertain time, but in the best and most hopeful way possible (magenta).

Here is the poem on its tag:

“A brand new century has come to call/Health and happiness to one and all/Bring on the fireworks and all the fun/Let’s keep the party going ‘til 2001!” 

That last line is a tongue-in-cheek jab at Prince’s song “1999:” “’Cause they say Two Thousand zero-zero, party over, oops, outta time/So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999.” The song itself has rather dark lyrics in spite of its catchy tune, and the poem on the tag is the polar opposite of that: Far from being the end of the world, 2000 is the start of something great! 

July 21, 1999: Clinton Signs Bill Limiting Y2K [law]suits

July 21, 2000: Puerto Ricans Could Vote For US President

In which I try to do a TARDIS Eruditorum...

I’ve been reading a little too much of Dr. Philip Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum blog, which puts stories and episodes of the BBC series “Doctor Who” into a social context by relating current events from when the episodes aired to the episodes themselves. It’s a very insightful project, and it’s inspired me to try my hand at it. Here goes—wish me luck.

 



 



The addition of a food product to the Museum's exhibits was inevitable. A friend on Facebook found this box of General Mills' “Millenni-O's” on another blog, and it is hosted here with permission. Basically, these are Cheerios sweetened with brown sugar and with an extra shape—a 2—added to the mix, so that you could get a “2000” with every spoonful. Cereals are perishable, and this is why Millenni-O's are almost impossible to find completely intact. The back of the box offers ideas and suggestions on building one's own time capsule of the 20^th Century.  

Yet again, we encounter this theme of time capsules and preserving what came before. It’s so prevalent that I’m beginning to see an overlap between the idea of the time capsule and the crisis surrounding the Y2K computer bug, but I’ll get to that in a moment. First, though, I’ll give you a brief history lesson (oh, don’t roll your eyes, it’ll only take a minute): At the heart of the Y2K problem was the idea that, in the changeover from 1999 to 2000—or 99-00—computers would think that “00” meant “1900” and not “2000.” (This 2-bit configuration came about because the earliest computers had very little internal memory, and corner-cutting was necessary.)

 

 As it happens, there were a few problems around the world, but, on January 1^st, 2000, the world as we knew it still existed thanks to the efforts of some very dedicated experts and technicians. I myself don’t pretend to fully understand what the problem is all about, but I do know that word of it spread across the globe, and with every news report and every discussion the nature of the problem became more and more distorted. At its peak, Y2K’s most extreme vision was the total collapse of society. It was almost a holdover from the fear of nuclear annihilation, which permeated American culture from the 50s to the 90s…I remember being aware of the panic, which hit the public consciousness in Fall 1999 or so. There was a lot of talk about preparing, stockpiling, building a bomb shelter (or using the one you’d built but never got to use when nuclear war didn’t strike), and all that delightful stuff.  

Which brings us back to the idea of the time capsule. Before the Y2K craze, time capsules were a way of preserving curiosities from our time so that our great-grandchildren could have a laugh at our expense a hundred years later. Around 1999 or so, though, the idea of preserving history commingled with the ever-present fear of total societal collapse: If and when the world ends, you can dig up the capsule and show people what life was like before the end. 

Here we are, in 2013. The world as we know it still exists. And, like the steel box that contains things from 100 years ago, we can open our New Millennium time capsule and have a laugh, because the things we did to prepare ourselves for the end of the world relied on some hilarious leaps of logic. Even if society ended on December 31^st, 1999, the world as we knew it would probably still exist. We would still have these things called books, and there would still be these places called libraries. Our villages and cities would not suddenly turn into a sandy desert one minute into the new year.

Boy, weren’t we just silly all those years ago?

 

 

July 14, 1999: GOP Weakens Democrats’ HMO Bill

July 14, 2000: Jury clears US over Waco deaths



A light update this week.

The past week has been really long and really tiring, and I’m saving my energy for two larger posts, one of which is going to be a Sydney Olympics 2000 retrospective.

The other one will feature my thoughts on Harry S. Dent, Jr.’s book The Roaring 2000s, a financial book.

To that end, this week will be a lighter post.

 

 

 

This is the inside of a non-working claw machine at Alsip Swap-O-Rama Flea Market.

As you can see, it hasn’t worked since 2000 or so, because there are a lot of “Millennium Bears” inside it!

I am really not sure where these bears come from or who made them. They’re all navy blue with a golden text box bearing the year “1999” embroidered on their chests.

They don’t seem to commemorate anything other than the turn of the millennium, so I can only say that they’re little more than a cheap cash-in on the Beanie Babies trend.

(I do, however, have the original Millennium Beanie Baby, which I found at the Salvation Army Thrift Store for $2, but I’ll save that for next week or so.)

 

If any of you out there on the Web have one of these or can provide more info on 'em, I'd appreciate it.

 

 

July 7, 1999: Cape Canaveral celebrates the 30^th Anniversary of the Moon Landings

July 7, 2000: Burglars removed about 30 compact discs from a car in Wheeling, IL (I include this one because reports about stolen compact discs are so 2000…you never hear of compact discs anymore.)