7/12/06
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Tri-O's oddities, observations, and opinions
by Herb Kandel


Who would have thunk it ? As you read this a battle is being waged whose outcome will be ruled on in the next few months by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The widely recognized smiley face in the Wal-Mart ads may be in jeopardy. What will the sons of Sam do? They are being challenged by a French family who claims that they originated the face made of punctuation marks in 1971.
However the person who first conceived the smiley face is acknowledged to be
Harvey R. Ball. In 1963, it was he who devised the smiley yellow button for a Massachusetts company, State Mutual Life Assurance Company . For this Mr. Ball, a graphic artist, was paid $45. He never trademarked it. ( Sorry to disappoint all the Forrest Gump fans who thought Forrest did this by a fortuitous wiping of his dirty face on a yellow t-shirt.). It seems that under the U.S. trademark system the first to register a trademark is not as important in the ownership as is the first enterprise who utilizes and takes full advantage of the symbol. This legal tug-of-war continues as Wal-Mart contends that the icon is public domain and has given it wide retail exposure since 1996. So let the grins fall where they may as we hold our breath to see who comes up smiling.
The above got me to thinking how various personalities might have commented on this smiley face saga. Let’s make some conjectures (with apologies to all):
William Shakespeare: “To smile, or not to smile: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the store to suffer the slings and mask of Zorro, or to take arms against a sea of Jacques Chiracs, and by opposing end them. To chance to vanish , to be erased; aye, there's the rub.”Herman Melville: "Call me Ish-smiley, for I too will cling to the leviathan called pop-culture. ”
Charles Dickens: "It was the best of smiles, it was the worst of smiles, it was the age of hip, it was the age of hop, it was the epoch of bling-bling , it was the epoch of phat, but was it the time to pay the piper?“
Margaret Mitchell: "Goldie O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her infectious wide sunny smile.“
J. D. Salinger: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is, where I was drawn, and what my lousy design was like, and all that Mickey Mouse kind of crap, but I won’t.”
Ernest Hemingway: “ Maybe the French got there first. But for whom does the bell toll when frowny face needs the oval and the “C” for a mouth? You’ll know soon enough, brother.”
James Michener: “Smiley was conceived from the tip of a rod of Chinese graphite embedded in the core of a #2 cadmium colored pencil honed from the over fifty year old red cedar tree grown in north Alabama.”
Stephen King: “ When he looked in the mirror all he saw were the period eyes. Where was the close parentheses mouth? Then the misty cloud began seeping in from beneath the French door.”
Bill Clinton: (chuckle) “ It depends on who’s smiling.”
Al Gore to W: “ See that smiley face slithering down the table-top like Dali’s melting watch? Tell me that’s not the effect of global warming.” W: “Heck of a story Aley boy, but you know that it was caused by Iraqi ‘new-cue-lar’ [sic] WMD.”
Will Rogers: “Ownership makes no never mind, I never met a smile I didn’t like.”
Jesse Jackson: “ Whoa, whoa, this is not legal until the rainbow smiley face is represented”
Martin Luther King Jr.: ” I dreamed you judged smiley by the content of his circle rather that the context of his ink color or origin.”
Pat Robertson: “ Smileys are much too happy and self-absorbed. They must be gay.”
Rush Limbaugh: “I hold here, in my formerly nicotine stained fingers (sound of paper rattling ), and with half my brain tied behind my back, the report by the pinko drive by media admitting that John Kerry and the Democrats leaked the smiley face to the French.”
Al Franken: “ Rush Limbaugh is a big half brained idiot who puts on a smiley face every time he takes a blue pill.”
Bill O’Reilly: “ I’ll give you the last word to opine about the other big ‘O’ as long as the pithiness does not spin here. And check my web site to see what’s for sale.”
Bruce Springsteen: “Smiley was born in the U.S.A/ was born in the U.S.A./ they put a pencil in my hand/ sent me off to a foreign land/ to go and draw the yellow brand.”
50 Cent: “Yo Bro/ Smiley face/ no one ‘gonna take your place/ Wal-Mart ‘gotcha ina store/ Frenchie never get no more.”
Paris Hilton: “Smiley who?”