“Ah yes, I remember it well,” said Maurice Chevalier in “Gigi,” and I remember when the latest in our review of fads hit the U.S.
The year was 1975, the middle of the self-seeking ’70s.
In that “Me Decade,” this little bauble summed up the time’s quest for self-mastery and self-knowledge.
Joshua Reynolds created the “mood ring.”
The ring’s stone possessed a heat-sensitive liquid crystal that ostensibly changed colors to reflect the wearer’s changing moods.
If you had one, you’d recall that purple indicated bliss, blue was tranquility, a yellow-green implied stability (or maybe dullness), reddish-brown meant irritability and black was, of course, gloom, depression, despair or worse.
For a brief period in 1975, more than 20 million mood rings were purchased, some as cheap as $2, others from Neiman-Marcus for up to $250 — I bet you didn’t buy one of those.
Celebs such as Ali MacGraw and Barbra Streisand subscribed to their validity and one columnist called them “thermometers of the mind.”
The product probably wouldn’t have been as big a hit had it not arrived coincident with “biofeedback,” monitoring hidden body rhythms.
Reynolds’ involvement in that craze led him into his rings, a more portable substitute for the EEG machines he tried to use at his biofeedback seminars.
Sadly, the rings were not without flaws. Their response to body temperature was not precise; one could cheat the system (holding a ring tightly could turn it a tranquil blue).
The other issue was that the liquid crystals wore out over time, growing blacker and blacker (deeper into despair?).
By 1976, the market was flooded with cheap imitations and other accessories such as belts, watches, and panties (don’t ask).
Within a year, the fad that had begun in New York City faded like the ring’s crystals and Reynolds’ mood grew black as his company went bankrupt.
Most Americans fell back on what they used before to assess their moods, facial expressions and verbal comments.
I’m feeling pretty good today, how about you?
• Got one in your garage? The present estimated value of a 1958 Edsel Citation convertible in excellent condition is $24,900; the original price was about $3,500.
• Good at anagrams? What Disney film can you build from: “Oh, sweet DVD wins new fan’s heart”? Did you come up with the classic, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”?
• Zsa Zsa should know. Zsa Zsa Gabor once noted, “A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.”
• No mention was made of the cart. The oldest known wheel was found in Mesopotamia; it dated back almost 5,500 years. Archaeologists do not agree on how may years prior to then (3,500 B.C.) the wheel was actually invented.
• No surprise here, the odds that a cosmetic surgery patient is a woman are about nine to one.
Jim Willard, a Loveland resident since 1967, retired from Hewlett-Packard after 33 years to focus on less trivial things. He calls Twoey, his bichon frisé-Maltese dog, vice president of research for his column.
