In the late 1970s, a stationary expert from the Mead corporation slipped a bunch of consumer
comment cards into his new product, a three-ring organizational binder called the Trapper Keeper.
He wanted to know if kids liked it, and if so why. Among the responses, one in particular
stood out. It came from a 14-year-old named Fred, who praised the Trapper Keeper’s ability
to, quote, 'keep all my $^@%... like papers and notes.”
This, my friends, is how educational history is made. We’re organizing a look back at
the Trapper Keeper on this installment of Throwback.
Welcome to the series where we take a deep dive into some of the most fascinating pop
culture stories and events you might remember from your childhood. I'm your host, Erin McCarthy.
If you have an idea for an item or event from the past for us to dive into in another episode,
let us know in the comments.
Now, if I had to pick just one item that summed up my learning years, it would be the Trapper
Keeper. Inside this three-ring binder was everything I needed to prepare for a day of
learning. There was enough room for papers and notebooks for six subjects, multiplication
tables, a ruler, and best of all, an outer cover that let me express my true self.
This particular Trapper Keeper isn’t the one that I had—mine had cats on it, obviously—but
it is a pretty spectacular example. Just listen to the Velcro!
Takes me back.
So who’s responsible for this textbook-perfect idea? And how did it manage to wind up in
backpacks all over the country?
To find out, we need to wind the clock back to the early 1970s, when a man named E. Bryant
Crutchfield was working for the Mead Corporation as its Director of New Ventures. The company’s
history dates all the way back to 1846, and it eventually became known for that familiar
and abstract composition notebook found on desks everywhere.
Crutchfield didn’t have a hand in that, but he was still something of a star employee.
In 1968, he had won a $2500 award, largely for coming up with a stationary set with a
floral design that kept envelopes in a special envelope caddy called the Valet. While that
might sound somewhat underwhelming, the set had sales of $1 million in its first year,
and Crutchfield proved he could inject some new life into the paper industry.
The Valet also hinted that Crutchfield liked to be organized. A few years later, he teamed
up with researchers from Harvard to project what classrooms would look like in the coming
decade.
For one thing, classes would be getting bigger. For another, students would
be taking more classes. Sales of folders were going up. And lockers were getting smaller.
Crutchfield’s solution? A binder that could be easily carried, wouldn’t require repeated
trips back to the locker, and could keep six subjects' worth of class materials organized.
When I interviewed Crutchfield about the creation of the Trapper Keeper in 2013 he told me, quote,
A portfolio, by the way, is a folder.
If this sounds like an idea that could be conceived of over a weekend, maybe that’s
true of some people. But Crutchfield didn’t win $2500 awards for floral design sets by
being sloppy. In addition to his other duties for Mead, he spent years analyzing educational
trends and pouring over how such a binder would work. The key, he eventually learned,
was to emulate a product that half of the country had never heard of—the Pee-Chee
folder.
Pee-Chee was the brand name of a school supply that was first introduced in 1943 by the Western
Tablet and Stationery Company. It got its name from either the peach-colored stock used
in its original incarnation or the phrase peachy-keen—the historical record is a bit
hazy, as can often be the case with these kinds of fraught matters of national security.
What we know for sure is that the Pee-Chee stored papers in vertical, rather than horizontal, pockets.
When you closed the folder, your papers would stay securely in place and wouldn’t be scattered
to the winds if you tripped, dropped the folder, or got shoved by the scary kid at the bus
stop.
Mead acquired Western Tablet, which was then going by Westab, in the 1960s, just a few
years after the Pee-Chee took on its iconic sports design. On the front and back of the
folder were athletes playing basketball, baseball, and tennis, among other activities. These
simple line drawings were done by Francis Golden, a popular illustrator who did work
for Collier’s and Sports Illustrated. While Golden could barely even remember doing the
assignment when he was asked about it a few decades later, his work became familiar to
millions of kids who stared at the drawings and used them as the basis for their own doodles.
Golden might actually be the most defaced artist of all time, if you consider the number
of kids who drew all over the basketball players.
Western Tablet, by the way, took their regional mission pretty seriously. While Pee-Chees
were well-known on the West Coast, people east of the Mississippi had hardly heard of
them. Mead tried marketing them on the East Coast, but there’s no indication they ever
really took off. Crutchfield knew about the folders, but it wasn't until his West Coast
rep explained that the vertical pockets kept papers from falling out of the folders that
things felt into place.
While Crutchfield was busy realizing his three-ring dreams, school supplies were pretty straightforward.
Aside from lunch boxes, kids didn’t covet much in the way of educational tools. There
were some exceptions, though. These are just some of the more memorable accessories you
could pick up over the years at retail or at a school store, which, aside from the book
club and the book fair, was basically where I spent all of my allowance as a kid.
Mr. Sketch markers came around in the early 60s, but it would take a few years for them
to implement the feature that made them so beloved by students: each marker was given
a different smell to match its color—tantalizing cherry for red, invigorating lemon for yellow,
and disgusting licorice for black. Why, Mr. Sketch?? Kids dreading their next class could
always look forward to taking a hit to get them through to the next period.
A little while later pencil grips came on the scene, which were hard plastic that supposedly
lessened the pain of keeping an iron grip on your writing utensil, though I feel like
they never really helped me that much.
We also can’t forget pencil toppers, which came in a variety of animal or licensed character
shapes and allowed for some livelier essay composition.
I was also super obsessed with tiny erasers in the shape of various foods and animals.
Desks also had Weepuls, which were fuzzy little creatures that could stick to surfaces. Weepuls
didn’t really do anything other than provide moral support, and now whenever I see that
emoji with the two hands making, like, jazz hands, I think of Weepuls.
And, of course, we can’t forget the original three-ring binder, which Crutchfield used as inspiration.
The modern American version is traced to a 1904 patent by William Pitt, who said in his
patent application that he wanted to, quote,
As it turned out,
the rings held on to fingers as well as papers. Those things hurt.
If Crutchfield wanted to join this storied assembly of essential school supplies, he
knew he needed to get on the ground and consult with the people who really mattered—teachers
and students. He took his design sketches for a three-ring binder and folders to his
potential customers and made tweaks based on their suggestions.
Eventually, he had a binder that closed with a non-pinching plastic clasp, enough room
for six subjects, and a slim profile that could fit inside desks and lockers easily.
The folders had angled pockets to make the papers inside a little more visible. He also
had a flap which closed everything up with a satisfying snap of a button. For some flair,
he taped a photo of athletes playing soccer to the front.
But there was still the matter of what to call it. Crutchfield found his answer while
enjoying a lunchtime martini with another Mead employee, a development manager named
Jon Wyant.
Wyant suggested the Pee-Chee-style portfolios be called Trappers because they trapped the
papers in their vertical pockets. The binder that kept the Trappers should be a Trapper
Keeper. It was catchy, it made sense, and it was all Crutchfield needed to hear. He
was ready.
And by ready, we mean he spent another year tweaking and testing his design.
By this point, it was 1978, and six years had passed since Crutchfield had done his
preliminary research with Harvard. Now it was time to unleash the Trapper Keeper upon
the world. In this case, however, the world was limited to Wichita, Kansas, Mead’s choice
for a test market.
In the summer, just as parents were starting their back-to-school shopping, Crutchfield
and Mead filled area stores with Trapper Keepers in a variety of colors for around $2.49, or
about 10 bucks in today’s dollars. Customers could buy additional individual folders for
29 cents a piece.
But that wasn’t all. Crutchfield flew from Mead’s headquarters in Dayton, Ohio to Manhattan
to supervise a television commercial that highlighted the appeal of the Trapper Keeper.
It was unusual to see a commercial for a school supply, but it worked. Trapper Keepers flew
off the shelves in Wichita—kids found its stylish method of organizing irresistible.
But this is Crutchfield we’re talking about. A man who valued organization and market research.
He wanted more data. So he stuck comment cards into the Trapper Keepers and promised that
anyone returning them would get a free notebook from Mead. Roughly 1500 kids returned the
cards and were full of praise, saying the Trapper Keeper could do everything from keeping
their papers in one place to allowing them to take only part of the binder home. Then
there was Fred, who got right to the point. Remember Fred? [Can show image of Fred’s
comment card.]
For Mead, the answer was clear: the Trapper Keeper was a resounding success. Soon, kids
everywhere would have a place to keep all their s**t.
The very next year, in 1979, Mead rolled out the Trapper Keeper nationally. For a few dollars,
kids and their parents could have a secure, smart way to keep track of the increasing
number of classes and materials throughout the school year. The designs were basic—you
could choose between a photo of people playing soccer, a dog and cat, or the Oregon coast—but
that was fine, since kids could easily customize their Trapper with stickers and doodles of
their own inside.
Word-of-mouth was probably the Trapper Keeper’s best form of advertising, but Mead still made
an effort to publicize it. Mrs. Willard, a ninth-grade teacher who had helped Crutchfield
during the focus group testing, appeared in print ads touting the benefits of the modular
organization system.
Later, television spots aired on MTV, with actors worried they would be considered a
“loose-leaf loser” unless they had a Trapper Keeper. One of the spots even featured future
Full House actress Lori Loughlin. The designs went from some of Crutchfield’s old vacation
photos and a Saint Bernard carrying a bucket of flowers to more elaborate illustrations,
including binders featuring Nike and the colorful work of artist Lisa Frank. Crutchfield’s
years of hard work had paid off. In the 1980s, Mead was selling $100 million in Trapper Keepers
annually.
One sure sign the Trapper Keeper was a success? It was one of the few school supplies to infiltrate
pop culture. Trapper Keepers have popped up in a variety of places.
Napoleon Dynamite carried one in the 2004 cult classic bearing his name.
In a 2000 episode of South Park, Cartman showed off his Trapper Keeper to classmates. The
cast of Dawson’s Creek appeared on the cover.
For the Totally ‘80s version of Trivial Pursuit, the Trapper Keeper became a game
piece, along with a Care Bear and a personal computer.
And just last year, there was a Trapper Keeper card game sold at Target. The object was to
collect cards valued on a points system and stuff them in a miniature Trapper Keeper.
You could even collect doodles to add to your score. I have not played the game, and there
are no reviews on the Target website. I would say it’s very hard to make a game based
on an organizational folder. If you’ve played Trapper Keeper: The Home Game, please let
us know in the comments.
As popular as Trapper Keepers became, there were still problems to overcome. The snap
enclosure that had once seemed so promising was difficult for some kids to use.
So Mead switched to a Velcro seal,
which created another problem. Teachers hated the sound of the Velcro ripping throughout
class.
The company eventually went back to a button snap, but teachers were still divided about
Trapper Keepers. For one thing, fully opening a Trapper Keeper often meant expanding it
until it reached another student’s desk, interfering with their work. Some teachers
also felt the multiplication and conversion tables printed on the folders was a low-key
method of cheating.
A small but vocal anti-Trapper Keeper contingent mobilized, with some teachers even insisting
that parents not supply their kids with them while back-to-school shopping. This irritated
the people at Mead, who pointed out that some of the more unwieldy binders produced by other
companies were at fault.
So why were Trapper Keepers such a hit? They had personality. Specifically, they let kids
show off their own personality, picking Trapper Keepers that reflected their love of sports,
movies, or abstract designs reminiscent of a psychedelic Picasso.
When I spoke to Crutchfield a few years ago, he thought the product succeeded because school
supplies were usually pretty plain and Trapper Keepers were fun. It was probably the only
school accessory you could give a kid for Christmas or a birthday that they’d actually
be excited about. Joshua Fruhlinger of Engadget declared it the “greatest three-ring binder
ever created” and even compared its all-purpose design to the smartphone.
Today, Trapper Keepers are still being made and sold by Mead. There’s also a flourishing
market for vintage Trapper Keepers on auction sites like eBay, where Trapper Keepers featuring
Sonic the Hedgehog and others can command anywhere from $30 to over $200, depending
on the condition and how much nostalgia bidders have for the cover design. The most popular?
Lisa Frank and sports cars. Less popular? Volleyball penguins.
Thanks for watching, and remember to check in with Mental Floss on YouTube every Wednesday
for new videos. Bye!