In the Fall of 1981, second grade Mike Ryan was walking through the halls of his new school when he realized something terrible: He was the only kid without a Trapper Keeper. "I'm sure there were others," he says now. "But I certainly didn't notice them because they weren't worth noticing because they didn't have a Trapper Keeper." After School, he told his parents his tale of woe, and his father picked one up-but it was the wrong thing, a rip-off made of what appeared to be denim. To Ryan's horror, everyone noticed. "Trapper Keeper? That looked more like a Trapper Jeansper." One kid sneered "It was that weird thing where having a knockoff was worse than having nothing at all." Ryan, now a senior writer at the Huffington Post, says. "Being the new kid, this was strangely devastating." He would eventually get the real thing-bright red, with red, green, and blue folders. "It didn't make me cool at least I felt like I was conforming. Which , at that point, is all I had hoped for."
Launched in 1978 by the Mead Corporation (which was acquired by ACCO Brands in 2012), Trapper Keeper notebooks are brightly colored three-ring binders that hold hold folders called Trappers and close with a flap. From the start, they were an enormous success: For several years after their nationwide release, MEAD sold over $100 Million of the folders and notebooks a year. To date, some 75 million Trapper Keepers have flown off store shelves.
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Wonder if the kids today would carry these to school?
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