Radio hat

The June 1949 issue of Radio-Electronics showing the "Man-from-Mars, Radio Hat," modeled by a 15-year-old Hope Lange

The radio hat was a portable radio built into a pith helmet that would bring in stations within a 20-mile (32 km) radius. It was introduced in early 1949 for $7.95 as the "Man-from-Mars Radio Hat."[1] Thanks to a successful publicity campaign, the radio hat was sold at stores from coast to coast in the United States.

The radio hat was manufactured by American Merri-Lei Corporation of Brooklyn N.Y. The company was a leading supplier of party hats, noise makers and other novelty items. Its founder, Victor Hoeflich, had invented a machine to make paper Hawaiian leis while still in high-school (1914), and by 1949 the company shipped millions of leis to Hawaii each year. An inventor and gadgeteer,[2][3][4] Hoeflich continued to develop and even sell machinery that manufactured paper novelty items.[5][6]

Battery-operated portable radios had been available for many years, but Hoeflich hoped a radio with innovative packaging and a publicity campaign could be a runaway success. The transistor had just been invented, but was still an expensive laboratory curiosity; the first pocket transistor radio was still 5 years away. This radio would have to use the existing vacuum tube technology and the tubes would be a prominent design feature. The loop antenna and the tuning knob were also visible. The hat was available in eight colors: Lipstick Red, Tangerine, Flamingo, Canary Yellow, Chartreuse, Blush Pink, Rose Pink and Tan.[7][8]

  1. ^ "Ad for radio hat". Popular Science. Vol. 155, no. 4. Popular Science Publishing. October 1949. p. 89.
  2. ^ Hoeflich, Victor T., "Machine for making convoluted structures of flexible materials", US Patent 1888197, issued November 15, 1932.
  3. ^ Hoeflich, Victor T., "Method of manufacturing noise", US Patent 2280582, issued April 21, 1942.
  4. ^ Hoeflich, Victor T., "Mouthpiece for sound-producing devices", US Patent 2607162, issued August 19, 1952.
  5. ^ Soule, Garner (January 1956). "He puts the noise in New Years". Popular Science. Vol. 168, no. 1. pp. 132–135, 254–256.
  6. ^ Gill, Brendan (April 16, 1949). "The Talk of the Town, Revolutionary". The New Yorker. p. 19.
  7. ^ "Radio Hat advertisement". Radio Electronics. 2 (11): 75. August 1949.
  8. ^ "The Radio Hat". Radio Electronics. 20 (9): 4, 32–33. June 1949. Cover description: The Radio Hat, posed by Hope Lange. page 4 "The Radio Hat is made in such gay colors as canary yellow, lipstick red, turquoise, chartreuse, tangerine, lavender, blue, and cerise for teen-agers, and in tan, gray, green-gray, and blue-gray for adult." page 33