Hey all, Ernie here with a fresh one from Andrew Egan, who is diving deep into the nostalgia train with a piece that combines two very ’90s

Yikes! You Call That a Pencil?

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2021-09-24 23:30:04

Hey all, Ernie here with a fresh one from Andrew Egan, who is diving deep into the nostalgia train with a piece that combines two very ’90s phenomena in a very unexpected way. Only one has to do with pencils. Anyway, read on: Today in Tedium: The mergers and acquisitions aspect of 1980s corporate culture made some strange bedfellows among companies. While this era gave us some now commonly known hyphenated companies, like Time Warner and Bristol-Myers-Squibb, it also saw electronics manufacturers buy steel companies and almost everyone buying or attempting to buy a movie studio. This was also when corporate executives realized company loyalty wouldn’t be rewarded if they ended up on the losing side of a hostile takeover. As an endless series of maneuvers breached public consciousness through news coverage and eventually films like Wall Street and Working Girl, critics and the public debated the impact of a high octane corporate culture that was always going to be defined in retrospect. Some of it was good. A lot of it was bad. And from time to time it led to something awesome. Today’s Tedium is looking at Yikes! pencils, one the 1990s most iconic school supplies, and how a notorious fat substitute indirectly helped its creation. — Andrew @ Tedium P.S.: If you’re a Tedium fan, we could use your support on Product Hunt today as we highlight our recent redesign. If you have a second, give us a thumbs up and a shout. Thanks in advance!