OK, your turn: Shoddy Goods 016
Jason Toon here, with a bit of a different Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about the stuff people make, buy, and sell. I've been on vacation so I'm keeping it casual this week, and wondering what's on your mind.
I'm just back in Australia, where I live now, after three weeks visiting the land of my birth, the USA. On my last trip in 2022, the post-COVID supply chain problems were evident in semi-bare shelves and wacky prices.
This time, those issues had clearly subsided. The USA is once again the abundant consumer cornucopia that makes Aussies bring an extra suitcase along, to carry home their cheap shopping bounty. And I don't just mean Nikes and Macbooks. You can see it everywhere from bookstores to 7-11 to antique malls. There's just so much more and different stuff.
Here's a picture I took at a Target in St. Louis that sums it up:
Bluey, of course, is an Australian icon. Not only is the show created in Australia by Australians, its dialogue and jokes and plotlines are so drenched in Aussiedom as to sometimes be incomprehensible everywhere else.
And yet the biggest display of Bluey merchandise I've ever seen was in a random Target in a medium-sized Midwestern US city. An unscientific survey finds that the US Target website offers more than 600 Bluey items while Australian Kmart, the closest equivalent down under, carries just over 100.
What's my point? To inflame Australian patriots with outrage over the Bluey tchotchkes they can't get at home? No, just to say that when it comes to consumerism, the US remains the center of the action.
Which could be a problem for this newsletter since I don't live there right now.
So, fellow Americans, I need your help. If you see a product, a brand, a commercial, a phenomenon that makes you wonder "what's up with that?", please let me know. The only difference between a story that gets told and one that doesn't is whether someone can dedicate time to telling it. That's me. Just point me in an interesting direction and I'll take it from there.
And while I've got you here… what would you like to see more of? We've unearthed little-known stories behind successful brands and failed ones. We've met present-day innovators and forgotten geniuses. We've torn into ripoff artists and taken straight-up nostalgia trips. We've even done a little consumer reporting. I have a blast with it all, so if there's a craving out there for particular flavors of Shoddy Goods, I'm happy to indulge.
Finally, would any of you be interested in taking this relationship to the next level? Every issue generates way more material than I can squeeze even into our generous word count; I'm personally skeptical people would pay good money for it, but I'd love to be proven wrong. We're also kicking around ideas like online events, trivia, an audio version, maybe a full-blown podcast or YouTube channel. I've got plenty to keep me busy now but we'd be intrigued if there was an audience for any of that.
Most of all, thanks for jumping down these rabbit-holes with me every week. Dave and I have been surprised and gratified by the response from both Meh longtimers (so few unsubscribes!) and our growing trickle of new readers. Now that I'm home again, we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming next week.
(And yes, my family not only took an extra suitcase along to the USA, we had to buy another one to haul all our new crap back to Australia. Maybe there's a story in there somewhere…?)
In addition to giving us suggestions on what you’d like to see in the future Shoddy Goods, feel free to treat this week’s Shoddy Goods chat like a general AMA and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you’ve got about our past, our present, our future, the meaning of life, all of that. (No promises that I’ll have useful answers, but I’ll probably have answers.
—Dave (and the rest of Meh)
If this is your first Shoddy Goods, check out these stories for a taste of what we usually do around here: