The year was 1984.  The day was December 25.  I was crying.

My hopes of a year filled with wonder and excitement had been dashed, and I blamed Santa.  He had not given me a piece of plastic critical for maintaining a competitive edge with friends at school:

Instead of getting the coolest of all cool toys, I sat next the the tree and clutching yet another Transformer. It was alright - better than my brother’s He-Man action figure - but it was no Voltron.

Oh, Voltron.  How I coveted thee…I had to maintain composure, express gratitude, and make it through the day.

The holiday season of 1984 will go down in infamy for two reasons, neither of which has anything to do with Japanamation.

The first was the Cabbage Patch craze. My family avoided it as we had no girls younger than 45. The second was the Made in the U.S.A. campaign that was launched just after Thanksgiving that year. Here is a snippet of that work (the only I could find).

Few campaigns from my upbringing are as powerful as this one started by the Crafted With Pride in U.S.A. Council, a conglomerate of American textile companies angered by what was inevitable. As America entered a post-industrial state, it sequentially shipped all of its industrial base to newly-industrializing countries. Clothing was the first to go. Soon everything else would follow.

“Made in the U.S.A.” became a battle cry for blue-collar Americans and lunch-pail conservatives. It became synonymous with flag-waving, trade unions, and a belt that was quickly rusting.

Flash forward 20 years to a New York Times article published this past week.  From the article:

“Made in the U.S.A.” used to be a label flaunted primarily by consumers in the Rust Belt and rural regions. Increasingly, it is a status symbol for cosmopolitan bobos, and it is being exploited by the marketers who cater to them.

For many the label represents a heightened concern for workplace and environmental issues, consumer safety and premium quality. “It involves people wanting to have guilt-free affluence,” Alex Steffen, who is the executive editor of www.worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability issues, said in an e-mail message. “So you have not only the local food craze but things like American apparel, or Canadian diamonds instead of African ‘blood diamonds,’ or local-crafted toys.”

With so many mass-market goods made off-shore, American-made products, which are often more expensive, have come to connote luxury. New Balance produces less expensive running shoes abroad, but it still makes the top-of-the-line 992 model — which the company says requires 80 manufacturing steps and costs $135 — in Maine. A favorite in college towns from Cambridge, Mass. to Berkeley, Calif., each model 992 features a large, reflective “USA” logo on the heel, and an American flag on the box.

American Apparel, which carries the label “Made in Downtown LA” in every T-shirt and minidress, famously brought sex appeal to clothing basics that are promoted as “sweatshop free.” In the process it won the allegiance of young taste-makers.

If Bob Hope were alive today, I’m sure he would have a thousand jokes to talk about this turn of circumstance.  In the matter of a generation, “Made in America” has switched from blue to white collar and from protectionist rhetoric to progressive idealism. 

For more information on the “Made in America” movement, check out the following:

Still Made in the USA 

From NYT:

Ms. Sanzone, 47, who lives in Alexandria, Va., started [this website] three years ago to list and promote American-made products, for environmental and economic reasons, she said.

Unlike many “Buy American” Web sites, which feature images of weeping bald eagles or quotations from Pat Buchanan, Ms. Sanzone, a Democrat, keeps her site nonpartisan. In the last month, she said, traffic has jumped fourfold, with new visitors including vegans, green shoppers, “Free Tibet” activists and visitors from the Web site democraticunderground.com. Many said the recall of Chinese-made toys inspired them to act, but many also told her that they were starting to expand their focus beyond toys.  

To support the “Buy Rad a Voltron, Already” movement, send checks to:

GSD&M’s Idea City

828 West 6th Street

Austin, Texas 78703