A Pet Rock. Seriously. Very Seriously.

April 1975.  In April of 1975 I was living in the second parsonage of the Edgewood United Methodist Church on Epler Avenue on the far southside of Indianapolis.  I was the Associate Pastor, mostly concentrating on youth ministry...and finishing up my final semesters at what was then known as Indiana Central College (now known as University of Indianapolis).  I was working on plans for a youth work camp trip to Redbird Mission in Beverly, Kentucky, and I was doing not enough training in preparation to run the 500 Festival Mini-Marathon late in May.  The New York Yankees were on their way to another disappointing season (they would finish in third place in the American League's Eastern Division...twelve games behind the Boston Red Sox...ugh!).
That was April 1975 for me.

What were you doing (assuming you were alive that long ago) in April of 1975?

In April of 1975, Gary Dahl was in a bar in Los Gatos, California dreaming up the idea for marketing Pet Rocks!  Seriously. He sold over a million and a half of those crazy things and became a millionaire.  Very Seriously.

He sold the Pets with a 32-page Training Manual.  Seriously.  The training manual offered advice on how to teach your Pet such tricks as "sit," stay," and "attack."  Good luck with the more difficult tricks like "stand," "rollover," and "shake hands."  Of course, potty training your Pet was no problem at all.  Very Seriously.  Its a rock, fer cryin' out loud!

In September of 2012 Rosebud Entertainment began marketing the things again...the Target store down the street from me sells them. 

A Pet Rock.  Gary Dahl was a genius.  Those of us who bought the things were somewhat less than geniuses.  Those of us who bought the things made Gary Dahl a very rich genius.

Amazing, isn't it, what can be dreamt-up, marketed, and sold for a ginormous profit?  Word is that the rocks cost Gary a penny each...the straw was free...and the box and the Training Manual were really cheap to produce.  Really cheap.

And, to quote from an Eagles' song, "Jesus, people bought them!"

I wonder what else we have eagerly purchased over the years that wasn't really worth the asking price.  Probably all kinds of stuff...all the way from deep-fried-chocolate-covered-insects (Seriously), to a cooked-up war: Hey-let's-invade-Iraq-because-they-got-WMDs (Very Seriously).