Where Are They Now
In between the minivan’s decline and the SUV’s surge, one of the century’s most beloved — and despised—cars experienced a brief moment of fame
Do you remember the PT Cruiser? Yeah, you do: Chrysler’s po-mo hot rod with the funny name and the Dick Tracy-esque curves? It’s in the first shot of the new CW series Superman and Lois, because it’s the closest thing on the road to the car on the cover of Action Comics #1, the 1938 comic book in which Superman makes his debut. It’s just right — like the current comic-book universes, the PT Cruiser was designed to be contemporary, entertaining, and a very loud echo of the past.
Object of the Week
Bucatini is so 2020
Object of the Week is a column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.
The 21st century has been a time of constant technical innovation — and a time for ridiculously overthinking food. These seemingly unrelated meta-trends have now coalesced in cascatelli, a brand new and meticulously engineered pasta devised over a period of three years by the host of the popular food podcast, The Sporkful.
Naturally, it’s a hit. In the first week of its formal unveiling to the public, the novel noodle has been hyped everywhere from Today to Eater to NPR…
Object of the Week
At a time when women have been hit hardest by the recession, brands are making International Women’s Day about themselves
“There is no Hershey’s without ‘SHE,’” the candy behemoth announced recently.
The occasion for this, uh, insight was International Women’s Day, this past Monday. To mark the day — and March as Women’s History Month — the company “developed a small batch” of its flagship chocolate bars, with the package design tweaked to highlight the “her” and particularly the “she” elements of the name, and adding the word “celebrate.” The gesture was meant “to honor all the women and girls out there,” the Hershey Company’s press release stated.
Sure. Of course, it was also meant to perform brand awareness and…
Online marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, and Zazzle have allowed hatred and misinformation to be marketed to the masses
The world of online fashion has been going through the same reckoning with white supremacist conspiracy theories as the rest of the internet. Platforms such as Etsy and CafePress were skewered shortly after the January 6 insurrection for hosting merchandise celebrating the event, which caused them to scramble to take some of the incendiary content down. If you type “QAnon” into sites such as Zazzle or Etsy, you will not get any hits, except for maybe a parody “QaNOPE” T-shirt.
This more aggressive posturing, however, has not rid these platforms of conspiracy theory merch. With minimal effort, you can still…
Object of the Week
”My Home Office” for kids lands somewhere between dark satire and a meme
Object of the Week is a column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.
It looks like a parody, and a rather dark one at that: The Fisher-Price My Home Office play set includes a fake laptop, headset, latte cup, pretend phone, and “4 fabric ‘apps’ that attach to computer screen to ‘work’ on different projects.” It’s intended for preschoolers, ages three and up. The obvious takeaway: Once upon a time, children might pretend to be an astronaut or a superhero before the educational system disabused them of all their dreams. …
Object of the Week
The new fleet of electric vehicles paints a brighter future where the post office actually still exists
Object of the Week is a column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.
It’s been a rough year — well, a rough decade or two — for the U.S. Postal Service. So it’s notable that in addition to enduring another round of criticism for subpar delivery performance this week, the venerable government agency also made news that struck a potentially positive note: It has awarded the contract for up to 165,000 new and redesigned delivery vehicles, some of which will run on electric power. …
Object of the Week
How a shortage of the most boring cereal turned it into a pandemic sensation
Object of the Week is a column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.
Of all the shortages the country has endured in the pandemic era, surely the scarcity of Grape-Nuts is among the least important. No lives are at stake; it is not even a particularly popular cereal. In fact, it’s probably more familiar as a punchline than as a part of your complete, nutritious breakfast. …
Object of the Week
The story of a hippie sandal, a six-figure handbag, private equity, and a very mischievous art collective
Object of the Week is a new column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.
Birkenstocks, “fashion’s original ugly shoe,” as the Business of Fashion put it the other day, are having a moment. A pretty weird moment, actually, that has somehow caused the brand to stumble into the realm of high luxury.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the maker of the hippie-dippie casual-culture icon was in talks to be acquired by L Catterton, a private equity firm backed by lux mega-business LVMH. The talks value Birkenstock in the neighborhood of $5 billion.
Object of the Week
The meme investor mob came after a physical commodity, and it didn’t go well
Object of the Week is a new column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.
Over the past week or so, the meme-crazed, Reddit-fueled “stonk market” phenomenon careened in a new direction. Instead of aiming to drive up the share price of yet another business with a dubious financial future, the mob went after silver. This hasn’t worked out — largely because of the nature of silver itself as a physical commodity whose value can be difficult to untether from its materiality.
The run on silver seems to have been sparked by users of…
Marker
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