THE BEAUTY OF PEGBOARD

Not so long ago an online commercial for a service called Dollar Shave Club popped up and captured the affection of the internet. To date, it's been seen over four point seven million times, and at least a dozen of those views are mine because I keep going back to look at the cool office in the beginning.

Here's the commercial if you haven't seen it...


The opening shot is brimming with three of my favorite decorative elements: wood paneling, pegboard and vintage toys. For the benefit of humanity I've taken some high-res screenshots (click them to enlarge)...

The first things I noticed were the Flintstones figurines and the Bam-Bam and Monchichi bubble bath bottles, but soon it became apparent that it's not just toys, and it's not just old stuff. There's a package of decorative tile and even a personal breathalyzer (in that steering wheel package.) It's a mishmash of unrelated items, some playthings, some utilitarian, and it proves a universal truth: anything looks cool hanging on old pegboard.

Another angle and we see stuff like poker dice, a disposable camera, Mario, chip clips, a Record Vacuum, a magic marker book with cassette, and a plastic, uh, is that Deputy Dawg at the end? EDIT: Nope! Thanks to Calamity Jon we know it's Ricochet Rabbit!

These are the things I would like to know...
1. Was this office set up like this before the shoot, or was there a genius set designer involved?

 2. If they found it that way, then what sort of business is it?  A distributor? Do they sell a raw material that wound up in each of those products? Do they offer packaging solutions or something? Or does the office just belong to a frequent flea market shopper?

UPDATE: I emailed the Dollar Shaver Club and they said, "Nope! No designer needed. The office was exactly how it looks in the warehouse. Everything there is the owner's stuff."  They didn't say anything about the business or who the owner is, but I'd sure like to congratulate them on their taste.

The entire warehouse looks pretty wonderful. Pale green metal machines are such a pleasure to look at.

Anyway, I've been trying to pinpoint why I find this so appealing and I think it goes back to my grandfather. Grandpa's home office was a magical place.  For starters, it was the only room in the house with an air conditioning unit in the window, so after returning from a sweaty tractor ride to the local gas station for candy I'd burst in and stick my face up to the vent for a blast of glorious freon-scented cold.

Grandpa was a salesman for Newton MFG,  an outfit that sells business promotional items. They can put your name on anything from ink pens to wooden nickels to fly swatters. Hiding all around Grandpa's room were fun, plastic samples that changed with every visit. A toy car on his desk, a box of stress balls on the floor, or a sales kit of sample key chains (or "fobs," as he called them) were wonderful discoveries in an otherwise toyless household.  Best of all, we often got to take home these treasures. So packaged doodads and offices have been married in my mind since boyhood. (I so wish I'd taken a picture of that room. Thankfully I did get to keep the ever-present plaster eagle and paint-by-number Jesus from his wall after he passed away.)

While I'm on the topic, here are a few more pegboard related items.  First, a shot of my own wall display of dime store toys (taken from an old Mr. Toast photo session) The pegboard came from a defunct shoe store...

 

Speaking of Mr. Toast, his creator Dan Goodsell sent me this amazing photo of the Joseph Cossman Co. booth at the 1965 New York World's Fair chock full of products on pale-aqua pegboard. Cossman was the novelty business king behind the Ant Farm and the Spud Gun.

Here's a shot of one of my favorite places, Dicks 5&10 in Branson, MO. They have a pegboard wall in the back set aside for gadgets that you rarely see anymore like pocket protectors, fizz-preserving soda bottle lids, suction soap holders and push-button "handy adders."

My favorite wall of sample products in the world had to be the one I saw at the S.S. Adams factory in Neptune, NJ in 2005.  This dusty display had been hanging up in the second floor since the 1960s...

Auto supplies in LA's WACKO!...

I tried to recapture some of that magic with this pegboard spinner rack in my own home office...

UPDATE: I just remembered this pic that Dex turned me on to (via)...

It exemplifies a huge reason why I'm so fond of pegboard, it served as a background to nearly every cool product I ever bought during my childhood.  (See more vintage toy store pics at Plaid Stallions.)

So there. I must say I've surprised myself with the number of relevant photos I found on my computer.  Oh, and if you're wondering, this is not a paid endorsement for the Dollar Shave Club. Being a work-at-home designer guy, I hardly ever shave.