
The Trapper Keeper (2017) - Stratoscope
http://mentalfloss.com/article/52726/history-trapper-keeper
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function_seven
This line is curious:

> _Folders with vertical pockets, called PeeChees (as in, peachy keen), had
> been around since the 1940s and were sold on the West Coast, but they had
> never made the leap across the Rockies—so Crutchfield was doubtful. “I said,
> ‘They only sell on the West Coast, and what’s the real benefit of a vertical
> pocket?’”_

I know a lot of products are regional, but how can these things stay confined
to one side of the country for decades?

I had Trapper Keepers in elementary and junior high school. When I started
high school, I switched to 3 or 4 PeeChee folders duct taped together as a
makeshift binder. It was a cheap way to signal how much "I didn't care."

~~~
bane
National distribution in the U.S. is an immense affair. Beyond the expense of
advertising in local markets, it took the intensive development of several
layers of massive infrastructure projects before we've arrived at today's
level of "effortless" distribution. The principle problem is that the United
States has no domestic East-West waterway option. No matter how good your rail
and road shipping system is (and the U.S. has among the best in the world for
freight), you can fit a lot of train's worth of goods into a single big
container ship. Rail also only gets you so far, as you need local trucking
links, large inter-modal warehouses and so-on.

What really happened was the rise of the trucking industry in the late 70s and
early 80s coinciding with the rise of big-box stores like Walmart. This built
all of the secondary and tertiary infrastructure -- and capacity -- to move
whatever stuff you wanted wherever you wanted, pretty cheaply.

However, there's also two major East-West barriers in the U.S., the
Mississippi river, which has largely been overcome but was a major geographic
barrier in an earlier age, and the Rockies, which both involve a large energy
cost to get over, but also have unreliable roads in certain areas during large
parts of the year.

Many many large brands exist only on one side of their respective barriers or
the other. Yuengling beers for example, more or less don't go any further than
the Mississippi, while Dreyers ice cream more or less go no further than the
Western Rockies.

~~~
pests
It's interesting you mention Yuengling beers. I grew up in Michigan and never
heard of them. I was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania over the new years and
I was introduced to this beer as one of the oldest breweries in Pennsylvania.
Everyone was excited that they were were now in more areas. Coming from just a
short distance away in Michigan I have never heard of them.

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bane
This topic has made me kind of interested in other regional/national school
supply items. I remember my Trapper Keeper very fondly and spent quite a bit
of time picking mine out when I was a child. I also grew up during the heydey
of the metal lunchbox [1]

I also went to school in an area and time when there was a large influx of
South Korean immigrants and I remember eyeing their incredibly cool pencil
cases with quite a bit of jealousy [2]. An incredible marketing opportunity
that never seemed to quite make it to the U.S. market.

What kind of ubiquitous local market school supplies were popular in other
places?

1 - [https://www.ebay.com/itm/PAC-MAN-vintage-metal-
lunchbox-/222...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/PAC-MAN-vintage-metal-
lunchbox-/222179820263) 2 - [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Students-
Multifunction...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Students-
Multifunction-Stationery-Pencil-Case-Korean-Box-Cool-/163244930362)

~~~
SamReidHughes
I'm guessing the pencil case was more like this one, with a thermometer and a
sleek black case:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdwoSkKdLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdwoSkKdLw)

Several of my kindergarten classmates got them, after one of them had visited
their family in Japan.

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js2
My memory of the Trapper Keeper is that it wasn’t very durable and you’d be
lucky if it made it through the school year. The flap was cheap and thin
plastic that would tear easily. The plastic rings were also easily broken. I
think I ended up just using the folders by themselves.

~~~
schwartzworld
plastic rings?

~~~
js2
The binder mechanism including the binder rings were plastic:

[https://tedium.imgix.net/2018/01/ktyhjn3jkmcetsgini69.jpg](https://tedium.imgix.net/2018/01/ktyhjn3jkmcetsgini69.jpg)

~~~
schwartzworld
So they were. I guess I was remembering off-brand trapper keepers with metal
rings

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FPGAhacker
I remember having a trapper keeper. I don't think I noticed that the logo font
seems to be the same as for the apple //e though.

~~~
kalleboo
Motter Tektura. Also used by Reebok shoes.

[https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/10214/motter-
tektura](https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/10214/motter-tektura)

[https://gizmodo.com/why-youve-never-heard-of-this-
typeface-t...](https://gizmodo.com/why-youve-never-heard-of-this-typeface-
that-defined-the-1602584135)

------
lubujackson
I recently excavated my much loved Trapper Keeper from 8th grade (circa 1990)
and it was peak random design with zebra stripes, polka dots, colors
everywhere. I actually used it for a little while because the physical quality
of the product was still amazing. Good solid feel, great bendable binding,
plastic coating on the outside to be rainproof, pockets, zippers and all the
interior folders were uniquely designed as well. Yes, they won through shiny
design for kids, social signalling and marketing, but the form factor really
was much better than alternatives, too.

Of course, after nearly 30 years in a closet my Trapper Keeper's plastic and
rubber bits were ready to give up the ghost and it started to disintegrate
after a bit of use. But I would love to get another one, just as it was.

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tiku
Please explain this trapper keeper. It looks like a re-usable enveloppe for
school stuff?

~~~
MacsHeadroom
It's the brand name for the original 3-ring binder. The paper company Mead
sold them along with 3-hole punched notebooks so that you could store and swap
out multiple notebooks.

It was ultimately a way of selling more paper. It was hugely successful and is
the reason 3-hole punches and 3-ring binders exist today.

~~~
chiph
The Trapper Keeper came out after I graduated high school. But we had 3-ring
binders before that - they were fabric covered (like a cheap denim) and had
metal rings which made a loud snap when you closed them. They had good & bad
aspects - you could draw on the fabric and customize your binder (something
the Trapper Keeper couldn't do until they allowed an artwork insert years
later). And bad: the metal rings would get bent and not meet up anymore so
your papers would fall out.

So far as customization - the thing we'd do with textbooks is cover them in
paper grocery bag material so you'd have something to draw on, as well as
protect the book so you wouldn't be charged when you returned it.

