the defunct cult of Silly Bandz
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- A TikTok unlocked a hidden part of my brain that is still firmly in middle school, which reminded me of the craze of silly bandz that swept my generation. In this video, I revisit their short-lived cult status and brainstorm if there's a way we can bring them back into the spotlight. What wasn't a cult but felt like a cult?
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one time a holocaust survivor came to my middle school and as a sign of appreciation a lot of my classmates gave him their silly bandz and i think about that a lot
That's so cute
Lmfao I love that
It’s the thought that counts
That killed me
That's so wholesome! Lol I only had a few of them. I live and grew up in hawaii and it wasn't a big thing here, or at least not big in my friend groups. I got them from my cousins that lived in Cali. She gave me some rainbow tye dye zoo animal ones 😇🤷
Okay wait. Another rabbit hole: My school had an eraser economy. Once the kneaded/squishy/scented ones came out, it was game over man. People were losing lunches for the pudding or Sanrio themed stuff.
My school had the same but only for the multi piece chinese style erasers.
@Maeve mine should have banned those "oriental trading co" magazines when they had a chance.. but at least we learned economics early 🤷🏾♂️
my school had this too especially with those scented putty erasers, some of us discovered that with enough of those rolled shavings from a normal eraser and enough willpower you could make your own (smelled like hot garbage tho) so there were many a recess with some kids independently slaving away vigorously erasing at a piece of paper to collect the shavings while others bartered off fractions of their scented ones away usually following the general script of "i'll trade you this much of your X scented eraser for this much of my Y scented eraser"
@@nailinthefashion Oriental Trading Company is still going strong actually. Since my mom runs a business in our home, we used to get the magazines all the time. Now it's very rare we get them but I still love looking through the magazines
It might've been just my best friend and I at the time, but anything Lisa Frank was coveted in elementary school. I know I had a bunch of the erasers
I remember that my school had a "secret" code. It was called secret but everyone, including most of the teachers, knew what they meant. And it went in depth, like each color, color combination and which arm you wore had different meanings. Examples:
- Pink worn on the right meant you were crushing on a boy, while pink worn on the left meant you were crushing on a girl
- Red meant in love; red and pink meant you had a girlfriend and red and blue meant you had a boyfriend. If the combination was worn on the left it meant everything was going well and if worn on the right it meant things were complicated
- The Christian kids decided that wearing dark blue and yellow on both wrists meant that you were Christian
- Purple worn on the ankles meant that you were queer, didn't really matter which ankle you wore them on, it was mostly a way for us to feel like we were secretly supporting each other
- Dark blue meant that you had a Tumblr, even though we weren't technically old enough to have one, this was the early 2010s and we didn't really care
There were way more but these are some of the ones I remember off the top of my head. I still have a few of my favorite designs sitting in a drawer somewhere.
bruh your school was progressive af for the 2010s if you had to clarify wether your crush was on a boy or girl
So it’s like the handkerchief code but for kids
as a teacher at the time, our school was way out of things! They were just cool bands and yes I got some for a holiday gift. (hint teachers like gift certificates, especially for their favorite coffee place)
lol the christian kids
@@danielsimmich1858 seems like a variation on the 90s jelly bands codes where you'd "have to" do whatever the band meant with someone if that someone broke it off your wrist.
Black was the full Monty, I remember.
Those bands were huge back when I was in middle school. I'm from Mexico and there was a boy that sold some "special edition" bands that he got from relatives in the US, everyone bought stuff from him. Never got banned or anything.
gotta respect the hustle
The only time the guy selling cigarettes wasn't the biggest hustler
Lmao i hope he was able to turn a profit. I'd probably be the relative in the US giving them away to my cousins so they'll love me
If you want defunct cults, here's some ideas: duct tape accessories, slap bands, hair feathers, fidget spinners, and those little plastic tassels, just to name a few!
Omg, duct tape accessories 😵 I had totally forgotten
Blah I really wanted hair feathers as a kid and now I’m glad my mom never let me get any. I also think a fun one to look at would be webkinz. I remember there being a ton of other stuffed toys to video browser games as well. I distinctly remember a doll like that as well. Also sweet streets! I had the whole first set of those except the rug and it made all my friends jealous in elementary school. I still have them….
the word duct tape accessories just brought me back. woah. i remember people making wallets out of them and stuff 😂
We as a society really went from silly bands straight into duct tape. Silly bands were my 7th and 8th grade years. Duct tape was freshman and sophomore year of HS. My sister literally made an entire duct tape dress for one of the homecoming week dress-up days 😭
I believe the dress up day was actually Class Color/Duct Tape day. Ik I had a blue duct tape bracelet and a duct tape bow and my sister had a pink duct tape dress and a larger duct tape bow.
SLAP BANDS omfl
So I'm way too old for the silly bandz fad (I finished HS in 07), but when I was in middle/high school standard shaped colored rubber bracelets were extremely popular. They all got banned because the admins believed kids were trading SEX for these bracelets. Like each color supposedly stood for a specific sex act and wearing that bracelet meant you had done that act! And that kids were doing these things just to "earn" a color. The whole thing was just an urban legend 😪
I graduated in ‘03 and I feel like that kind of rumor was going around when I was in school as well!
I remember that shit. I liked wearing the bracelets but then people would constantly be trying to pop them talking about "NoW wE gOtTA", no! Leave my bracelets alone!
That happened at my school in 2010ish (the plain bands, not silly bands, they never got big at my school). The specific rumour was that if someone snapped a certain colour of band on someone else they had to do the act it represented together.
The day they were banned a teacher came into our class, asked us all to raise both arms, and _cut_ the bands off of everyone wearing them
That is wild that you're not the only one who has had this experience, I never heard this rumor but this is wild
Ah, those are what I'm remembering!
"How can we girlbossify Silly Bandz?" You're getting dangerously into pyramid scheme territory Amanda, that might actually be worse than the NFTs...then again, it would definitely get people talking about them again.
I don't know what is more annoying, the hunbots pushing MLMs or the techbros pushing NFT and Crypto. Who knew that Pyramid and Ponzi schemes would be so prevalent in the 21st century
Somewhere, someone had read this & now wants to sell NFPs (Non Fungible Pyramid schemes).
I'm older than you, and one thing I remember was news reports warning parents about buying them. They would show these gruesome photos of wrists with crazy skin infections from kids wearing so many bands that got too tight, and from kids showering with them on, and the moisture getting trapped and causing infections. On top of the school bans, that's why I think they died off
its almost like parents should occasionally glance at their children
@@iamcool544 you're talking crazy talk
They got banned in my house as my little sister would just leave them on the floor and our cat would try to eat them, nearly choke (I'd save her) and then she'd try again cause cats are arrogant and dumb. Yeah that had to be stopped.
I remember the popular kid had a ton. I went to her birthday party and I remember seeing the skin around the bands turning different colors. Her mom is an RN and, looking back, I'm shocked that her mom let her wear as many of them as a time as she did. The should've had to know that that was not healthy.
@@ThexDynastxQueen as a veterinary assistant, that terrifies me!
I remember these! Crazy popular in my middle school too, always under threat of banishment for being “too distracting”. The animal/dinosaur ones absolutely DOMINATED in popularity, they were basically currency and we’d trade them all the time.
I think it died quickly because schools banned them so much- if you can’t wear them to school, for kids, you can’t wear them anywhere basically because school is your whole life. So other fads overtook them- in our school, it was anything made of duct tape. Girls would make and sell duct tape book bags, purses, ties/bow ties, hats, vests, etc. One guy even showed up to a school dance in a duct tape suit. (All colored duct tape btw, not just the grey stuff)
my fifth-grade class definitely had a silly band economy. also it was hilarious how some of them would nearly cut off your circulation because of the weird shape.
Fun fact: on the album cover for her 2010 album "Sale el Sol," Shakira's wearing a selection of Silly Bandz on her right wrist, which 13 year-old me was absolutely HYPED about
I vividly remember having an entire drawer in my jewelry box dedicated to silly bandz. I had a guitar shaped one that I kept separate because I was going to give it to the lead singer of Marianas Trench and he was obviously going to love it so much and wear it forever...that was the only silly band I still had 10 years later LOL
It got banned in my middle school because we had a gambling ring, we would also flick each other, AND a parent got involved saying that someone "stole" their child's property lol. We made a game out of the silly band where you could win someone else's band. The game involved laying both your silly bands on the cafeteria table flat and you would flick the side such that they popped upwards and moved sideways a bit. You won if your band landed on top of your opponent's silly band. Someone lost half of their bands and I believe it was their parent that came in and got silly bands banned for sure after they were already considering it because of the flicking against skin problem.
I feel like this immediately followed another short lived trend: having as many silicone bracelets as you could on your arms. Who else remembers that? Or was that just a thing here in Canada?
Oh, that was a thing stateside. Couldnt tell you when it started and when it died off, but I had a friend in like 2015 who had so many silicone bracelets on his arms that he had like a reverse farmer's tan
That was me in highschool!
We had those in Scotland, as well! I used to think the silly bands and those silicone bracelets were like connected, as in made by the same company. I was never into either, would rather buy pencils and notebooks, but I also dislike bracelets in general, so now I think about it that's probably why
Yeah, they started with LiveStrong bands, I think. That’s what we called them, anyway, even though they could be any color/text
oh my god yes, especially the ones from hot topic with band names, or the breast cancer awareness one that said "i
God I was a kindergartner when these were super popular and kids would honestly to god have underground businesses based on these things. Like imagine 30 small kindergartners huddled inside a covered slide on a play set conducting illicit trades and sales for these rubber bands. I had a large shoebox I kept all mine in and would bring it to sell and trade them at recess. It was so wild and I can’t believe we did this lol.
I remember these being a huge thing along with the food and animal themed erasers you could pull apart and put back together also they were also banned in our schools
At my school, the fall of silly bands coincided with the rise of Kooky pens. They also became super hot commodities that were traded and bought/ sold at school, and were eventually banned until they faded into obscurity, forgotten like their silly band predecessor
Oh GOD I forgot about those. I never had one of those, but I swear every guy in my class had one of those
@@nerdoftheatre ikr! It was such a hot commodity. I remember having to prove the pen works for top value, but also trying to use as little ink as possible to not waste it. What a time lol
@@marymik7372 Tbh I never understood the appeal of them because they reminded me of a fishing lure for some reason. I went to a private Catholic school, so we didn't have lockers. I remember the guys would just hang those off the side of their desks and NEVER use them
kooky pens came before silly bands for my school. it was so cool to wear a lanyard with a big bundle of kooky pens hooked onto it.
I was all about these when I was in highschool lol wore multiple every single day. I honestly don't remember why I stopped wearing them besides I fell out of love with them? But I definitely kept them around until I moved out into my own place. I would buy them at Party City and it was so hard to find shapes you wanted! I bought the alphabet set so I could wear my boyfriend's name and a heart on my wrist at all times.... yes we're still together LOL
Edit: and yes I wore them with my I love boobies jelly bracelet.
I started working in a bookstore in 2013 and Silly Bandz sold really well into 2014 for us. I did notice that it was mostly grade school kids that were getting them though. So maybe younger kids that had seen their older siblings wearing them and still wanted them?
I remember when I was camp counselor in 2018, we found a whole stash of silly bands in an old storage area we were cleaning out, each of us there took one and wore it the whole summer
the schools in my town banned them for the same reason they would later ban the beaded bracelets that were so popular with scene kids, cuz someone started a rumor that each color you wore corelated to a sex act you had done or were open to doing lol
ah good old fashioned moral panic.
I found this out later on, had no idea there was a sex act with the colors - Lol
@@ddjsoyenby ya gotta love it
The store I work at got in some Silly Bands wannabes last year, and I was so worried that the trend was coming back, but thank goodness, they've only been bought by, like, parents on a last minute party favor search. In fact, I think we still have the original box with product still in it somewhere.
Omg literally same... We stocked them for basically a couple of months but they nvr came back. Ngl im surprised they didnt considering that regular degular fidget spinners had a resurgence last year
I just remember moving on to only buying "I ❤ Boobies" bracelets since the Silly Bands would break.
Also remember there was lots of snapping them on eachother and that got annoying. 😂
"Iconically fungible" is the funniest phrase I've heard in a while
When I was in middle school, I had a friend who would wear so many silly bands that they were basically sleeves. It was almost like a sign of status in the silly bands community. One day, they started banning them which teachers said was for dress code, but rumor had it that a kid tried to out do her in how many they wore and started losing blood circulation in their hand.
This has actually come back into fashion in my towns alt community cause kandi bracelets + silly bands looks really good together and the neon colors really pop with black outfits
"every once in a while, we are allowed stupid" is my new mantra
silly bandz being cool is so ingrained in me that my first instinct upon seeing them again was to think "omg i want the dinosaur ones." i am an adult.
These were straight-up a form a currency in elementary school... like, a glow-in-the-dark unicorn could go a long ways when trading lunches
In 2011 I wound up in the ER with my very scared boyfriend (now husband) and my mom. When I was finally discharged, my mom drove us to Walgreens to pick up my prescriptions. I was asleep in the car because I was zonked on painkillers. I woke up to my mom and boyfriend piling into the car with my meds along with a giant Pikachu pillow thing, snacks, and my boyfriend had a little bag with 2 Hello Kitty beanie babies (that I still have to this day 🥰) and 2 packs of hello kitty silly bands because he and my mom couldn't decide which color scheme I'd like. They still turn up in my belongings on occasion. I was in the jelly bracelet generation, but fining those little hello kitty rubber bands reminds me how loved I am by some really amazing people.
It's wholesome as fuck.
....and no...I don't have Pika Pillow. The Pikachu pillow was humped and torn up to death by one of our dogs after years of snuggles. RIP Pika Pillow. I'm so sorry Morty tore off your eye and then humped the hole.
They were straight up called “shag bands” where I lived💀 each colour supposedly meant a different “act”
Yes! I thought I was the only one that remembered this. We call them "Sex bandz" at my school and they got banned quickly once the teachers found out what they meant.
They lasted for a bit longer in the UK, I remember there was at least a couple years when they where around schools here. Also, they're doing NFTs, they're far into being dead now to be pulled back. Nothing can make them popular again.
I was in middle school in 2002 to 2005 and the “why did I buy so much stuff at Claire’s “ statement also applies to me, Claire’s is something every femme 13 year old had an addiction to
I was about 28 when this was a thing. I work at a preschool and all the kids had them. I started wearing them and immediately became the coolest teacher there. Even made a few trades lol
Middle school memories (and tastes) last longer than most things. This happens to be the thing that was happening during yours, so it's BIG in your mind. I will always defend my love of Depeche Mode for this reason.
The camera audio halfway through is giving some fun throwback Swell vibes
I never bought silly bands but I did trade for a green dog and yellow giraffe. For the longest time they were sitting on the bookshelf from my childhood bedroom, but I had to clean it out, I bet they’re in the box of nostalgia in my basement.
i loved them bc i like cute lil colorful shapes ofc lol but i had a friend who had sooo many and she would wear all of them at once, like going up her forearm probably partially cutting off circulation lmao
i dont remember ever actually owning a pack though, i think i just acquired them through friends/classmates who let me keep some hahah
I was a little old for silly bandz (graduated hs in 2012) but during 4th/5th grade those yellow Live Strong bracelets were everywhere (as well as every color under the sun)
"Practice social skills like negotiation" Yes, negotiation, that's what was happening at our school. Not the segregation of people who could afford name brand vs. those who bought knock-offs (me) vs. those who had none. Not the brutal trading circles that we're 100% biased by how much the other person liked you (which again tied into what group you we're in).
Silly Bandz we're one of the ~50 things that we're banned at my school, we we're never given reasons for any of them other than "because we're adults and we said so", but I mean you could make a very educated guess on why for most of them. (Mini sticks, bouncy balls, tennis balls and lacrosse balls can cause injuries. Snow forts, snow balls, and snow men could cause injuries/put you out of sight of a teacher. Pokemon cards, Webkinz, and Silly bands can cause a lot of fighting. There's more that was banned, but yea, it was weird and caused a frequent change of trends in my school.)
A friend and I were obsessed with figuring out how to repair these when they snapped. We’d find broken ones lying around and try different ways to fix them. We thought we could sell them once they were fixed. Never did figure out how to fix one and have it still look nice.
It does seem odd for it to be such a short lived trend, when i remember EVERY store was selling them, even Disney and now they are no where to be found. Especially since most ppl still love silly bands just don't wear them.
As someone who works with elementary and middle school students now I feel like popits were the craze at the beginning of this school year. Everyone had them. Kids were trading them, parents were mad. It was big. Now not so much.
Here in the UK, they were known as "shag bands" (colloquially, I imagine), and depending on who you asked, they either represented how many people you'd had sex with, or how many different acts you would do if they were broken. A consensus was never reached, but a lot of people had the elastic pulled and slapped against their arms anyway.
I worked retail during the silly bands craze and seeing those plastic packages brought back memories so hard it almost felt like ptsd
God...this is a blast from the past.
I remember Silly Bandz being a big thing when I was in 5th and 6th grade. My mom pretty much never let my brother and I indulge in fads, so if we wanted it, we needed to spend our own money on it.
The only Silly Bandz I ever got were from the local Dollar Tree, so they were bootlegged to hell and back, but no one could tell the difference.
They got banned at my school when I was in 6th grade because kids were trading them in class. There was a rule set at the start of the year that if 100 Silly Bandz (or something like that) were confiscated due to being a distraction/traded in class, then they would be banned (I went to a pretty small charter school, so it only took a few weeks).
The thing that sticks with me is a girl a grade above me who had Silly Bandz on both arms, wrist to elbow. She just added more every time she got them, so there was a thick layer of rubber around each arm. When the school banned them, it was the first time she had taken them off (or so she claimed) and they were so tightly fused to her skin that it left purple bruise/rings on her forearms for like a week.
Silly Bandz were most definitely a cult
A kid ate one at my school and started choking, that’s how they got banned.
Also squinkies, any one remember squinkies?
Those were nuts too, those got banned cause someone started throwing them at people.
Oh god I haven't heard that name in years. I have a few of them. Ik a few 8th graders were playing with them while we were sitting on the sidelines during PE. I ended up getting them from a secret Santa exchange at school. By that point, they fell off in popularity by the time that following summer rolled around. Ik I still have the ones I got.
This takes me back, I used to have the cowboy pack. In 4th grade at my school tamagotchi’s were banned from classrooms!
in 2011 I went on a church mission trip to Guatemala and one of the things we brought was an entire duffel bag *stuffed* with silly bandz. A grown adult had to explain to TSA why their carry-on bag solely contained packs of silly bandz.
my school banned it because there was this big news story of kids wearing too many bands all the way up their arms and loosing circulation, damaging their arms. Looking back now i doubt it caused any real damage but i was so sad when they were banned.
I was the salesperson in my elementary school. I didn’t just sell silly bandz, I also sold gel pens and colorful bandaids.
I feel like they could rebrand into a line of aesthetic journaling/study products. I'm feeling a "keep your list on your arm" sort of vibe where once you finish a task you take the color off or put it on a different arm
silly bands are the best 2010s nostalgia i needed this week. i want to go back all the time 😭😭
lol the UK's equivalent to these (at least in my area) were known as 'shag bands' and were accompanied by a code of sexual activities you had to perform if you and a partner broke them. They also didn't form cool shapes. Very weird looking back....
In portugal 2002 our school had a fad among 6th graders to collect the tabs of soda cans and have them hanging from a keyring of your backpack. The coolest people had like blue red or orange tabs. I wasnt that cool ahah.
OMG nostalgia alert!! 🤩 These were my life in elementary school and I totally forgot about them! So glad you brought this up again cuz it’s fun to reminisce during these difficult times, plus it’s interesting to see how we could bring these back in style. It could definitely happen! 😄
I graduated in 2012 so I’m a bit older than the silly band generation. I do remember though that my gen’s “version” of silly bands were just plain colored rubber bracelets. There was this whole secret game with them if you broke someone else’s band, depending on the color you had to do something with/for them. The black bracelet was always the most risqué
i like this theme for some video. the defunct cults thing.
its so fun to resurface these weird little things that you havnt thought about in like 10 years.
I think sillybandz should veer towards band/artist specific merch as a cheap fun little trinket option for fans to get like how we had Hot Topic pins when they were easier to swipe when we were kids.
I was a freshman at an inner city high school when these were a thing, and I don’t remember them ever getting banned. Probably because the freshman classes are so big that they require their own separate building, and the least of my schools problems were sillybandz 💀. My high schools student population was over 3,000 students. I think I remember that they tried to police wearing sillybandz but it was kind of impossible for the faculty to keep track of. This was around the same time that the whole ‘invisible sleeping dart’ game was taking over and students would hit full send and straight up fall on their face in the middle of the hall or out of their desk chair and wait for someone to come tap them out if they got ‘hit’. THAT got banned and was definitely the priority lmfaoooo. This was also at the same time that my school was more worried about students ‘turtling’ other students backpacks by turning them inside out and re-stuffing them as form of bullying. 2010 was a lawless, wild time.
A girl from my hometown who's an influencer was dating Robert Croak recently for a few years, and i remember her trying so hard to bring these back into style when they first got together lol.
Lmao I was fully a senior in high school when these became popular but my friends and I bought some "ironically" (everything had to be ironic in 2010). Pretty soon after that though it turned into a brief but sincere obsession. I remember driving to walmart to buy sillybandz with my friend Eric because we were looking for the halloween pack (I wanted the bat shape so bad) and I managed to accidentally lock my keys in my trunk and had to call my mom and explain to her that I, 18 years old, technically an adult, locked my keys in my trunk at walmart while buying sillybandz
I think there's definitely alt circles on tiktok that could re-popularise them as accessories. Not just wearing them as bracelets but incorporating them into more DIY type jewellery and other stuff.
Bruh I was straight up selling these things. After a VERY intense end of year they were fucking dead come September
I never got super big into Silly Bandz, I had a handful I coveted and loved. My most prized one was a tiny blue umbrella one that was actually a ring! Think you're right there's definitely a market for them if they branched out. Could even do a jewelry run inspired by their more popular shapes to target an older nostalgic audience without being bright-shaped plastic.
I still have a zip lock bag of the 300+ silly bandz i have and traded for (including the glitter ones and the glow in the dark ones bc I'm cool like that)
The story of the silly bands guy brought a tear to my eye. Love hearing small business find success. Yet another win for the best/worst economic system.
I feel like rainbow loom also fits in this category of how it was really popular, and people would trade/sell them and then it was gone in a few months
I forgot about those. I remember so many kids had them and I had no idea where they were from or how to make one, but I wanted one so badly.
I remember some kids in my school started selling a service of making a coolER bracelet. Basically you would give them three silly bands and in return they would make a bracelet with two of them and keep one in return. The bracelet was SO easy to make, but they didn't tell anyone so they became rich lmao They would basically place one silly band on top of the other, and then grab the side of the one in the bottom, and join it with the other side through the one on top (idk if that makes sense lmao)
I was an assistant manager of a Claire’s from 2009-2012 and these things were the BANE of my life. But can’t lie, I had a bunch. Rocking silly bandz as a mid 20 year old made me the cool adult with the kids that came in the store and those I coached on a swim team.
I went to a webkinz day camp at the local community college over the summer one year. We got to bring in our webkinz, play with them on the computer, and then play some of the webkinz games in real life. I also vividly remember winning a webkinz coloring contest which was just the webkinz dog coloring page. It was some of the most fun I've ever had.
They should have followed the Beanie Baby model and started retiring different shapes and colors. That's what created the spike in demand and collector fervor with the Beanie Babies.
I distinctly remember buying a product like silly bandz at summer camp in 2005. The wiki says that they were distributed in 2005 in Connecticut and New York so it could have made it's way up to Wesley Massachusetts.
"You know, I think every once in a while, we are allowed stupid, and that's how people stay sane."
_-Amanda 2022_
amanda is truly wiser than all of us.
I feel like making charms in the shapes of the silly bands, like key chains, earrings, scrunchi charms, will target those who are into y2k and its fashion but also be marketable to young kids. Claire’s would definitely eat that up as they are super nostalgic right now, as is a bunch of other stores. Hell, a collab with like Vans would do great, make special ones in the shape of their shoes and keychains and everything.
Watching some of your older videos. I didn't realize just how old I am until I thought about what fads we had in elementary school, those plastic baby soothers and then pogs. Neither lasted long after being banned.
My school never banned them, my German teacher even gave us special country shaped ones during special events and stuff.
Once they got out of style I discovered that my elementary aged cousins all started collecting them as did all of their classmates and it became a trend that only little kids did. Then it wasn't cool anymore for them either and they seemed to disappear.
As for how quickly they died out, I want to point out figit spinners. At least in my school, I saw the first spinner on the bus when someone showed my friend and I, then everybody had them, and then they were pretty much gone by the time spring rolled around. I've seen trends like that come and go within a few months
even as a 10 year old homeschooled child who only left the house to go to church, they were a big deal. we would lay all of our sillybands out on the classroom tables at church every sunday and trade and admire each others collections. i remember when i got one that fit over my head and how big of a deal it was.
I went to a rich private school (note: I was not rich, I was on financial aid) and I so vividly remember that multiple birthday parties gave packs of silly bandz as party favors. A few years prior it was the same, but with webkinz
Parents and teachers band them at my schools because adults stared to us them a hook up marker. If someone gave you a silly bands then you were going to get lucky. Or something like that. It reminded me of those color rubber bracelets I also loved those.
I think branded partnerships would benefit them well. Can you imagine being at DragCon and collecting/buying a themed band from each of x12 queens that forms that year’s set? Each year they could change which queens would get a band. Shapes could include signature silhouettes (particularly of iconic looks), memorable references, and even assorted associated shapes (painted eye, lips, mascara, pump…). They would be limited as they change year to year, and fans would collect and swap ‘em like Disney pins. :)
I only ever was allowed to get 2-3 packs, total. I had friends who gave them to me too, but they quickly became contraband at my middle school and then we're forgotten by the time we went to high school.
My school oddly enough never cared about silly bands. Instead, one year the scholastic book fair had these little, yellow ducky erasers that everyone went feral over. If you didn't have one, and you didn't make a little hat for it out of paper or draw horns on it, you were a loser.
Before that, in elementary school, it was these little rubber animal pencil toppers. There were pigs, cows, frogs, monkies, blue elephants (my fave) pandas and a few others. We all had a bunch and would make "homes" for them in our pencil boxes. Tissues for beds, rubber pencil holders for jumping pads, decorated pencil case tops with things like paper chandeliers...we spent too much time on them and then forgot about them the next year. Ha
I know this will age me but in middle school I collected Koosh balls. I remember 6 but I may have had more. Moved on to Pogs after that.
I remember going to office max, back when silly bandz where popular, to buy plain rubber bands and there were only silly bandz. Like no shelf room for regular rubber bands. I had to go search for plain rubber bands.
Elevator pitch for bringing back silly bands: make an app. Scan the band with the app and shape/color does something. Or maybe go "collect them all" and when you complete a certain set of silly bands in your collection that unlocks things like Snapchat/Instagram filters or something like that ... Definitely needs some sort of virtual interactive item. There definitely needs to be something that can be shared cross platforms to give status/bragging rights for collecting certain packs. We are also missing the essential add on items such as creative ways of displaying the silly bands when not being worn (especially if we are going to target an adult audience). We can't have our precious silly bands getting shoved in some junk drawer like a common rubber band or losing their structural/color integrity from subpar storage containers. I'm thinking twinkle fairy lights that have special clips for hanging the silly bands...maybe the silly band app connects to the lights for color changing to go with the themes/colors of the bands in your collection. As for the material of the bands themselves, yes they need to be a bit more environmentally friendly but that's for science people to figure out.
Oh my god, I’m having flashbacks to fifth grade right now! There was this tiny local toy store in my town that used to sell them and I think they managed to keep their lights on that year with all the silly bandz (and all of their knockoffs) that we were buying! A friend of mine gave me this pretty little jewelry box she’d painted to put them in. I know the box is still at my parents’ house, I wonder if the bands are still there…
You just unlocked a hidden memory. These were huge even in Poland, although we probably only had knockoffs
My school didnt ban them but the teachers where constantly telling us to stop playing with them during class because its distracting. The days before fidget toys were common were very different
I remember these being very popular when I was in elementary school. Ngl these were sold in stores that no longer exist where I live so I just miss this craze
You need to do a video like this on POGs from the 80’s-90’s ! Those things were a cult status trend
I think focusing on the nostalgia and making merch would work well, like a silly band patterned t shirt or a silly band sweatshirt and the patterns could differ based on color and design pack
I’m a year younger than you and I remember being AMAZED the first time I saw a silly band. I still remember the guy who had it even though we haven’t talked in over ten years. I dont understand what was so mesmerizing about them
No way I literally was JUST talking to my friend about these a week ago, of course now my favorite TH-cam reviewer talks about them
It so weird, I live in Canada and I am the same age as you, but I was in high school when the craze happened. Some kids had them and we thought they were cool, but the price of one pack was just to high for us. My "collection" was build from the ones I found on the sidewalk or hallway, I didn't even knew what they were, they were just cool. I think the most significant aspect of m y experience is the fact that I was at a pretty chill private school, so by not making them "contraband" nobody cared enough to make a problem out of them. BUT I do remember when visiting my elementary school and also at summer camp younger kids went crazy for them!. It was a really weird trend, but I don't think its was the worst.
(I still have memory of the jelly bracelets craze from the dollar store (Probably around the 2005-2007 not sure when), they were pretty much like silly band, but made of smelly toxic plastic and we could make flower or spiking ropes out of them. good times.)
I love the little schnauzer face of Hermes popping in frame briefly.
I was super confused because silly bands were big in elementary school for me. AND then me realizing your the same age as my sister because she graduated in 2016 as well. Which means your only six years older than me, so it totally makes sense that they were big for you in middle school because they were kinda dying out by the time I was into them.
I'm glad that I seemed to have dodged most random trends after those scented glittery gel pens and was well out of school before fidget spinners came in.
In my elementary school they got banned because some kids had so many, up all the way past their elbows, they would lose blood circulation in their hands so the nurse got them banned.