The man who brought three-ringed order to the chaos of millions of grade-school backpacks has died. He passed away.
Kenneth said the cause of his father's death was bone cancer.
The Trapper Keeper is one of the most powerful objects that evoke Gen X or a younger generation. By the end of the decade, the company estimated that half of all middle and high school students in the US had one.
The folder was held in place by a set of plastic rings in the "keeper" which was closed with a metal snap.
The way it looked was just as important as what the keeper did. Mr. Crutchfield was able to see the possibilities of the wide exterior panels. Soccer players, dogs and cats, and a coastal scene were some of the stock images he bought.
Licensing deals were set up with artists like Lisa Frank and a host of television shows and movies. The popular covers were done by in-house designers.
The era of bright colors, cute animals, and lots of laser beams made the Trapper Keepers a fixture. If you liked the idea of a puppy with a basket of flowers in its mouth, there was a trapper keeper for you. Mead had you covered if you wanted a fire-red car. You don't have to worry if you want a giantNewton's Cradle standing in a field of Neon-tinted towers.
It was just like a rocket when it was rolled out, according to Mr. Crutchfield. It was the largest thing we had done. Kids were fighting over designs in retail.
School supplies used to be anonymous. The Trapper Keeper invited further personalization. The students wrote poems and wrote love letters on them. They used to double as shields in a snowball fight.
In an interview with Mental Floss, Mr. Crutchfield said that school products were dull when he first started working. He said that the Trapper Keepers were more functional and attractive. I made them fun.
Ernest Bryant Crutchfield was born in a small town in Alabama in 1937. His parents used to work at a cotton mill.
He was the first in his family to attend college, graduating with a degree in applied design. He moved to Atlanta to work for a stationery company that was part of a giant paper manufacturer.
Along with his son, Mr. Crutchfield is survived by his wife, daughter, six grandsons, and two great-grandson.
He had an intuitive sense for what consumers wanted. He won an in-house award for a product aimed at teenage girls. One of the first teen-focused TV specials was developed in 1971 in a bid to get students thinking about school in the summer.
As the paper industry changed in the 1970s, the company looked to broaden its product offerings. Mr. Crutchfield was in charge of the innovation program.
The trapper keeper did more than one thing. The idea for the Pee-Chee folder came to Mr. Crutchfield when he was talking to a sales rep from the West Coast.
Mr. Crutchfield was following market research that showed rapid growth in folder sales to students, driven by the expanding number of high school subjects on offer and the vast amount of paper they generated, thanks to the expanding use of copy machines by teachers.
He realized that the students had a folder for their things. He had the design in place, with two sturdy plastic coated cardboard panels and a shorter third panel. Students were encouraged to buy more binders as they needed them because they came with a few folders.
Jon Wyant is his research and development director. The folders trappers would be called.
The notebook is going to be called what. "Mr. Crutchfield said that."
Mr. Wyant said that he was the trapper keeper.
There was a bang. Mr. Crutchfield said that he remembered. It made sense, that's what I said.
It was tested for a year and iterating. He went to his children's school to look at their lockers to see if the Trapper Keeper fit.
The product was released in 1978 after being chosen as a test market. The questionnaire card was inside each trapper keeper.
The usefulness of the Trapper Keepers was cited by a lot of respondents. One student said that everyone has one. The item was sold out very quickly.
The trapper keeper was brought to the rest of the country. He decided to run commercials during after-school cartoons. He flew to New York to shoot three teenagers for a film.
More than 75 million Trapper Keepers were sold by the man. The swell in paper in the late 1970s made the Trapper Keeper a must, but it was rendered an anachronism by the advent of digital technology. It didn't help that many teachers soured on them, banning them from class because of their size and the distraction of the Velcro rip.
The Trapper Keeper was withdrawn from the market in 2002. The company merged with Acco Brands in 2012. He moved to Atlanta to work for Georgia-Pacific after spending most of his career at the company's headquarters in Dayton. He stopped working in 2004.
The company tried to revive the Trapper Keeper in 2015, but it failed.
The current wave of 1980s nostalgia may be giving them a new life. There is a picture of several on the home page of the site.
A picture of a boy with a "Kick Me" sign on his back is being sold on eBay.
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