Nearly 30 years ago, Ernie sang "Rubber Ducky" on "Sesame Street."
For rubber duck fans, it was the equivalent of the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.
It took a while, but ducky mania seems to be in full flight. No longer content to bob around in the bathtub, the humble rubber duck has staked a claim in kitsch culture, infiltrating the Internet, sports merchandising arena and other territories formerly dominated by bobbleheads, Barbies and Beanie Babies.
Sports teams feature ducks bearing the likenesses of their star players or mascots. Internet sites such as Duckplanet and CaptainQuack.com swap, sell and celebrate all things ducky: cowboy ducks, devil ducks, clown ducks, glow-in-the-dark ducks. Lord love a duck, you'll soon be able to buy rubber ducks bearing the likenesses of Ozzy and the rest of the Osbournes when a special line of hybrid-human rubber ducks go on sale this fall in J.C. Penney stores.
The duck stops here in Pittsburgh this weekend:
Saturday, the Pittsburgh Pirates will host Rubber Duck Night at PNC Park. Each fan at the 7:05 p.m. game between the Bucs and the Florida Marlins will get a duck dressed in Pirate cap and uniform.
Sunday, more than 15,000 rubber ducks will mass on the Seventh Street Bridge for the start of the Ducky Derby, sponsored this year by area Rotary clubs, the Pirates and Bayer. At 10:30 a.m., the ducks will be dropped off the bridge into the Allegheny River for a race to the Roberto Clemente Bridge. More than 40 Rotary district clubs have been selling the ducks for $10 each. The quacker who crosses the finish line first will be traced to its owner via a special bar code. The grand prize is a lease on a Pontiac. Proceeds will go to various charities, including the Pittsburgh Food Bank.
"That's a lot of ducks in your tub," says Pittsburgh Rotary Club president Seddon Bennington, director of the Carnegie Science Center on the North Shore.
At the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park in St. Augustine, Fla., rubber ducks dropped in for a similar charity event several years ago and became so popular they took up permanent residency in the gift shop.
"We initially ordered them because a local charity wanted to have a rubber duck race in the river," zoo director Bill Puckett says. "We ordered more than we needed, so we started to sell them in our gift shop. They started selling so well we reordered again."
Guests who book a stay at the Chancellor Hotel on Union Square in San Francisco, Calif., find a rubber duck � usually dressed for the season � waiting for them when they check in to their rooms.
The ducks have been an amenity for nine years, reservations manager Luis Pina says.
"We go through huge boxes," he says. "They're cute; people like them. I usually get these comments: 'I'm going to take it to my kids.' 'I'm going to take it to my grandson.' 'Could I get some more?'
"We have Santa ducks, (and) for the spring we have a rubber ducky with a hat on and a flower on the hat. We have rubber ducks with cell phones."
Why a duck? Perhaps it's because, in these uncertain times, we hold on to the objects of our youth to help keep us afloat.
Or maybe it's just that the little fellas are so darn cute.
"Everyone loves rubber ducks," says Craig Wolfe, president and founder of Celebriducks, the California company responsible for the Osbourne ducks. "They're like teddy bears. Almost everyone has one or has had one."
Along with the Osbournes, the fall line of Celebriducks will feature ducks bearing the likenesses of the rock group Kiss. Penn State's Nitanny Lion is one of 25 college mascots who will be represented.
Wolfe, who runs the company with daughter Rebecca, is just as surprised as anyone at how the quackers have caught on. They've been selling their ducks for nearly five years on the Internet. Their commercial breakthrough came in January, when fans at a Philadelphia 76ers game were introduced to a rubber duck made in the image of team star Allen Iverson. More than 5,500 ducks were snapped up. Celebriducks clients now include various Major League Baseball and NBA franchises, including the Chicago Cubs, who sell a Sammy Sosa rubber duck. Wolfe says they'll even be issuing a rubber duck version of Penguins star Mario Lemieux.
While the Pittsburgh Pirates decided to dip a toe in the waters of the duck pond with their duck fan giveaway, Pirate brass balked at the idea of ducks grafted with the heads of past or present players, says Joe Billetdeaux, director of purchasing.
"I like the duck idea, but I didn't feel comfortable putting one of our past players' images on a duck's body," he says. "The bobblehead's one thing."
That brings up a question: When does a rubber duck stop being a rubber duck? When you've got a likeliness of Iverson that's accurate down to the tattoos on his arms, where does the human end and the duck begin?
"We had to ask ourselves, too," Wolfe says. "How do you keep it as a duck and also as a person? You've gotta have the beak, gotta have some sort of feathers, some sort of shape. Just putting a human face and putting a beak in, if you don't blend it in the right combination, it's not going to work."
Wolfe got the idea for Celebriducks about five years ago when he came out with a model of a duck grafted onto the head of Betty Boop. His biggest obstacle, apart from convincing people that he wasn't taking psychedelics, was getting the ducks to float. Some of those big-headed celebrities � Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, for example � can make a duck top-heavy, unstable and less than seaworthy. They kept tipping over.
"It took us years to figure out how to seal them up and put in an internal squeaker," Wolfe says. "If we had known how hard this was going to be, we never would have done it."
Indeed, the ducks were simply a curio, a sideline to Wolfe's primary business of selling original acetate cells from animated television commercials. But the Coca-Cola polar bears and Budweiser frogs eventually were overtaken by the duck business. Wolfe sold the art business.
"It was timing as much as anything else. After the Beanie Baby thing hit and the bobblehead thing hit, everybody was looking ahead to the next big thing. We just naively fell into that niche by being in the right place at the right time.
"We just wanted to do something fun and whimsical. Who knew?"
Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Rotary Club, Pittsburgh Pirates and Bayer Corp. Ducky Dump at 10:15 a.m. Sunday; race begins 10:45 a.m.
$10 per duck; a "Quack Pack" of six ducks can be adopted for $50, or a "Flock" of 13 ducks for $100.
Proceeds will benefit Allegheny Valley YMCA, North Hills Crisis Center and Community Outreach program and Camping for Kids in Braddock, South Hills Interfaith Ministries, the Bethel Park Police Youth Mountain Bike Club, Crossroads Food Pantry, The Elhovo Orphanage & the South AIDS Orphanage.
Seventh Street Bridge, North Shore.
(412) 471-6210.
Members of 47 district Rotary Clubs in the Pittsburgh area have sold almost 20,000 duck "adoption certificates" for $10 a pop. Each duck has a number that corresponds to the certificate.
"It's such a silly idea that everybody wants to be involved in it," says Dana Craig, senior vice president of investments at Solomon Smith Barney, which bought 100 ducks for their top customers.
At 10 a.m. Sunday, these ducks will be dropped from the Seventh Street Bridge into the Allegheny River. At 10:45 a.m., plastic booms holding the ducks will be removed, and the ducks will ride the current down river to the finish line under the Roberto Clemente Bridge.
If the river is too calm, members of the Three Rivers Rowing Association will stir up a wake to propel the field. They will not directly touch any of the ducks.
The duck that crosses the finish line first will be matched to its owner by the number on the adoption certificate. The owner of the winning duck will receive a two-year lease on a Pontiac Vibe.
Other prizes include a trip to Duck, North Carolina, a custom-designed home office and a trip to Disney World for Christmas.
1843: Danish author Hans Christian Andersen publishes "The Ugly Duckling."
1933: The Marx Brothers movie "Duck Soup" opens in theaters.
1934: Donald Duck makes his debut in the cartoon "The Wise Little Hen."
1941: Viking Press publishes Robert McCloskey's classic children's book, "Make Way for Ducklings," a story about a duck family who makes a home in Boston's Public Garden.
1941: Donald "Duck" Dunn, future bassist for Booker T & the MGs, is born in Memphis, Tenn.
1942: Pilot model of amphibious DUKW vehicles is created for the U.S. Armed Forces.
1964: Pirates utility infielder Richard "Ducky" Schofield is the first batter in the history of Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., when the Pittsburgh Pirates play the New York Mets in the brand-new ballpark.
1970: Ernie sings "Rubber Ducky" on "Sesame Street."
1976: "Disco Duck" by DJ Rick Dees tops the Billboard Charts.
1986: The movie "Howard the Duck," starring Lea Thompson and Tim Robbins, lays an egg at the box office.
1992: The hockey film "The Mighty Ducks" premieres, starring Emilio Estevez.
1996: A CD featuring Ernie singing "Rubber Ducky" in German sells 1.8 million copies in Germany. The CD features five versions of the song, including a dance mix.
1997: Just Ducky Tours Inc. sets up shop in Pittsburgh and begins conducting land and sea tours for paying customers. Their quacking "horn" becomes a familiar sound along the riverfront at Station Square.
1999: Daffy Duck gets his own postage stamp.
2001: Emmy and Peabody Award-winner Mike Reiss creates the "Queer Duck" cartoon for cablecast on Showtime.
2002: The Pittsburgh Pirates holds its first Rubber Ducky Day.
William Loeffler can be reached at [email protected] or (412) 320-7986.