Holiday: Last Year of the Glasses

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - Last night on coverage of the New Year's festivities at Seattle, Washington's Space Needle, KING-TV chose to interview Richard Scalfani and David Cicero of Brainstorm Novelties. That local Pacific Northwest company came up with the idea for the glasses that have been appearing at this time of year for a decade--those with the digits "00" covering the eyes and a number dangling off on each side to form the number of the new year.

I first saw such glasses during the nerve-wracking "millennium" celebration as 1999 turned to 2000. This was the part of the era of my life in which my freshman roommate from college, who grew up in Connecticut, would come to visit me for "First Night" in Boston each year. Boston, with its many arts performances and family-friendly "midnight GMT" fireworks at 7 pm in addition to midnight fireworks, was a great place to be on New Year's Eve, never mind the temperatures that were usually below freezing.

On 31-December-1999, my former roommate and I were walking down Tremont Street after the fireworks when we saw glasses spelling out "2-0-0-0" for the first time. After a few seconds to process how clever they were, I made a realization that I expressed verbally: "We're going to be seeing those glasses for the next decade!" Indeed, as easily as 2000 could be formed, so could 2001 through 2009.

It turns out I have little excuse for not having seen such glasses nearly a decade before. According to recent press coverage, Scalfani and Cicero came up with the idea for the "2000" glasses in 1990--and shortly thereafter realized that with minimal modification to form a "99" in the center instead of "00", could be used for the decade of the 1990's as well. The first year of large sales was as 1990 turned to 1991.

In that era, Seattle's local comedy show, "Almost Live!", did a "New Year's Live!" show on New Year's Eve. Host John Keister wore the "1991" glasses (one of only two palindromes in the whole series--the other being 2002--though since the numbers "9" and "2" are not symmetric, the glasses didn't look significantly more stylish than other years) on air during the show, and from there, popularity and sales would take off and last for almost two decades.

Yet, while my premonition of many more years of "200x" glasses certainly did come true, the last of those years, 2009, has arrived. Scalfani and Cicero humorously claim that they do not intend to continue sales "for safety reasons." A run of nineteen years is not bad for a novelty item.