Rickie Tickie Stickies and Flower Power

Do you remember Rickie Tickie Stickies? I didn’t when I first found a bunch of them in packages while inspecting a box lot from auction a couple weeks ago. I was going to toss them until I decided to find out what they were.

There were 19 brightly colored stickers, most with the name Rickie Tickie Stickies, the rest labeled “the fantasticks.” I examined the packages closely and saw one set of orange daisy-shaped flowers with pink centers. When I flipped to the back and saw the image, it sparked a memory.

It was a familiar Volkswagen Beetle from the 1970s plastered with daisies. Then I realized that I knew the image but not the name. They were a symbol of Flower Power and the hippie movement of the 1960s. I never knew where these images came from or who invented them.

The peel-and stick decals I got at auction were in their original packaging, unopened and sealed, except for one sleeve of daisies. Someone had apparently bought them 40 years ago, never got around to using all of them and just put them aside. The packaging was in good condition, but aged.

There were pink ladybugs (9 for $2), yellow/pink/royal-blue/lime trains with cars (5 for $1), an array of yellow/orange/hot-pink animals (9 for $2) and pink/orange paisleys (9 for $2). The Stickies were dated 1970. The package warned that they had to be removed within six to eight months or the company wasn’t responsible for any damage. 

 

On the back was the inscription:

They’re Right Now. They’re Bright Now.

For walls, ceilings, shower enclosures, luggage, notebooks, boats, appliances, raincoats, furniture, bulletin boards, cars, glass doors, garbage cans, gift boxes.

Top Quality Vinyl Decals in The “In” Colors. Easy to Apply, Washable, Non-Permanent.

They were a fad of the late 1960s – that’s how they were described on several websites – that made a man named Don Kracke millions of dollars. Kracke, who was working in an ad agency at the time, saw some hand-drawn flowers on the side of a Volkswagen bus and felt he could do prettier, according to neatorama.com.

He designed his own version of daisies, polka dots and paisleys, and put them on his own car, according to a 1998 story in the Los Angeles Times. Neighborhood kids took to them; so he created 3,000 in hot colors, and peddled them in his neighborhood and to a local hardware store. He didn’t expect the fad to last beyond 1967, he told a reporter.

It took off, especially the daisy sticker, embraced by “flower children” all over the country. By the end of 1968, 90 million Rickie Tickie Stickies had been sold.

“The key is timing,” Kracke is quoted as saying on the website drfad.com. He created the stickers a few months after 1967’s Summer of Love, a defining moment for the hippie movement at its epicenter of San Francisco.

The company lasted for about six years before Kracke sold it to a Minnesota company that no longer exists.

In 1977, he wrote a book – which was republished in 2001 – called “Turn Your Idea or Invention Into Millions.” He has brought 2,500 items to market, and was one of the writers of a 1970s comic strip called Yankee Doodles. Kracke is also a painter; his works were exhibited in 2007 at a Palms Springs, Calif., gallery).

Kracke apparently did not trademark his design, so other companies copied the concept. The fantasticks may have been one of them. I could find nothing about these stickers in my research. They had the same feeling of agedness, so I’m assuming they were from the same period.

I have yellow daises, a little boy with yellow hair and a little girl wearing a lime hat with flowers. They’re described as a “Home Decorating Kit” with suggestions on the back on where to place them – walls, waste baskets, canister sets, mirrors, glass doors, boats, walls and surfboards. All so very familiar.