American Bandstand’s Platter Puss mascot

The stuffed cat with green eyes and red candy-cane stripes was neatly packed in a plastic bag, tied with a white thread to keep out the dust and dirt. I had bypassed it on my first round of the vintage toys at the auction house.

It was lying on top of a box of old German-made dolls that had instantly caught my attention. The second time around, the white cat called out to me. I untied the thread, pulled it from the plastic and laid it out bare for a closer look.

I saw one very familiar name and face: Dick Clark. American Bandstand. The rest was unfamiliar to me: Platter Puss. Official Autograph Mascot. Merrimac Toy Co. 1959.

When the cat came up for auction, the auctioneer joked that maybe it was autographed by Dick Clark. Not likely. If it were, the auctioneer would not have laid it out on this table. It would have been listed in a high-end Decorative Arts sale fetching hundreds of dollars.

The cat did have its share of autographs, though, but the names in blue ink pen were more personal: Love, Grandmother; Uncle Steve; Love, Aunt Betty; Sister Margaret; Barbara; Daddy; Miss Sandra, and the names of two lovers who drew a flower.

The autographs on Platter Puss were like the signatures of friends and teachers we all collected in our yearbooks at the close of a school year. They meant much to us but very little to others. That’s probably why this autographed mascot ended up on the auction table; it held no memories for those who didn’t gather the names themselves. Like the many yearbooks that show up pretty often on the auction tables.

I remember Dick Clark’s famous dance-and-music show, the hit of teens first in Philadelphia and then across the country. Black teenagers watched the show but were not invited to dance on TV to the sounds of some of the best black singers in the country. By the mid-1960s, black teens were allowed to dance on American Bandstand alongside their white counterparts. In 1971, we got our own Soul Train.

I don’t recall being a big fan of Bandstand, so I never bought (or could afford) its paraphernalia.

The show first appeared on a Philadelphia TV station in 1952  as Bob Horn’s Bandstand, hosted by a man named Bob Horn and featuring a group of dancing teens. Clark became the disc jockey and Horn remained in front of the camera until he was arrested on charges of drunk driving. The clean-cut Clark took over and the show became part of the ABC network lineup. The new American Bandstand debuted in 1957 and became a hit. It went off the air in 1987.

Clark did quite well financially with this new show. The most popular teens were logging about 15,000 fan letters a week, according to a 1977 People magazine article. Capitalizing on that popularity, Clark produced a magazine about their personal lives. He set up a company that made and sold Platter Puss, the stuffed cat that celebrities signed on the show, sold hair conditioner to teens and established companies to distribute records, according to People.

All of Clark’s largess and those of other DJs caught the attention of a congressional committee in the early 1960s that began investigating whether they were taking payola for playing certain records. In a 1960 appearance before the committee, Clark, 30 years old at the time, denied the accusations, noting that he had sold off interests in any conflicting companies. He mentioned his business interests, including the company that made Platter Puss.

At the auction, Platter Puss sold for $25. In 2006, the auction house Guernsey’s in New York sold items from Clark’s personal collection, including an unsigned and very clean Platter Puss that brought in $225.