In 1979, Chicago was hit with one of the largest snowstorms ever recorded. Meteorologists predicted two to four inches of snow, but in a span of just 36 hours — from January 13th through January 15th — the city was blanketed in 29 inches, or about two and a half feet. Wind gusts reached speeds of 39 miles per hour. Five people died. Approximately 15 others were seriously injured.
As you might imagine, everything in the city stopped for those two days. All flights out of O’Hare were grounded. The buses ceased running. And, of course, mail delivery was halted. For Joe Sugarman, a copywriter by trade who sold computer electronics via mail-order, the pause put on the U.S. Postal Service was particularly problematic. The best he could do was notify his customers that there would be shipping delays. “Something he hated since he took such pride in getting his products out to people in a timely manner,” April Sugarman, his daughter, tells me.
In such cases, the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) provided a stock letter for businesses to send to their customers. But Sugarman — again, a copywriter by trade — didn’t like how it was written. So he tweaked it. When the FTC found out, they hit Sugarman with a $100,000 fine. For six years, Sugarman tried to fight the FTC. He even created an illustrated pamphlet: “The Monster That Eats Business.” But after six years and roughly $500,000 in legal fees, Sugarman conceded and opted to pay the fine over four years.
The incident, however, left him in a financial hole. For the next six years, he searched far and wide for a new product that could help him dig out. But he mostly landed upon dud after dud after dud — e.g., a horseshoe-shaped radio worn around the neck, a laser-beam mousetrap and a Batman credit card. (He printed 250,000 Caped Crusader cards and didn’t end up selling a single one of them.) Then there was the card game based on Watergate, Hungarian Conspiracy, which was described as “a game of cover-up and deception for the whole family.” Per a 1973 report from Time, the instructions read, “Nobody in the Watergate Scandal wins. There are just losers. Once the cards are dealt, however, the object of the game is to lie and cheat as much as possible.”
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