Excerpt from the Gemmy website: In 1984, Gemmy introduced its first product line — ballpoint pens. An entrepreneurial company at heart, Gemmy soon found its creative legs and began developing novelty items that mirrored cultural trends in music and movies like Dancing Hamsters,Frogz, , and, of course, Big Mouth Billy Bass.

Pellettieri: In 1998, I’d just started with the company. One day my wife and I were driving by a new Bass Pro here in Grapevine, and we were banging back and forth ideas and she said, “How about a singing fish on a plaque?” I thought it was hilarious, and I said it could sing “ ,” so that was the initial concept.

The first prototypes were horrible and no one but me was really excited about the project, but after working on it with the engineers for about a year, it finally came together. I was in Hong Kong in our showroom one day before all the buyers got there, because all the buyers would go to Hong Kong to see what we were offering. So, it was the day before I left Hong Kong and I had the fish. It wasn’t a bass yet; it was a generic fish on a plaque, and it just wiggled and the mouth moved — it was okay. So I stared at that thing for like 10 minutes, then I just took it off the wall and took a train into China, where our engineers were. I got there and I asked them, “Can you make the head turn?”

At that point, that was a pretty state-of-the-art mechanism — most animation for stuff like that only had one movement where it just bounced up and down, things weren’t that sophisticated at the time. The engineers managed to get it done, and they put it on the wall of the showroom. Later on, the salespeople got there, and next thing I know, my emails blow up with, “Where’d this fish come from?” and “Who did this fish?” Because no one knew I was working on it. So I said, “Well, it was me,” but I didn’t know if it was good or bad.

The reaction was phenomenal, and from there, it took off. We decided on a bass because that was the most popular kind of fish and the most popular kind of fishing. I also went to a taxidermist to make it realistic looking. I’d never been to a taxidermist, but I asked him for a couple of samples to base it off of and we picked one. It wasn’t an exact copy, but it was something to base it off of.

For the music, initially the whole concept was “Take Me to the River,” which was the perfect song for it, and then somewhere along the line, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” became the second song. That one wasn’t my choice, but it was a great choice. I was in charge of all the music and music production as well. A singer named Steve Haassang “Take Me to the River,” as we’d worked with him on a number of different projects. I don’t remember who we used to record “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” though.

We also had to work on what kind of material it was going to be. We experimented with latex, which looks good at first, but then it dries up after about a year and starts cracking and stuff. So we did a soft PVC material. Then our packaging department, they came up with the name Big Mouth Billy Bass, and the first packages were great. I had a lot of help. There were all the engineers and the artists and other people that helped me. So I didn’t just do it by myself, but I was the one who persevered and made sure that it happened.

It really goes back to that head turn, though. Once Billy Bass’ head turned, that’s what hooked people. It was that surprise factor. That’s what made it the item it would be. If it was just a wiggling fish on a plaque, we might have sold some, but it would have been long forgotten.

America Catches a Big One

Deservedly, the first store to stock Big Mouth Billy Bass would be Bass Pro Shops, with Cracker Barrel gift shops carrying them soon thereafter. These two chains would be the primary retailers for Billy in those first few months, but the product would prove so popular that it would soon find itself just about everywhere.

Pellettieri: Initially, we only distributed it to specialty stores and department stores, because we realized that once we brought it to mass, those people wouldn’t buy it because then they’d be priced out of the market. So we held it for six months — we just sold it to Bass Pro, Spencer’s, Cracker Barrel, KB Toys and people like that to give them a head start on it. Then we released it to Walmart and Target and everybody else.

David Stewart, professor of marketing at Loyola Marymount University: It’s an interesting novelty product, and the appeal really comes from that startle factor. He looks just like a trophy fish on the wall, and then you walked by and he suddenly would start singing — that’s something not really found in novelty gifts like a Chia Pet or a Pet Rock. I tdoes something, which is part of the appeal. I mean, what do you do with a Chia Pet? It’s like watching paint dry.

There are always the people that you don’t know who to buy for, and so, a novelty gift is often a very safe gift that says, “We were thinking of you.” I suspect that these were bought more as gifts rather than for personal use. I was actually given Billy Bass as a gift by some of my students because I’d used it as an example in an MBA class lecture about novelty products. Now we bring out Billy every Christmas, and he holds a place of honor in the house.

Chris Bensch, vice president of collections at the Strong Museum of Play, home of the National Toy Hall of Fame: Novelty toys like this tend to pop up every now and again. I’m thinking of the Pet Rock in 1975 or the Rubik’s Cube. More recently, there was Tickle Me Elmo. It seems like there’s sort of a snowball effect: People get it, people like it, people talk to their friends. Even before social media, they sort of went viral and would wind up on the covers of magazines and on talk shows. That always fueled the demand further and then you’re nobody if you don’t have one.

Stewart: This product was also sold via word-of-mouth, which is another characteristic of novelty products. A lot of awareness of novelty products comes about as a result of exposure, so you go to a friend’s house and there’s Billy Bass, which precipitates a conversation. Then you say to yourself, “My dad’s birthday is coming up. I bet he’d really like that singing fish.” It’s called an “imitation effect.”

Word-of-mouth is a very powerful marketing tool. There are a lot of marketing organizations that spend a lot of time and a lot of money trying to create word-of-mouth. Actually, the models that we use for the spread of information by word-of-mouth areexactly the same models that we use for the spread of disease.Literally, they’re borrowed from epidemiology.