Picture This

What made Palmer Paint a success was the high quality of Robbins's and his staff's work. The other half of the equation was Klein's genius for marketing. Paint by numbers débuted at the Macy's Toy Fair. Robbins has this story about how before the fair, Klein passed out some petty cash to strangers to come in and purchase sets. The sets flew off the shelf and Macy's was impressed but Robbins never knew whether the sales were all part of Klein's gimmick, if people had actually purchased them on their own, or a little bit of both.
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/15/paintbynumbers.php

 Ah, a little bit of Payola. The way things got done in the 50s. But WTF? If someone gave me ten bucks to buy a kit, I'd take the money and go treat some dame to a beer. Definitely a higher calling!



 Paint by number. It makes me want a Paint-by-Number background for my blog! But I'll settle for a nice image. I also want to know: do they still do those copper foil things in Junior High? Where you get a reverse lithograph of sorts, and use some awls and hammers to poke and pound a piece of copper foil over it until it looks like a scene of a square-rigger on the high seas? I did that once. I'm not sure why. But then, I'd have to ask that question about a lot of things in junior high.