The Ugly Business of Being Cute: Lisa Frank and Company

[Lady Frostbite]

I apologise if this has been posted before, but I found this a while ago and bookmarked it so I could re-read a few times. Lisa Frank was most certainly before me or at least was never a thing in the UK as much as the US. Still, I know the name, and this is a FACINATING read!

Inside the Rainbow Gulag: The Technicolor Rise and Fall of Lisa Frank on Jezebel

[LadyAmalthea]

That's a crazy story...she and her husband are a hot mess. Now I want to go Google pictures of her and the bizarre things described in the article...her funhouse-colored house, the company building, etc. Sounds like a house of horrors.

[Leave a Whisper]

Dang, that's quite a story. 

[Lady Frostbite]

I thought there was an image in the original article? Maybe it was in the short film, I'll see if I can find a picture because I remember seeing the utterly bizarre original building.

[Artemesia's Garden]

I remember seeing a film posted on here a while ago. Sounds like a drug-fuelled horror house! Still, very very cool artwork.

Post Merge: July 12, 2022, 04:17:34 PM

Just went down a wierd, wierd rabbit hole...

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[LadyAmalthea]

Yeah, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole myself this morning with it. I found an old video from before they were divorced where she looked all early 90's and he was talking all weird about how she was 'a little girl at heart' or something like that. So weird!

[Artemesia's Garden]

 

[Leave a Whisper]

Well, I mean the people that make the stuff we love are people and their lives won't neccesarily be sunshine and rainbows.

[Lady Frostbite]

One thing I did like about the short film embedded in the article was the fact there is a vault with all items ever licensed/sold stored and the original artwork. In a world where physical artwork can be lost, stolen or damaged, that's a really good thing! I'm sure you could make a fully fuctional collector's database with all that information, if only other collectables had that!

That Joe Exotic artwork ... at first I was going to say Joe doesn't even fit in the image, until I saw her people artwork, and ... yeah, okay, it's her art for sure, but it still doesn't blend with her classical stuff.

I DID find an article on Insider that has a tour of the abandoned Lisa Frank factory, but it's behind a paywall 

True, people are people, but it's always fascinating to see behind the curtain and see what lessons can be learned, especially when power and money corrupt and there are not enough sensible, unbiased hands guiding the ship. I'm always interested in corporate mismanagement or missteps, either criminal or unintentionally malicious, so I found this an interesting story.

[Artemesia's Garden]

One thing I learned over the years is that people with good ideas, like innovators and creatives are often not the same people as those who are good at managing a business. And sometimes people managing busnesses are good at neither, and then stuff starts going wrong. The tension between discovery/innovation/creativity and the need for cash flow is a recurring theme in industry. I get nostalgic about the past, thinking about companies like PYE, Cambridge Scientific Instruments and ARM. Also retail like Habitat, Whistles and even Topshop were intensely creative in thier time, translating art and high fashion and putting it into everyone's homes. However I think all these things have a life cycle. So it really is amazing that certain toy/media companies like Hasbro, Marvel, Lego and Disney have lasted as long as they have. It's one of the lovely things about being a toy collector. I can't think of any other really creative and innovative sectors that have lasted so long. I wonder why?