Davy Crockett.

As in any other decade, a series of brief fashions in dress and pastimes captured the public's imagination during the 1950s. Many of these fads were inspired by what Americans saw on television, which most of them encountered for the first time during the decade. In 1955 children and adults alike were swept up in the merchandising blitz surrounding Walt Disney's television series "Davy Crockett." Four million recordings of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," the show's theme song, and fourteen million Davy Crockett books were sold to eager fans. Little pioneers wore replicas of the coonskin cap their hero wore, so that the price of raccoon tails shot from twenty-five cents to eight dollars a pound. Some three thousand items of merchandise were licensed to cash in on the popularity of the Tennessee woodsman, including lunch boxes, bath towels, ukuleles, and...