Posted by Hero Arts
on April 26, 2019
Happy Friday! It's time for our second Flashback Friday feature. In this series we are sharing the story of our five decades as a company. (You can catch up by rewinding to the 1970s if you missed last week's post.) Now we journey into Hero Arts' second decade in business - the 1980s! Here is CEO Aaron Leventhal with some insight:
"In the 1980s, the budding Hero Arts moved out of the bathroom and into a garage, and evolved its look from the cartoon look into teddy bears, country folk, bookplates, kitties, and more. Coloring with pens (Hero Arts carried Marvy brush pens) and embossing were the most popular techniques. There were only a limited number of ink colors -- black, brown, red, blue, green -- before "exciting and new" colors like hot pink and purple hit the industry by storm. Only woodblock stamps for the most part, with a few businesses selling unmounted, Hero Arts was at the forefront of the growing stamp industry, with competitors such as All Night Media, Rubber Stampede, Personal Stamp Exchange, and others."
Let's take a look at some of the catalogs from the 1980s!
You can see how the styles evolved from the early part of the decade (at left) to the later part (at right.)
Hero Arts Founder Jackie Leventhal penned the following introduction which appeared in the 1980 catalog:
Some things never change. "It's amazing what has happened since I began this romance with rubber stamps..." Indeed!
And some things do change. While the woodblock stamps of today are indexed with labels, that wasn't always the case. From 1974-1986 we handstamped images right onto the top of the block! This was how we indexed all stamps until introducing labels in 1987. These cute bears with numbers were made in 1983:
1, 2, 3, come stamp with me!
Do you have a bear or cat stamp in your collection? Both were wildly popular during the 1980s! Let us know in a comment below and we will pick one winner at random to receive a $25 Hero Arts gift card! Comment by Thursday, May 2 at 11:59pm PT and you'll be entered to win.
Thanks for traveling back in time with us today. Be sure to join us on Instagram for more 45th Anniversary fun and use hashtag #herocelebrates45 to share your first Hero Arts stamps and memories!
125 comments
I do not have the stamps as I am fairly new to this stamping community. But those bear stamps are so adorable!
Not only do I remember those old wood mounted stamps with the images handstamped on them, I have a slew of cat and bear stamps. I first discovered rubber stamps in the mid-80’s but didn’t really get serious about stamping until about 2004. I’ve got a lot of wood mounted and clear Hero Arts stamps in my collection and was recently surprised to learn that I live in the same city as the Hero Arts headquarters! Hero Arts has a special place in my heart…and in my craft cabinet!
I have both bear and cat stamps ❤
I do have a bear stamp from the 80’s, but it is a little teddy bear picnic stamp set from All Night Media.
Oddly enough I don’t have any bears or cats in my collection, and my collection is pretty big! Thanks for the flashback!