If you were under
sixteen in the
mid-eighties, you should remember these. The
Trapper Keeper was a highly
stylized type of
three ring binder. They had a flap that folded over the opening and
velcroed shut,
color-coordinated plastic backbones, and, in later years, even matching colored
loose leaf paper. They used to come adorned with endearingly
corny designs of
tropicalia or random shapes that looked like
Bryce gone horribly wrong. On the ones I saw most recently, the non-commital
cheesiness had been replaced with
kid-targeted advertising.
Trapper Keepers were sort of the
Swatches of
grade school. There were always new styles available, and kids would go through two or three a school year. The
novelty was a big part of the
attraction.