“An entire orchestra in a hat” – Victor Theodore Hoeflich, American Merri-Lei Corporation of New York City, New York, and the Man from Mars radio hat, part 2
Good day to you, my bright eyed and bushy tailed reading friend. I am pleased to see that you are eager to continue our archaeological dig into the history of the Man from Mars radio hat produced by Victor Theodore Hoeflich’s American Merri-Lei Corporation of New York City, New York.
Incidentally, the text which accompanied the photograph of a young couple at the beginning of the previous part of this article was not a denunciation of the idleness of the capitalist classes which shamelessly exploited the proletarians of the world, a denunciation penned by the good people of the French news magazine Regards. Nay. It was an amusing musing on how said couple might have navigated the common use of its radio hats without hitting some reef of discord, before recommending that the couple go bareheaded, to avoid a more or less inevitable pain in the head.
And no, there were no snarky comments about the two easily identifiable bottles of soft drinks in front of our young couple. The author presumably did not know that Coca-Cola was hugely popular in National Socialist Germany at the onset of the Second World War, in September 1939, but I digress. Back to our story.
Hoeflich thought (hoped?) that sport enthusiasts would take their radio hats to a game (baseball, football, hockey, hopscotch, etc.) and listen to the live commentary of their favourite commentator. Nervous golfers could also have taken theirs to their favourite golf course, to soothe their ago, if Lady Luck threw curveballs at them throughout their game.
Mind you, our sport enthusiast might also have chosen to listen to the live commentary of her or his favourite commentator while mowing the lawn, and this as her or his spouse hung up some pieces of clothing on a clothesline as he or she listened to his or her favourite radio soap opera. Their teenage progeny, meanwhile, might have gobbled hot dogs and soft drinks as they danced to their favourite music on a nearby beach.
And yes, assuming that said progeny numbered two, our family would have coughed up US 31.80, plus tax, a sum which corresponded to $580 or so in 2024 currency, to acquire its radio hats. Another trifling sum, provided you could afford it.
By late May 1949, American Merri-Lei was allegedly producing 5 000 or so Man from Mars radio hats per day. The firm hoped to boost to triple its production capacity before too, too long. In time, actually, to make that headgear available to anyone heading for a beach during the summer of 1949.
Hoeflich claimed that the City of New York Police Department was considering the possibility of ordering a number of radio hats. Better yet, the management of New York International Airport, Anderson Field, in New York City, had allegedly bought a number of hats to stay in touch with members of its staff.
And you have a question, my media savvy reading friend? Did a lot of newspapers publish more or less detailed articles on the radio hat, you ask? You bet. Indeed, our hat also received widespread coverage in popular general interest / news magazines like Life, The New Yorker, Newsweek and Time, as well as in popular do-it-yourself / science and technology magazines like Mechanix Illustrated, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Radio-Electronics.

The American journalist Samuel Petok captured by a photographer of The Detroit Free Press of Detroit, Michigan, as he strolled about in that city. Sam Petok, “There’s Something New Under the Sun Helmet!” The Detroit Free Press, 23 July 1949, 11.
Mind you, some of the newspaper articles dealt with the radio hat in a humourous way. One only needed to think about the text written by staff journalist Samuel “Sam” Petok for The Detroit Free Press of… Detroit, Michigan, and published in July 1949.
As you can see in the photograph above, yes, the one on the left, a photographer of the daily captured Petok as the latter crossed a busy intersection without paying too much attention, allegedly provoking the ire of a taxi driver who allegedly had to stand on the brakes of his vehicle to avoid a collision. Petok also allegedly failed to notice the charming young woman visible in the photograph on the right who was allegedly trying to catch his ear.
Speaking (typing?) of humour, would you believe that an early June 1949 episode of the American daily comic strip There Oughta Be a Law!, a Sunday episode to be more precise, by the American cartoonist Albert “Al” Fagaly and the American writer / book publisher / editor Harry Shorten dealt with a radio hat? I kid you not.
Better yet, that episode seemingly existed in two versions, a (black and white or colour?) 10 illustrations comic strip which occupied a third of a page in a standard newspaper and a (black and white or colour?) 13 illustrations comic strip which occupied an entire page in a tabloid newspaper.
The latter could be found in the supplement of a late July issue of Le Petit Journal. In that Montréal, Québec, weekly newspaper, the comic strip created by Fagaly and Shorten was known as C’est toujours comme ça.
Incidentally, There Oughta Be a Law! appeared later and briefly in Le Soleil and L’Évangéline, two daily newspapers respectively published in Québec, Québec, and Moncton, New Brunswick, as Ainsi va la vie and C’est toujours comme ça, but back to our story.
The radio hat of our comic strip was the brainchild of a brainy teenager named Migraine, I kid you not, who gave it to his father, as a gift. The latter took it to the office, where it greatly impressed his colleagues. Sadly enough, the boss of Migraine’s father accidentally grabbed the radio hat as he ran out of the office. Shocked to hear the voice of a radio show robber coming out of nowhere, seemingly from behind him, said boss tossed his money over his shoulder, as ordered by the unseen criminal, before pulling down his pants, as ordered. A shocked police officer who had witnessed those strange goings on arrested the businessman, with some violence.
The final illustration of the comic strip showed Migraine’s father, badly beaten, presumably by his boss, asking to see his son so that he could beat him up with a radio hairbrush.
And no, the son in question was not called Migraine in the French language version of the comic strip. In fact, his name was not provided at all, and…
I know, I know. Such a level of violence was quite shocking but then, the truth was that the late 1940s and early 1950s were a time where far more horribly more violent American crime comic books like All-True Crime, Crime And Punishment, Crime Does Not Pay, Crime Must Pay The Penalty!, Crime SuspenStories, Crimes by Women, Exposed, Famous Crimes from Police Files, Justice Traps the Guilty, Thrilling Crime Cases, True Crime, Wanted, War Against Crime!, etc., could be found all over the United States – and presumably Canada.
And that was not all. There were also a great many thoroughly horrific American horror comic books for sale all over the United States – and presumably Canada. Comic books like Adventures Into Terror, The Crypt of Terror / Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, Haunted Horror, Horrific, Horror Comics, Journey Into Fear, Screams From The Past, Tomb of Terror, The Vault of Horror, Weird Ghastly Horror, Weird Horrors, Weird Terror, etc.
And yes, at least one Canadian publishing house, Superior Publishers Limited of Toronto, Ontario, published reprints and original crime and horror stories in publications like Crime and Punishment, Famous Crimes, Ghost Rider, Ghost Stories, Haunt of Fear, Journey into Fear, The Monster, Mysteries Weird and Strange, Red Seal Comics, Strange Mysteries, Tales from the Crypt, Tales of Horror and War Against Crime. Well, it did so until its collapse, around 1956.
Will you wait for a moment, my reading friend, while I look in my closets and under my bed?
Why people gorged themselves on images like those found in such comic books is beyond me.
And yes, you are absolutely correct, my aghast reading friend, such images would never ever have been seen in American motion pictures of the time.
Around 1948 at the latest, a respected German American psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham, born Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, came to believe that crime and horror comics were leading young Americans, mainly young men actually, towards delinquency, racism, violence, etc.
Wertham presumably knew that, in July 1949, the French Assemblée nationale had passed a legislative measure which gave the government the power to prevent the sale of books and magazines deemed to be harmful to minors. The West German Deutscher Bundestag and the British Honourable the Commons of the Kingdom of England in Parliament assembled passed somewhat similar measures in June 1953 and April 1954.
The book Wertham published in early 1954, Seduction of the Innocent, became a minor bestseller which was seized upon by many Americans, sometimes genuinely horrified and sometimes self-righteous, or politically ambitious, to censor the comic book industry.
And yes, you are indeed correct, my astute reading friend, there were many people in Canada who agreed with Wertham. People like the ones who publicly burned 8 000 or so horror comic books in Vancouver, British Columbia, in November 1954, an act denounced by so many people that it was not repeated in that province, nor elsewhere in Canada.
Mind you, many American government officials fretted about the damages that the racist messages of comic books could do at home and abroad. The grotesque racism of many comic books might not go down too well overseas, for example. On the other hand, that same racism might enrage many Americans and undermine their support for the more or less legal American anti-Communist activities in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Mind you, again, many American government officials also fretted about he way certain comic book publishers consistently disparaged the United States Army and portrayed atomic weapons as too destructive for humans to control, those humans being described as bellicose, greedy, incompetent and / or stupid anyway.
Indeed, what would have happened had those publishers succeeded in tearing apart the veil of highfalutin balderdash, nay, the veil of b*llsh*t, under which the military and government had pudically hidden the horrific consequences of the use in combat of those weapons of mass destruction? Sorry, sorry.
Fearing for its future, and bank accounts, the American comic book industry set up Comics Magazine Association of America Incorporated in September 1954. In turn, the latter set up a Comics Code Authority (CCA) in October, as a voluntary self-regulation alternative to government regulation.
The fact that the American government decided not to regulate the American comic book industry did not go down too well with Wertham. He felt that the logo of the CCA led many readers to conclude that, among other things, the racist portrayals of non-white characters in many American comic books was perfectly acceptable, something that he profoundly disagreed with.
The CAA went the way of the dodo only in January… 2011, by the way, when the last publisher which adhered to it finally dropped the whole thing, but I digress.
Incidentally, Wertham compromised, fabricated, manipulated, misrepresented or overstated a good part of the data he put forward in Seduction of the Innocent. The individuals and groups who promoted his ideas did not know about that faked content – or did not care.
Before I forget, however, would you believe that, according to Canada’s criminal code, in other words the Act respecting the Criminal Law, the distribution, printing, publication or sale of crime comic books in Canada was illegal between December 1949 and an indeterminate date in 2018? I kid you not, but back to our story.
And yes, that December 1949 vote in the House of Commons of Canada, an action editorially described by the daily newspaper Saskatoon Star Phoenix of… Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, as “one of the most outrageously ridiculous crusades ever undertaken by a democracy,” was indeed unanimous.
And yes, again, at this very moment, there are probably pieces of legislation in Canada’s criminal code which are equally outrageous or ridiculous, or both.
A young gentleman who was seemingly not too pleased with the Man from Mars radio hat was Olin Mumford, the teenager mentioned in the first part of this article. Indeed, in June 1949, he asked Pierre DuVinage Howard, the Georgia lawyer / politician who had stickhandled his patent application, to check if that headgear infringed on his patent.
Sadly enough, yours truly does not know how that story within our story unfolded. This being said (typed?), I have a feeling that the differences between the two designs were such that no infringement could be proven.
Incidentally, newspaper advertisements signing the praise of the Man from Mars radio hat could be found right until the 1949 Christmas season.
As was to be expected in the land of free market capitalism, some merchants took advantage of the hype surrounding that headgear to jack up prices, to US $ 8.95 if not US $ 9.95, tax included perhaps, sums which corresponded to $ 165 and $ 180 in 2024 currency. Mind you, some merchants sold those same radio hats for as little as US $ 4.95, a sum which corresponded to $ 90 or so in 2024 currency.
By January 1950, in other words after the Christmas rush, some radio hats sold for as little as US $ 3.99. One place had some for sale at US $ 2 in October 1950. Those sums, incidentally, corresponded to less than $ 75 and slightly more than $ 36 in 2024 currency.
And yes, by 2024 currency yours truly means 2024 Canadian currency, as befits a Canadian blog / bulletin / thingee like ours.
The Man from Mars radio hats sold in stores all across the United States could also be ordered by mail, which was a good thing. You see, as far as yours truly can figure out, that headgear could not be bought in Canada. Indeed, it might have been impossible to find that product for sale outside the United States.

One of the first, if not the very first Man from Mars radio hat found in Québec, namely the one imported by Québec theatre and radio actor / elocution and drama teacher Alfred Brunet. Arthur Prévost, “Alfred – ‘Ceux qu’on aime’ – Brunet est le premier des artistes de la radio à se couvrir du chapeau-radio.” Radiomonde, 3 September 1949, 8.
Given that minor inconvenience, Alfred Brunet, a popular if long forgotten Québec theatre and radio actor / elocution and drama teacher very much in tune with technical developments, had to order the radio hat he wanted to acquire from an American seller, quite possibly American Merri-Lei. He actually had to pick up that headgear, carefully packaged in a cardboard box, at the Montreal Customs House, in… Montréal.
The staff of the Department of National Revenue, which was responsible for customs and excise, was puzzled, however. Their customs and excise schedule contained no information whatsoever about a radio hat. Were they dealing with a hat or a radio set?
After much head scratching and soul searching, said staff indicated to Brunet that he would have to cough up $ 3.33 to leave the Montreal Customs House with his Man from Mars radio hat. Brunet was probably not thrilled to pay that much moolah, the $ 3.33 corresponding to $ 44 or so in 2024 currency, but he did so anyway. He really wanted that hat, and this even though he readily admitted that this headgear was little more than a toy.
Ahhh, boys and their toys… Video games. Atomic weapons. Sorry, sorry.
And yes, Brunet’s radio hat may very well have been the first to make an appearance in Québec, if not Canada.
Incidentally, Brunet was able to listen to broadcasts from only 2 stations and he really had to pay attention because the sound volume was very low.
Incidentally, the expression “Ceux qu’on aime,” in English those we love, found in the caption of the photograph above was the title of a weekly radio soap opera in which Brunet played an important role. That radio soap opera which remained on the air almost 20 years, between October 1938 and May 1958, was inspired at least in part by an American radio soap opera, Those We Love, which was broadcasted between January 1938 and April 1945.
By the way, Brunet was seemingly part of the cast of Ceux qu’on aime between October 1938 and September 1953 at the earliest.
The Montréal journalist Arthur Prévost concluded his lighthearted article about Brunet’s radio hat, published in a September 1949 issue of the weekly magazine Radiomonde, of Montréal, with an even more lighthearted sentence, translated here: “When will we have the toaster-hat, the cocktail shaker-hat or the lunch box-hat?”
And yes, Prévost was indeed mentioned in May and October 2019 issues of our stellar and lighthearted blog / bulletin / thingee.
Incidentally, again, did you know that, until 31 March 1953, Canadians who wished to legally listen to the programs put on the airwaves by radio stations had to obtain a Special Private Receiving Station License delivered by the Radio Division of the Department of Transport? Said license had to be renewed every year. In 1949, that license cost $ 2.50, a sum which corresponded to $ 33 or so in 2024 currency, but I digress.
The first Man from Mars radio hat put on public display in Québec (if not Canada??) could be gawked at in Montréal, at the Festival du Commerce du Plateau Mont-Royal held between 6 and 8 October 1949. It was on display in the kiosk operated by Claude Girard, the owner of a record store located in the… Plateau Mont-Royal area of Montréal, a store with mail order customers throughout the province of Québec.
And no, that particular radio hat was not for sale.
Before I forget, in mid-November 1949, the Man from Mars radio hat was one of the topics mentioned in one of the daily (Monday to Saturday) episodes of a radio program dedicated to the latest scientific and technological developments. Broadcasted between 1946 and 1957, I think, by CKAC, a Montréal radio station owned by the important daily newspapers La Presse of Montréal, Quoi de Nouveau? was hosted by a seasoned Québec radio announcer by the name of Alain Gravel. The words he spoke were the brainchild of a talented Québec scriptwriter, Berthe Robitaille.
Interestingly, at least to me, our radio hat had also been mentioned during an episode of Quoi de Nouveau? broadcasted slightly after mid-June.
And no, yours truly had never heard of Quoi de Nouveau?
Leaving aside any hint of levity, yours truly would like to point out that a number of Man from Mars radio hats arrived in France in time for the 1949 Christmas season.
You may wish to note that what follows was horrific.
In August 1944, as the German forces which had occupied France were forced to retreat, members of French Résistance sabotaged an important railway line near the village of Maillé, in central France, and this on 3 occasions. That same month, residents of the village helped a Royal Canadian Air Force aviator to evade the German soldiers looking for him. Still in August, other German soldiers intercepted an airdrop of weapons near Maillé.
Soon after, in late August, members of the Résistance attacked two German military vehicles near Maillé, again, wounding and possibly killing some German soldiers.
The day after that attack, members of the infamous Waffen-SS, the military arm of the equally infamous Schutzstaffel (SS), a paramilitary organisation of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, attacked Maillé, killing 124 of its 500 or so inhabitants, including 48 children under the age of 14 as well as 41 women.
A well-off American painter, Girard Van Barkaloo Hale, and his Anglo-American spouse, the philanthropist Kathleen Van Barkaloo Hale, born Burke, both of them ardent Francophiles, heard about the Maillé massacre in 1946. They were horrified and decided to help.
From 1946 until their passing, in October and November 1958, the couple supervised the shipment of huge amounts of goods to feed, educate, comfort, clothe and assist the inhabitants of the village they had adopted. There were books for the school library, a tractor for the local farmers, modern electric appliances for every home, etc.
There were also yearly Christmas presents for the children of the village between 1946 and 1957 or 1958. Many of them got a Man from Mars radio hat in 1949, for example.
As popular as the Man from Mars radio hat proven to be with members of the 4th estate, in other words with journalists, the sad truth was that this headgear did not sell as much as Hoeflich had hoped.
Typical American grownups, err, American adult male Homo sapiens actually, the male ego being easily bruised, might not have wanted to be at the receiving end of the amused stares of strangers, or the loud shouts of curious boys, as they went about their business, and…
All right, all right. The main reasons behind the failure of the Man from Mars radio hat were linked to its technical limitations and poor performance.
It only had 2 vacuum tubes, for example, whereas arguably far more bulky household radio sets had 5 or 6.
As well, the volume of the radio signals captured by our headgear dropped frequently or fell to zero when the wearer turned her or his head. At times, when tuning into a radio station, all that person would hear was a squeaking sound.
Even so, the Man from Mars radio hat had many fans. In 1956, Hoeflich claimed that his firm was still receiving the odd order for that item. The inevitable reply was that the radio hat had gone out of production years before, as early as 1950 in fact.
And no, American Merri-Lei probably did not produce 5 million or so radio hats. The ones which have survived to this day are probably collector’s items.

One hopes that this young man put on a Man from Mars radio hat backwards on purpose, to gently poke fun at that quirky headgear. Anon., “Radio Hat.” Life, 6 June 1949, 155.

While yours truly does not know if that older lady bought a Man from Mars radio hat, she certainly seemed to enjoy the music that she heard. To quote 2 lines from the popular 1972 (!) song Listen to the music by the Doobie Brothers, an American rock band, “Whoa, listen to the music, all the time.” Anon., “Radio Hat.” Life, 6 June 1949, 155.
The fact that an icon of American popular culture like the magazine Life referred to the Man from Mars radio hat, in a June 1949 issue, as both silly and ridiculous, even though it worked fine, might not have helped. And yes, the young man in the photograph above was wearing his hat backwards, presumably on purpose.
And no, yours truly will not disgrace this issue of our very serious and scholarly blog / bulletin / thingee by bringing up the day, in June 1994, when a certain Prime Minister of Canada was photographed as he wore his helmet backwards, presumably not on purpose, while visiting the Canadian Forces soldiers based in Visoko, Bosne i Hercegovine / Bosnia and Herzegovina. Said soldiers were then trying to monitor a ceasefire in that region of the former Yugoslavia.
And yes, my techie reading friend who wishes to change the topic, several if not many types of Bluetooth hats with built-in speakers are currently available on the market. Ahhh, boys and their toys…
Incidentally, the first radio set small enough to be slipped into a pocket came out in November 1954. Although produced by Industrial Development Engineering Associates Incorporated (IDEA), an American firm, the Regency TR-1 transistor radio was actually the brainchild of an American transistor manufacturing firm, Texas Instruments Incorporated.
And yes, the TR-1 was the world’s first mass produced transistor radio.
The 340 or so grammes (12 or so ounces), battery included, TR-1 sold for US $ 49.95, battery not included, a sum which corresponded to $ 815 (!!) or so in 2024 currency. I kid you not. And the thing did not even perform all that well.
Even so, IDEA produced 150 000 or so TR-1s. By the looks of it, none of them were sold in Canada.
The second radio set small enough to be slipped into a pocket came out in March 1957, I think. The pocketable TR-63 was the brainchild of a Japanese electronics firm, Tōkyō Tsūshin Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha.
Incidentally, the word pocketable was not invented for or by that Japanese firm, but I digress, one of my many faults.
This time around, however, the transistor radio in question was sold in Canada, from June 1957 onwards. It might, I repeat might, even have been sold in that country before it became available in the United States.
As you might have conjured up by now, the TR-63 was the first transistor radio to be exported / imported on our big blue marble.

An advertisement issued by the Calgary, Alberta, office of General Distributors Limited for the Gendis Sony TR-63 transistor radio. Anon., “General Distributors Limited.” The Calgary Herald, 11 July 1957, 10.
Distributed in Canada by General Distributors Limited (Gendis), a well-known distributor of various imported products based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I think, the TR-63 was known in Canada as the Gendis Sony TR-63. Yes, yes, you read right. Sony, as in Sony Kabushiki Kaisha, a new corporate identity formally adopted in January 1958.
As a special introductory offer, Gendis sold the TR-63 with a leather case, an earphone with its leather case and a battery. The cost of that little jewel, a jewel slightly smaller than the TR-1 actually, was $ 69.50, a sum which corresponded to $ 750 or so in 2024 currency. Wah!
Without the leather case, earphone with leather case and battery, a TR-63 sold for US $ 39.95 in the United States, and this from July 1957 onwards. Incidentally, that sum corresponded to $ 625 or so in 2024 currency.
And yes, my financially brilliant reading friend, the price of that TR-63 sold in the United States was virtually identical to that of a TR-63 sold in Canada without the leather case, earphone with leather case and battery.
Err, that was a long digression, was that not, my reading friend? Your fault. Now to conclude our story.
Sadly enough, yours truly was unable to discover out when American Merri-Lei disappeared.
The father of the Man from Mars radio hat, Victor Theodore Hoeflich, on the other hand, left the stage in December 1977, in New York City, at the age of 81. End of story.
See you later, in the future. In 2025.