2005 -- Royal Technologies Group creates an all-in-one process
for an injection molded house. The 35-foot-high, 70-foot-wide, 200-ton
mold comes in Colonial, Bungalow, Ranch and Spanish Villa styles
and is a hit with movie makers looking to cut their location budgets.
Low-paid studio interns now can lug elaborate homes from set to
set with ease.
2010 -- Unfettered by gas prices surpassing $8 an ounce, Ford introduces
the all-electric, all-plastic, one-piece Sport Utility Recreational
Vocational Urban Suburban Mobile Domicile, the Hummalong. Royal
Technologies Group supplies the molds.
2014 -- Out of sheer boredom, Exxon Mobil Phillips Chevron Corp.
and Dow Union Carbide Lyondell Oxy LLC -- the megafirms that control
97 percent of the North American resin market -- swap their massive
petrochemical holdings in a one-year contest to see who can post
higher returns.
2020 -- The Global Humane Society notes an astronomical increase
in the number of abandoned, mutant puppies in the past decade, which
the group blames on phthalates. "The whole time Greenpeace was protesting
phthalates in baby products, our pets were chomping away on septic
squeaky toys. Now we've got all these three-legged, one-eyed dogs
that nobody wants."
2021 -- Former Cambridge Industries Chairman Richard Crawford g
announces he has acquired a controlling interest in the Global Humane
Society.
2089 -- High-strength metallocene film finally wins over skeptical
film processors when police departments across the country adopt
Pactiv's Crook-Grab film in high-speed car chases. The film's stretchability
and strength allows cops, sheriffs and federal agents to stretch
large sheets of it across highways, side streets and back alleys
to nab lawbreakers fleeing at speeds of up to 100 mph.
2100 -- Long the world's sole automotive supplier, Delphi Automotive
proclaims itself the world'ssole automaker. Thousands of impoverished
but fashionably wheeled Delphi employees storm the Renaissance Center
in Detroit, declaring martial law. "From now on, those Big Three
bozos and their cohorts work for us," a spokesman said.
2111 -- DuPont strikes paydirt with a new liquid-repellent polyester,
which a group of college students in Ithaca, N.Y., convert into
Drinkin' Pants. The revolutionary fashion concept quickly posts
huge sales numbers among college fraternities, rugby clubs and English
faculty. The one-size-fits-all pants, marketed in a vast array of
designer colors, are impervious to spilled beer, wine coolers, Hairy
Buffalo mixes and shots of hard liquor.
2121 -- Blow molders test-market carbonated beverages, water, mayonnaise,
ketchup and cooking oil in 2-ounce bottles to meet consumers' busy
lifestyles. Industry analysts say the minibottles are the next logical
step down from the 20-ounce bottle craze of the 1990s.
2170 -- Delphi announces it is replacing "that cheap wood s---"
in its Jaguar XJ40 Hovercraft dashboards with "rare and luxuriant
plastic, made from nonrenewable resources."
2227 -- Plastic beer bottle promoters rejoice when referees escape
without injury after a controversial call costs the Cleveland Browns
a victory over the Mexico City Feathered Serpents in Super Bowl
CCLXI. Browns fans bombard officials with a volley of thousands
of plastic Miller, Budweiser and Great Lakes Brewing bottles after
wide receiver "Sugar Bear" Ali-Muhammad is ruled out of bounds on
a triple reverse flea-flicker pass on the game's final play. At
one point in the melee, referee crew chief Seamus Lafferty taunts
the crowd, shouting, "Is that the best you can do?" as bottles careen
harmlessly off of his head, face and shoulders.
2261 -- Plastics e-commerce hits a glitch when an exhausted buyer
at cookie giant Keebler Co. sends commodity markets plunging by
electronically canceling an order for 2 billion pounds of resins,
when he means to cancel an order for 2 billion pounds of raisins.
The 3 a.m. typo isn't discovered until noon the next day, by which
time market prices drop 75 percent.
2261 -- A similar incident occurs when an initial public offering
for Xavier Injection Business Molding (Nasdaq: XIBM) sees its $14
opening price climb to $171 per share before day traders realize
the company is not an Internet venture launched by former IBM executives.
2280 -- Mold makers schedule conventions in Las Vegas, Cozumel,
Paris, Venice, Athens, Rome and the Poconos to discuss the urgent
need for better education programs.
2389 -- GE Plastics and Bayer Corp. introduce the Super-Disc, a
polycarbonate data-storage disc capable of storing the names, addresses,
phone numbers and ice cream preferences of each resident of the
48 contiguous United States and Canada, with enough storage space
left to include computer games such as Doom 19, Quake 37 and Pokemon:
Buy This Now!, and all 137 Rolling Stones albums.
2492 -- To commemorate the 1,000th anniversary of Columbus' discovery
of America, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce commissions full-scale
plastic replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, which they
plan to tug to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola where the misguided
adventurer landed in his search for India. Halfway to their destination,
the replicas are attacked by Greenpeace speedboats in the environmental
activist group's latest attempt to discredit the plastics industry.
The attack fails, however, when the speedboats' engines unexpectedly
burn out. Investigators later learn Greenpeace mechanics had removed
PVC fuel tubing from the engines, leading to the catastrophic engine
failures.
2492 -- Jon Huntsman XII acquires Greenpeace, announcing he will
dismantle the organization and burn any remnants. "Like my great-great-great-great-great
grandfather, I am a humanitarian," he said. "And this was the most
humane action I could take."
2500 -- Female vocalist Shalamar J-Twain, a direct descendant of
rapper LL Cool J and country singer Shania Twain, races up the charts
with "(You Can't Break This Fly Girl's) Plastic Heart." The song
stays on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for an unprecedented 47 straight
weeks, raising the public image of the plastics industry to new
heights.