THEY’RE JANDALS! “Some people call them flip flops, slides or even thongs, but if that’s you, then shame on you cuz, because all those names are wrong. They’re Jandals.” WORDS ANDY TAYLOR // WITH THANKS TO THE SACAMANO COLLECTION FOR THE ACCOMPANYING GRAPHICS
S
o sang Rhys Darby in his smash hit Jandals, which was heard by literally dozens of people back when it was
released in a pre-YouTube 1996. Darby would go on to greater things – notably helping put us back on the map with that lady from the government and getting well-weird in The X-Files reboot – but for many of us he made his mark by saying it loud and saying it proud in ’96, and then keeping it real in 2016 (when popular demand saw a re-release of Jandals with one of those new fangled videos). Yup, they’re Jandals. They’ve been jandals since 1957 when businessman Morris Yock trademarked the term, reportedly after being inspired by Japanese zori sandals, a cheap and cheerful working-class form of footwear that looks like a jandal made of straw, because it is in fact a jandal made of straw. The Japanese are famous for taking technology, improving on it, and building an industry around that, so when Morris turned that trend right around and replaced the straw with rubber it was a stroke of genius. The campaign to put him on the five-dollar note starts here. We should point out, however, that there is some dispute about all this. The family of John Cowie claim that it was John who introduced the footwear in the late 1940s and that he came up with the name jandal, and stoushes about who owns the bragging rights have erupted on a semi-regular basis.
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P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // H A K I H E A 2 0 1 9
