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

So 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.

Kiwis everywhere could now ‘throw a jandal’ – which means have a hissy fit – ask if someone could ‘handle the jandal’ – which means not being a total wuss – and ‘give it some jandal’. None of these things had been possible prior to 1957.

We’ll probably never know the full facts, and some stories just take on a life of their own over time, like that bloke we met at the pub in Ngongotaha who reckoned his uncle invented the question mark. But what we do know is that regardless of who first made the ‘Japanese sandal’, its ascent to Kiwi icon status was swift. By the 60s they were ubiquitous and by the 70s de rigueur, with bold new colours like teal, avocado and that shitty orangey-brown and off-white combo entering the market. Generations of Kiwis learnt the art of clenching their toes so that they could run in jandals, and with the development of the Safety Jandal in the early 80s by Lane’s Apparel in Hawkes Bay, the jandal’s place in our history was confirmed. Kiwis everywhere could now ‘throw a jandal’ – which means have a hissy fit – ask if someone could ‘handle the jandal’ – which means not being a total wuss – and ‘give it some jandal’ – which means hitting the accelerator (or over-revving any combustion engine for that matter). None of these things had been possible prior to 1957.

And perhaps nowhere in Aotearoa was the jandal more of an ever-present icon than the Bay of Plenty. From our beaches to our main streets, jandals were acceptable forms of footwear, the perfect compliment to our balmy semi-tropical environment and our total disregard for dress sense. In fact, the humble jandal was so a part of our regional psyche that it appears on the Bay of Plenty flag and it officially resided here for more than two decades.

OK, so we made up the bit about the flag, but up until earlier this year the Sandford family of Katikati held the trademark for the jandal name and continued the noble tradition of supplying jandals to the nation. With the passing of a senior member of the Sandford family earlier this year the jandal moniker appeared to be on shaky ground, ripe for a takeover by forces unknown, but fear not New Zealand; Para Rubber, that purveyor of so many Kiwi essentials, has taken up the challenge of carrying the torch for what is arguably this nation’s greatest gift to the modern world besides the Māori strum.

Admittedly Kiwi’s have always been pioneers: Earnest Rutherford’s ground breaking work in physics helped give us nuclear power and paved the way for countless Simpson’s episodes, and Kate Shepherd’s tireless campaigning for the right for women to vote means Aotearoa was technically the first real democracy the world had ever seen – and, it seems, the only one to be currently making a decent go of it. But having nothing between your foot and the whenua except a thin slice of oddly coloured rubber is a beautiful thing. It’s liberating. It’s egalitarian. It’s way more ecofriendly than your expensive Italian leather sling-backs, and come on – it’s the way of our people.

Remarkably, there is a school of thought that shuns the jandal. For health reasons. Yes, it’s not your Mum – “You’re not going out to dinner in those!” or “You can’t go to a funeral in jandals” – that is raining on the parade, but doctors. That’s right, doctors aren’t huge fans, and podiatrists (foot doctors now that you ask) are downright hostile. And a quick Google search shows why, with thehealthy.com website listing seven of what they call ‘scary’ reasons why jandals are bad for you, m’kay, though they appear to have spent only marginally more time researching those reasons than we did on our research (which was bugger all).

Among the seven are the entirely plausible, but totally ‘meh’, You Could Get a Splinter and You Could Sprain Your Ankle, to the less obvious You’ll Twist Your Toes and They’ll Stay That Way. That latter one seems to be related to the Don’t Make That Face cos the Wind Will Blow and You’ll Stay That Way theory that someone was always banging on about at school, though it may also be a product of the Just Making Shit Up on the Internet school of thought. We think the latter, but then we don’t have a .com website so what do we know.

70% of wayward, marooned jandals are off ya proverbial left foot and that this is due to the propensity of Kiwi boaties.

In regard to just making shit up on the internet, one particular gem of jandalore™ that we love is that most jandals that wash up on Kiwi beaches - we can’t comment on Aussie beaches – are lefties. Yes folks, the theory goes that 70% of wayward, marooned jandals are off ya proverbial left foot and that this is due to the propensity of Kiwi boaties to launch by pushing off with their right leg, then lifting their left up off the sand – and setting the left jandal accidentally free on the tide.

And by that stage you’re off heading for tight lines and the manky jandal is like, whatever, we’ll get it when we get back. But yeah right you never do. Remarkably, this is in fact a factoid: in 15 surveys carried out on plastic litter collected from Northland west coach beaches between 1974 and 1997, researcher Bruce Hayward identified 21 jandals, eight of which – or 70% - were lefties. Bruce, we salute you.

And Para Rubber we salute you too. As Stacey Mearns, the director of the company’s NZjandal division says, you ain’t see nothing yet.

“Kiwi’s LOVE jandals, and we are the one and only original. Look out for the new NZjandal logo on the sole! We have added some new designs to our range and we also now have a website and Facebook page. It’s easy to stock them, we supply small business owners and larger franchise stores, we are local so getting them to you is no sweat either! Jandals are the shoe for summer and we look forward to seeing more and more kiwi’s wearing them as we continue to embrace the New Zealand jandal legacy!”

So sleep well freestylers, your favourite footwear is in safe Kiwi hands. They’ll always be jandals; not thongs like our Australian cousins say, not slops as they are known in South Africa, or flip flops as they call them in the US, or even Japonki – which we rather like – as they say in Poland. They’re jandals. Say it out loud this summer. And say it proud.

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