Posted on 04/30/2006 5:17:37 PM PDT by Lorianne
WASHINGTON - Hail to the flip-flop, the best-selling footwear in the history of the world.
Talk about classic design: The flip-flop's so classic that there's an Egyptian hieroglyph for it -- a long oval with an inverted V in just the right place. King Tutankhamen's tomb has prototypic flip-flops in it.
Whether they're high-end Rainbows or brandless Chinese imports, slipping into a pair can signal a beach in the offing or downtime in the dorm. But the basic flat sole with a Y-shaped strap, joined between the first and second toes, is also a historic, even heroic, consumer good.
For example:
• Flip-flops are as universal and iconic as jeans.
"The guy who owns a mansion wears them, and the guy that cleans his swimming pool wears them, too," Fernando Tigre, former president of Alpargatas SA, maker of the popular Brazilian flip-flop Havaianas, liked to say.
For millions of Third World buyers, flip-flops -- aka thongs, zories, slaps, flaps, beach walkers -- are their first footwear. Often they're the first step in upward mobility toward closed-toe shoes, said Sonja Bata, whose Toronto-based Bata Shoe Organization operates factories that make basic shoes in 26 countries.
• Flip-flops helped start economic growth.
The production of rubber-soled versions, which had begun in Kobe, Japan, in the 1930s, stoked Japan's recovery after World War II, technology historian Edward Tenner wrote in his book "Our Own Devices."
Cutting and assembling them took so little capital, machinery and expertise -- and they were in such demand -- that many Japanese families and entrepreneurs got back on their feet making flip-flops. Mitsubishi, the Japanese conglomerate, bought out many of those businesses and became a big early exporter of flip-flops, said Phillip Nutt, a Toronto-based shoe industry consultant.
Chasing lower wages, Japan's footwear companies moved production to Taiwan and Korea in the '60s and '70s and ultimately to China. Along the way, most transitioned into more profitable closed-toe shoes and then athletic shoes.
• The flip-flop's basic design is classic.
Easy to make, easy to fit, simple and cheap, flip-flops have been virtually unchanged for more than 70 years.
Flip-flops, while not very profitable, are a way for manufacturers to gain a foothold in athletic shoes, said Donald Kalfin, president of New York-based Sino-East International Ltd., a longtime Asian shoe marketer. It's hard to lose on flip-flops, he added, because as a consumer product, they're the ultimate perennial: "If population grows, sales grow."
Archaeologists say sandals ancestral to the flip-flop are the world's second oldest footwear, after moccasins.
Endorsed by John F. Kerry!
I had a pair that gave me blisters when I was a kid, and I haven't worn them since.
My 92-year-old dad still has his wooden ones with canvas strap that I remember him wearing when I was but a wee laddy.
Most inconvenient style of footwear ever. They slip off the toes, gunk gets stuck to the bottom of them. You might as well just go barefoot.
I discovered Havaianas last summer and now own multiple pairs. You can walk on about anything and not feel it. High grade rubber and great colors.
I do...and often I have to turn around and drive back home because I forgot to put shoes on! -and I'm a great grandmother :0)
They squeak alot, but I like overall design.
I grew up in Japan. The zoris went on at the first sign of warm weather and stayed on til the Fall. I always got blisters when I first started to wear them again but they quickly turned into callouses. You gave up too soon! LOL
Slippers in Hawaii...
D's or J-K's ?
Here in North Florida, I wear flip-flops summer, fall, winter, spring--rain, shine, frost. I even jog in them. I only don regular shoes for church. I keep all four of my fast growing kids in them also--very economical.
The J-K was the most popular before it wasn't.
When I was a kid we called them "Go-aheads". I had no idea where the name came from, but many years later my older brother told me it was because it's so hard to walk backwards in them. :)
Actually it's almost impossible to find the old-fashioned rubber ones.
The JK flip flop is the most versatile flip-flop, and the most commonly used flip flop when discrete devices are used to implement arbitrary state machines. Like the RS flip-flop, it has two data inputs, J and K, and a clock input. It has no undefined states or race condition, however. It is always edge triggered; normally on the falling edge. (some JK flip-flops; e.g., 74109, trigger on the positive edge.)
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