Adolescent Fads

PHONEBOOTH STUFFING

This was a popular fad in the 1950s. It actually started in South Africa in 1959, when twenty-five students packed themselves into a telephone booth until nobody else could fit inside. From there, it traveled to England and became known as “telephone booth squash”. It became popular in the United States when seventeen college students from UCLA, California tried to stuffed themselves into a telephone booth. It became popular in the colleges in the west coast and spread eastward from there. It became a competition to see who can stuff more people into a telephone booth. The fad died out in the summer of 1959, but years later, it reemerged as the Volkswagen stuffing.

Number of students in a singular booth

Twenty-five in South Africa
Nineteen in England
Seventeen: UCLA
Eighteen: St. Mary’s college, California
Nineteen: MIT
Thirty-four: Modesto Junior college
Forty: Canada (cheated by using a bigger booth than set by the rules and laying it flat rather than upright)

There were eventually rules set in order to prevent cheat

Standardized booth size
Booth must stand upright
at least half a body had to fit into the booth for the person to count

People started dieting and skipping classes in order to plan their attempt at this fad. Although, the fad did catch on at a rapid pace, it died off just as quickly.