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Farklebeary Bear will warm youngsters' hearts while helping Children's Hospital Free Care Fund
Thursday, November 18, 1999 By Kelly D. Burgess, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
That's purple, plush, pug-nosed and unbearably cute?Ask a child and he'll probably tell you it's the Farklebeary Bear, the latest in a long line of products marketed under the venerable "Farkleberry" name and made for one purpose -- to raise money for Children's Hospital.
Farklebeary has his antecedents in the popular beanbag animals. As part of its fund-raiser last year, Children's Hospital sold little beanbag bears wearing T-shirts with the Children's Hospital logo. So many were sold that it caught the attention of a representative of Gund, a well-known manufacturer of stuffed animals. The official contacted the hospital administration to ask if they would be interested in developing a teddy bear specifically for Children's Hospital.
So Farklebeary Bear was born. Weighing in at just 8 ounces, Farklebeary is about 12 inches tall and around his neck he wears a white satin ribbon that bears the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh logo.
His ear tag not only explains his purpose in life -- to help the kids at Children's Hospital -- it also tells where he falls in the birth order of his species. There were only 10,000 made, so this limited edition darling is a collector's item and a cuddly friend.
Best of all, he only costs $15. Of that, Children's Hospital gets $10.05, so if all the bears are sold, that's a whopping $100,500.
Pretty good for something with fluff for brains.
It's also a heck of a jump from where this all started. It was in 1968 when a young broadcaster named Jack Bogut came to Pittsburgh to work for KDKA Radio. At that time, the radio division of KDKA had a Children's Hospital campaign asking listeners to tape pennies to a card and send in the card. It was raising about $1,250 a year.
Bogut was appalled with such a paltry figure.
"I had just come from Salt Lake City where our efforts were so much more successful. I figured I could do much better," he said. "I suggested that I transmit my show for the Christmas season from the window of a local department store. Management agreed, Joseph Horne Co. agreed to host me, and it became the first remote radio broadcast in Pittsburgh."
For the next 15 years, Bogut presided over the fund-raising campaign, broadcasting inside the display area of a large picture window in one of the Downtown department stores for three weeks before Christmas. The collection bin was outside the window where he could see it.
That first year he began to joke to his listeners they should mail paper instead of coins so they "wouldn't give the mailman a hernia." The novel idea of the remote broadcast coupled with the simple "don't give your mailman a hernia" campaign raised $12,500.
The next year, Bogut chose to play on a theme with which his listeners were familiar -- the Slitheree Dee. It had started earlier in the year when he would tease his youngest listeners with this silly ditty by song writer Shel Silverstein:
Oh, The Slitheree Dee
Has crawled out of the sea.
He may catch all the others
But he won't catch me.
No, you won't catch me,
Old Slitheree-Dee,
You may catch all the others,
But you won't...
Bogut told young people if they didn't squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom, or if they spilled their milk, he would send the Slitheree Dee to get them. It was a big hit, and kids from all over the region started sending him drawings and paintings of the Slitheree Dee. One in particular caught his fancy -- a painting of the Slitheree Dee on a piece of ceramic.
"It was sent in by a little girl named Margie Larsen," Bogut recalled. "For years afterward I tried to find her, but she never came forward. I guess she was shy or just didn't want to be in the public eye. It would be pretty incredible if she were still living in the area and turned up after all this time."
Bogut talked about his ceramic Slitheree Dee on the radio, and, after he had the curiosity of his listeners sufficiently piqued, he offered to show it to people for $1. At first, he kept it in his pocket, but so many people wanted to see it that he eventually rigged up a pulley system so people could pay their dollar, pull the string, and take their look.
The following year, Bogut knew he had to come up with something else for a catchy campaign slogan. For some reason, he chose to pick on the lowly rutabaga and started making jokes about how much he hated rutabagas. One day, just to taunt him, a woman left a rutabaga in the collection bin.
After talking about the rutabaga all morning, he decided to rent it to people to have their picture taken with it. Listeners came to the makeshift studio, deposited their donation in the collection bin, take the rutabaga to have a group photo taken with the vegetable, and bring it back for the next person.
To cap the campaign that year, Bogut auctioned off what was by then the most famous rutabaga in the world. Western Pennsylvania National Bank (now Pittsburgh National Bank) purchased it for $5,000. The bank had it bronzed, and, as far as Bogut knows, it's still in a basement somewhere.
Bogut had started to develop a pattern and each year his listeners eagerly awaited the Children's Hospital campaign "hook." But he felt as if he was painting himself into a corner, because he never deliberately thought these things up, they just came to him by accident. He began feeling pressured to create.
Then he had a happy accident with a farkleberry, a small black berry with stony seeds. A listener sent him an article about the farkleberry bush festival in North Dakota, and he liked the funny name. He started using it on the air long before Christmas, again, as a way to connect with his younger listeners. Every morning at 6, he would urge them to get up and march around the breakfast table to wake up. One morning, with farkleberry festivals on his mind, he said, "Start your heart, eat a farkleberry tart."
The euphonious phrase became a regular on his show and by the time the holiday season came around that year, everyone was familiar with it.
One year, Bogut held a contest in which listeners were asked to pay for air time to say, "Start your heart, eat a farkleberry tart." Everyone seemed to have fun and it raised a ton of money for Children's Hospital.
Another year, Bogut sold a bogus farkleberry bush to the highest bidder. In years to come, there would be farkleberry tarts, farkleberry cookies, farkleberry ding-dongs, and anything else anyone could think of to associate with the silly, but effective, farkleberry name.
But Bogut hastens to point out that it wasn't the gimmicks that raised the money -- it was the people.
"Pittsburgh is an incredible place," Bogut said, still marveling. "The fact that this campaign did so well is a tribute to the generosity and sense of humor of the people who live here. We were bilking them out of their money and they knew it, and they loved the silliness of it all. And they gave and gave and gave."
Thanks in part to Bogut, they still are giving. And a cute cuddly bear has a silly recognizable name.
The Farklebeary Bear can be found at these retail locations: Foodland, Brueggers Bagels, Boscov's and Exxon. An order form also can be downloaded from the Children's Hospital Web site at http://www.chp.edu..
Also available this year is the 1999 Farkleberry ornament sold by KDKA Radio. It is available on the Internet at http://www.kdkaradio.com/store.html. Farkleberry ice cream by Hagan is available at local supermarkets, and farkleberry bagels are being sold by Brueggers. Farkleberry cookies are being donated by Pati-Petite Cookies in South Fayette and are available to anyone who makes a donation to Children's at one of the remote donation sites.
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