Lightening Up

For people who relish the fun, kitschy decor of the 1940s and ‘50s, a party just isn’t a party without a goofy string of palm trees glowing somewhere in the background.

These days, decorative strings of lights are no longer just for the holiday tree. They have gone mainstream. They’re being sold at major retail chains, gift stores and on Internet sites. There are strings of fruit hanging in kitchens, Budweiser bottles festooning recreation rooms and scallop shells lighting bathrooms.

Among connoisseurs, palm trees, while popular, seem almost conservative. Current options include such whimsies as Dalmatians and fire hydrants, frolicking ponies, pigs, cows, dinosaurs, dice and playing cards and all manner of variations on the red-hot chili pepper.

“They add ambience. It’s a $10 word for a 50-cent look,” said Steve Colby of Hagerstown, Md., the proprietor of cheesylights.com, an Internet party-lights emporium. “They set a tone. It’s like you’re telling people, ‘This isn’t serious. We’re here to have fun.’ ”

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Sue Scott, president of Primal Lite Inc. of Durango, Colo., can be considered a pioneer in the party-light world, which came into being around the mid-’80s.

“Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I took Christmas lights and decided to design different covers for them,” Scott said. In 1987 her first two styles, lizards and trout, were introduced. They were considered hip and trendy, selling well in Los Angeles and New York, but middle America didn’t quite get the idea.

“Also, people were understanding them as Christmas lights,” Scott said. “It took a lot of consumer education for them to understand that you can put them anywhere.”

Since then, Primal Lite has been glowing away, with licensing agreements with Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Disney and Universal Studios. Its products, which retail for $10 or more, are sold in Wal-Mart, Sears and Target stores.

“We take everyday icons and take them to a different place,” Scott said. “Humor is very much a part of the entire product line, trying to take things that are out of context and that you wouldn’t expect to see light up.”

Thus, the load of laundry lights (boxer shorts, a slip and a pair of socks that come in a box resembling a washing machine); the bacon-and-egg string; the moose-and-cabin; and the dinosaurs wearing Santa hats.

Scott said she regularly receives letters from people who’ve collected her lights for years, and from people requesting various themes for new lights. Recent requests include the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.

“There was one from San Francisco that was very funny, a request to do body parts, shall we say,” Scott said. That one will not be hitting the production line, and Scott also will not do lights that have political connotations.

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Scott said Primal Lite is the only company strictly devoted to party lights, but there are many other sources, including a company called Midwest of Cannon Falls, which offers delicate glass lights in motifs such as frogs, ladybugs and bees. Another Internet site, partylights.com, is loaded with lights.

Colby, of cheesylights.com, and his wife, Sally, got into the Internet business after operating an antiques store in Frederick, Md., for 10 years. They sold “real oddball stuff, like mannequins and things,” dating from the 1920s to the 1950s. But after a while, antiques prices started rising.

“At one time, you could buy hula dolls at auction for a dollar or two; now they would go for $80,” Colby said.

So they began supplementing their inventory with new items that had the flavor of the ‘50s. About three years ago, they began selling lights, along with flamingos, tiki accessories and all manner of ‘50s accouterments on their Internet sites.

“I think [the interest has] grown, I really do, whether you attribute it to more leisure time or whatever,” Colby said. “I attribute it to people loosening up a little bit.”