Toxic McDonald's Garfield Mugs
I love Mondays
In the summer of 1987, McDonald’s released a series of Garfield tie-in collector’s mugs. Their sordid story originally surfaced on Twitter, Reddit and other social media outlets before being validated by The Mirror. As it turns out, these novelty glasses contain “over 99,300 PPM of Lead and 5,833 PPM of cadmium, which are both known to cause brain damage and/or potential cancers.”1 Later, parenting blog “Lead Safe Mama” performed an independent analysis of the mugs, confirming they possessed 103,600 PPM lead (brain damage) and 7,314 PPM cadmium (cancer). 2
You already know where this is going.
I’ve spent every Thanksgiving for the last eight years away from my family, save for one. Most of these Thanksgivings were pandemic-shadowed family dinners spent in Northern Virginia with my then-girlfriend’s D.O.D. arms-contractor parents. The rest were sojourns spent in dreamlike, liminal environments, witnessing the bomb-flash burn shadows left by several broken women in the form of the families they left behind. Each expedition might have warranted a pith helmet, jodhpurs, and riding boots, these excursions through the gnarled wastes of the American suburbs.
I was an anthropologist writing a taxonomy of personality disorders to teach future travelers. Naturally, I was selfless, performing these actions in service of a greater good transcending mere study. My erotic travels were mystical, yes, but also scientific. In November 19, 1961, Michael Rockefeller - son of New York Governor and later United States Vice President Nelson Rockefeller - disappeared in Dutch New Guinea while attempting such an expedition. His body was never found. Rescue operations funded by his father turned up little. Rockefeller desired adventure, to observe the Asmat tribes’ warrior culture. The Asmat were cannibals, you see. Michael Rockefeller may have been mauled to shreds by wildlife or consumed by headhunters as part of ancient endemic rituals; so too was I torn limb from limb by sexual headhuntresses in the wilds of their hometowns. The Midwest, the Boston Suburbs, the mountains of Tennessee: dense jungles of peril from which no humble city mouse (or Rockefeller) could return alive.
This year, I spent Thanksgiving with my family. My parents endure my colorful life as best they can, but my scapegoat remains the same: “Mother, I’m like this because you put me in theater camp instead of Little League.”
I travel North with my family to visit my brother, his girlfriend, their roguish Siamese and absurd little Shih Tzu at their home in the provinces. I am supposed to format what is left of a technical assessment for a cryptocurrency company, but instead I pass out the entire drive after five shots of Evan Williams at 8 AM on a Thursday. At the same time, my girlfriend (Maxine to the scene, Alexandra to the layman) is waking up to the apocalyptic rumble of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade brass bands as they move up Central Park West - that is, directly under her window. I imagine Beagle Scout Snoopy or Marching Band Minnie Mouse floating by her brownstone while police snipers stand guard from high perches along the avenue. She’s taking the Amtrak later to join us. It’s snowing.
My mother has held my Thanksgiving absences against me for years, so this time I’m as present as possible. We are all dying; aging is merciless. Its speed depends on many factors. The older you get, the more you value your family, found or otherwise. The people left with you are the (presumably) lucky ones. They will eventually be gone, so you treasure them with all you have. My father has already survived cancer once; my mother lost relatives to assassinations. Alexandra and I have mourned more late lovers than anyone should. After a while, certain things fall away. Petty conflicts among the people you are seen with become mere games.
Thanksgiving is lovely. Alexandra might be the first woman I’ve introduced to my family and friends of whom they universally approve. She’s the first that hasn’t prompted them to pull me aside with warnings of Cannibal Island (or questions like “why does she keep twitching and sniffling?”)
We play darts over drinks, go to bed early, then set out for antiquing the next morning.
On Black Friday, my family drives us to the few vintage outlets open in Troy. I’ve been injecting my question of the hour at every stop, inquiring at thrift stores, rummage sales and and comic book shops: “do you have the ‘Toxic ‘80s Garfield Mugs’?” I’ve been seeking these dangerous grail items for years now. Despite their notoriety, no one seems to know what they are.
We hit a few more shops. We have lunch. I buy Alexandra a very irregular 1950s stuffed bear. A massive warehouse in the distance calls out to us. It’s a mammoth antique space, one of the largest I’ve seen in years. Now, I’m an estate sale guy - I’m not easily impressed - but this one is special. Oil paintings, wool skirt-suits, retro records, kitschy tchotchkes - fragments of the dead meant for my menagerie. With a squeal, Alexandra grabs my arm and points. No way.
There they are: the rare, the deadly, the cadmium-riddled. All I ever wanted, all I ever needed. Death in paint. Somehow, in the wild, we’d stumbled upon two toxic ‘80s Garfield mugs.
The remainder of this lucky Thanksgiving weekend in Albany is spent with heaps of leftovers and local dive-bar emo karaoke. We drive back smiling, toxic mugs in tow.
I don’t collect objects like these from some cliché, cackling sense of ghoulishness. I love them for what they say about the passage of time. There are people who have drank from these things for decades, morning coffees poisoning them slowly. Staten Island’s ground releases radon gas into basements, leading to higher rates of pancreatic cancers than any other parts of NYC. Memento Mori matters. When you get to my age, you notice the absurdity of death, its ubiquity. Like the Macy’s Garfield balloon none of us manage to see this year, the Morai hide behind every juncture measuring your thread.
We place the two glasses on our mantle, between our clown figurines.
https://www.themirror.com/news/weird-news/my-favorite-garfield-cup-been-463205
https://tamararubin.com/2022/07/garfield-use-your-friends-wisely-mcdonalds-mug-103600-ppm-lead-causes-brain-damage-7314-ppm-cadmium-causes-cancer/