The Original Quotation Towel

From Towel

Details

The framed white/blue quotation towel shown above is one of two prototypes produced by Marks and Spencer that Eugen Beer tracked down and gave to Douglas Adams in 1984/5 - (Sorry can't remember exact date - EB) The story goes that a Marketer in M&S was a big HHGTTG fan and thought that a towel would be a great idea. So he had two made up and then failed to sell the idea internally. Douglas had been contacted by the M&S guy at the time and then had completely forgotten about it until the subject came up in conversation with Eugen Beer who was doing PR work for him. For whatever reason the idea of the towel stuck and Eugen persuaded his partners (Gareth Davies & Eddie Blower) in Beer Davies Publicity that they should produce more of the towels. A deal was done with Ed Victor (Douglas's agent) and the first official HHGTTG Towels were made in 1984/5. A flyer was sent out with each towel explaining its provenance and in the vain hope of getting more sales.

Original production run - 1000 towels. The original run of Blue and Red was manufactured in the UK by a company in the North of England - it was not Marks and Spencer. Half were blue text on white, the other half were red text on white (the photo above on right looks like a brown one from a later run - EB). There were further production runs of red and blue as well as later brown and silver/grey.

Theye were sold through adverts in Private Eye, Forbidden Planet and other comic stores in Birmingham, Oxford and Manchester amongst others.

The Mail Order price was £14.95 + P&P.

Eugen Beer: "We probably just about broke even - they were expensive to produce and in reality sold very slowly. The shops (Forbidden Planet, etc) would only take 10 at a time and they took a while to sell those. But it was great fun and everybody loved them. I am now in Sydney Australia and still using my HHFTTG towels."

Additional - "Forbidden Planet (at their original address in Denmark Street) definitely sold Red ones as well as Brown ones and another colour that was probably Blue. They were £18 each and they sold out of the Red first." (Thanks Robert)

Additional - John Buell discovered re-watching his copy of the bonus material in the US release of the H2G2 TV series on DVD that there's a VERY brief clip, when Douglas is being interviewed about the trips that eventually became Last Chance to See, of him WEARING an official H2G2 towel over his left shoulder! There's now a pic to illustrate the appropriate section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

Additional - According to Cliff, his white/brown towel came with a certificate (possibly yellow paper with red writing). Correct.

Production run

1000 in 1985 or earlier by a UK Manufacturer. Subsequent runs were done in Germany by Vossen.

1000 may not seem a lot but you should try storing them in a house!

The colours were

• Blue Text out of White (sjk owns one of these...see the photo at the top of this page)This and the Red and White were the two original colours.
• Red text out of White

Later two other colurs were added to the "range":

• Brown and White (Cliff owns one of these...see the photo at the top of this page)This was called "Beeblebrox Brown"
• Grey/Silver and White was called "Squornshellous Silver"

Source

Various, including Forbidden Planet shops

The Advert

David was going through some old copies of the ZZ9 magazine and found a reproduction of an advert for the original HHGTTG towels. It comes from Mostly Harmless issue 25 and says the advert was originally placed in Private Eye issue 664. (Thanks David)