Attack of the Snuggie

Who knew that an ubiquitous backwards bathrobe would become a cultural icon for the routinely drunk.

The Snuggie, that denizen of late night infomercials that seems to have taken off and shown up, sometimes uninvited, into American living rooms has been embraced in ways that grandma couldn’t have imagined when she first made that purchase call.

Whoever came up with this ridiculous, yet useful, garment is probably cheering in their basement workshop after they saw last week’s sudden onslaught of articles about events across the nation encouraging bar patrons to sign up and wear the monk style robe to a weekend tour of local bars.

Certainly one never to turn down a chance at harmless fun, for some reason I draw the line at the Snuggie. Something about it smacks of an attempt to pretend you’re not too lazy to put on another sweater or wear the right clothes. While useful when you can’t afford to turn your heat up, as my boyfriend says something about it smacks of an attempt to pretend you haven’t just escaped from a mental hospital by turning your robe backwards.

Oddly, before I found out about this snuggled up booze fest, I had turned down, for the second time, an attempt by my boyfriend’s mom to offload her Snuggie on me. She keeps her heat very low and I sometimes wonder if this is not an effort to get us to don the ridiculous robe.

Then today I saw in AgencySpy the announcement of the Snuggie Pub Crawl. The supposedly unofficial event already has 4,361 signed up and claims to be giving money from the event to an orphanage in Tanzania. More than 4,000 crawling from pub to pub in New York? Sounds like a possible riot to me.

But the pub crawl apparently isn’t confined to greater Manhattan. Chicago will also hold one, and unlike the NYC version gives details before it demands you sign up. There are also in D.C., Seattle, San Fransico, Detroit, Denver, all but Philadelphia, though I’m sure the coverage this is likely to receive from a press desperate for young readers may change that.

Question is, is this truly and independent thing? AgencySpy claims it is. But I could think of nothing better for sales than a gimmick such as this.

But honestly, who wants to be drunkenly traipsing around in a Snuggie through the gross streets of gritty cities. I can’t imagine what the hem of these long blanket robes will pick up. Though I doubt the crowds of frat minded men wearing them really plan to keep them for those cold nights on the couch.

Whether the NYC event manages to keep its pub crawl date quiet or not, I guarantee not so great videos will show up on YouTube, but I very much doubt this will hurt the Snuggie’s reputation. It might actually make it the most popular garment to bring to college in the fall, creating at least one money maker in this dire economy.

I’m just wondering how it’s going to look as police beat back blue and red Snuggie wearing, drunken patrons of packed bars. And will it still be cold in April?

And what will happen if you show up for the crawl without a Snuggie? Already, the Chicago event was pushed back "to allow for additional
time for our guests to acquire their Snuggies™ and for the bars to
prepare for our volume."