Packard was tapping into a broad current of concern about product quality and sales tactics, which had been building for some time, and became crystallized in fears about planned obsolescence. Even before the publication of The Waste Makers, these fears had become widespread enough that in 1959 an article appeared in the Harvard Business Review on the topic of how business should respond to them.14 The editors introduced the piece by noting that “business has been subjected to a barrage of criticism about one of its characteristic practices, planned obsolescence.”15 Evidently there was concern in the business community about the popular sentiment gathering around the issue. A representative expression of the kind of criticism that gave rise to this concern is given by Irwin Frost, writing as the “Voice of Youth” in the Chicago Tribune: “One of the greatest evils in industrial society is that of planned obsolescence.” Irwin announces, “This . . . maneuver of most manufacturers to squeeze the sponge of the customer’s pocketbook dry is the least excusable. Products are quietly but definitely fabricated to wear out, break or become useless in a relatively short span of time.”16 In an attempt, in 1958, to give a more balanced assessment of planned obsolescence, Charles Neal, economic pundit for the Los Angeles Times, weighed the pros and cons of the practice. Echoing London’s argument, Neal saw an upside to the practice in its stimulating efect on production. For Neal the considerably weightier downside, however, was its negative impact on families with limited budgets, and the risk of “overproduction.”17 Fear of planned obsolescence was cited as one of the motivations households had for consulting the publications of testing organization such as Consumers Union.18
The broad impact of concerns about planned obsolescence is indicated by the thematization of the topic across a number of diferent cultural forms. In 1962 a radio program was devoted to the issue, under the title “Consumer
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