Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 87

Smile buttons, which appeared as an innocent flock of gremlins less than two years ago, have suddenly turned into an army of insidious, grinning monsters that turn up in the most unusual places these days. They have driven one observer to a case of smilophobia. The Smile Button Its Enough to Make a Grown Man Cry By Joseph M. Treen Let's get one thing straight right now: I hate smile buttons. Not hate really--they're not worth hating--but an opinion, let's say, which does not lean heavily in their favor.

I'm not the only one. I met a man yesterday who said he couldn't stand them, either. He was bordering on hysteria. "Everywhere I look, there they are smiling at me, grinning, constantly grinning, looking at me with that idiotic face. I'm sick of them; I can't stand them.

I'd like to get rid of them. All of them. They're everywhere." He's right. They are everywhere. Everywhere.

They are on buttons. You've seen the buttons. Smile buttons. They are on coffee can lids, cookies, pencils and pens, napkins, even brassieres. I went to the wallpaper store the other day.

Smile wallpaper. I was in a lamp store. Smile lamps. I went into the children's department of Macy's and came out absolutely giggly: smile postcards, smile glasses, smile clocks, smile purses, smile key chains, smile baby shoes, smile earrings, smile, smile, smile, smile. Absolutely everywhere.

The Westbury Chamber of Commerce uses a smile as its symbol. That means there's a smile on almost every door in downtown Westbury. Downtown Westbury- something to smile about. The Levittown Teachers' Association has a smile bumper sticker. So do the Nassau Republicans.

No one really knows who started the smile, but whoever it was probably has incredible problems dealing with guilt. Amazing as it may seem, there are some who actually want to be known as the Inventor of the Smile Button. Kool-Aid says it created it; Hertz Rent-a-Car says it created it; WMCA radio says it created it; a California group called "No War Toys" says it created it, and Junior Achievement says one of its student companies created it, but doesn't know which one. Then there is the view that the whole thing started when a little known 19th Century schoolteacher put the first sunny face on the first spelling homework that deserved it. And finally, there was the opinion expressed by the man who tried to copyright the smile face but got turned down.

"Who cares anyway?" he said. One of Nassau's leading Republicans, County Controller Angelo Roncallo, has worn a smile button for seven months. Just the other day someone gave him a box of smile buttons that bear a striking resemblance to none other than Angelo Roncallo. That made him smile. He handed them out to a lot of other Republicans, but he says that even though Hubert Humphrey has a Happinessis-Hubert smile button and George McGovern has a McGovern-for-President smile button, it doesn't mean that the Roncallo smile button is a Roncallo for Congress smile button.

"That would be a little premature," he said just days before announcing he was running for Congress. He just likes smile buttons. Why? "I don't know," Roncallo said. "It's kind of a well, it's a conversation piece. People comment on it.

They look at it and they say, or 'It's a great or 'Where'd you get the smile It's a great way to get to know people." Besides, Roncallo says, smile buttons carry a message. "It shows that things aren't always as bad as they seem," he said. "Every cloud has a silver lining." Every cloud is probably wearing a smile button. Smile buttons are everywhere. There's even a frown button with an unprintable word on it.

That made me smile. You want to know how popular smile buttons Monday, March 20, 1972 are? One smile-button manufacturer, Robert Slater of N. G. Slater of Manhattan, estimates that they have sold 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 of them. And the orders are still coming in.

Another manufacturer says you can't even get out of the country to avoid smile buttons. Larry Fox of Valley Stream's Larry Fox Associates says most of his orders right now are from Europe and Japan. "Funny, we got orders from Lebanon and Israel in the same week--maybe that's a good sign." There's even a smile joke book called "Smiles, Chuckles and Chortles." It has drawings of a yellow smile face all through it and great jokes. Try this one: "Why don't you like girls?" "They're too biased." "Biased?" "Yes, bias this and bias that--until I'm bankrupt." The book can really make you smile. Slater says that if you take all the smile buttons, books, coffee can covers, pens, pencils, sweatshirts, bras- you make my sun shine MAD Smiles, and more smiles, surround smiling Kathy Gilson.

everything with a smile face on it- it would add up to $75,000,000 in business. His company alone, he says, has sold smile buttons to more than 1,000 different businesses all with their brand name or slogan on them. Thus far, Good Humor ice cream has purchased 100,000 What-the-world-needs-nowis-more-Good-Humor smile buttons and CIT Financial Systems has ordered more than 1,000,000 CIT-Financial-Services smile buttons. Clairol has its Try-a-little-kindness smile buttons and Woolworth's has smile buttons. There's even a "Kill 'em with Kindness" smile flyswatter.

Why Why Why Why Why? Why has the smile face gone beyond the fad, beyond the simple craze? Why is it what the military call entrenched, what businessmen call "institutionalized," what bureaucrats call ongoing! Why are smile faces traditional when they are only 18 months old? Psychiatrists Robert Damino of the Nassau Continued on Page 12A Maguire WOLL 8 Photo 3 A dE.