Fridge magnet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Magnetic seafood and fruit on a market stall in New York
Fridge magnets in the form of colorful letters for short notes
Fridge magnet.

A fridge magnet is a decorative element that can also have practical uses. In the early 1970s, William Zimmermann from St. Louis (Missouri) was the first to apply for a patent on small, colorfully cardboard magnets that were suitable for decoration or the variable attachment of notes.

Types of fridge magnets

The fridge magnets consist of the magnets and a variety of possible colors, shapes and motifs that are firmly connected to the magnet. There are many possible motifs, e.g. B. decoratively designed images of food , kitchen tools, nostalgic kitchen appliances, logos and advertising images from food manufacturers, cartoon characters , flowers, cityscapes and tourism items. The magnetic side sticks to the iron refrigerator door and the motif side is visible. Some of the motifs are published in series and are popular collector's items .

Another technical possibility consists of a printed magnetic film , which consists of a plastic film that is coated with iron dust and magnetized.

Fridge magnets as collectibles

Collecting fridge magnets is a popular hobby in the United States and Russia, among others. The magnets are z. B. exchanged between collectors via online communities and traded privately. The tourist fridge magnets with views of different cities and countries are particularly popular there. The Russian-speaking web community, to which several hundred collectors belong, even introduced a term in 2008 to describe the collecting of fridge magnets - memomagnetic (Russian: мемомагнетика ). This term was derived from two words: Latin memoriale and Greek magnetis .

The largest collection in the world

The US American Luise J. Greenfarb from Henderson (Nevada) holds the world record as a collector of refrigerator magnets and is therefore entered in the Guinness Book of Records . Your collection now includes more than 30,000 items. Over 7,000 of them are on display in the Guinness Museum in Las Vegas.

Special forms

In the 1990s, fridge magnets came in the form of whole syllables and words that could be used to convey short messages. Keys or pot holders can be hung on other stronger magnets with hooks. Even small picture frames are possible.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian- speaking and English- speaking web communities of fridge magnet collectors.
  2. ↑ Dmitry Balashov Project. Site of the collector Dmitry Balashov. In: dmitnic.narod.ru. Retrieved January 23, 2017 (English).
  3. ↑ Magnetic collectors web community. In: LiveJournal . May 23, 2008. Retrieved January 23, 2017 (Russian).
  4. ^ Joan Whitely: Green Valley woman attracted to collecting refrigerator magnets. In: Las Vegas Review-Journal. July 8, 1997, archived from the original on May 24, 2011 ; accessed on January 22, 2017 (English).
  5. ↑ Interesting Refrigerator Facts. In: refrigerators.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2010 ; accessed on January 23, 2017 (English).

Web links

Commons : Refrigerator magnets  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files