How a simple, feelgood logo spawned a global industry.

THERE is a famous scene in Forrest

Gump. One day the eponymous character, played by Tom Hanks, goes for a run – and doesn’t stop. For more than three years he jogs across America. When a truck drenches Forrest with mud, a fan hands him a yellow T-shirt to mop his face.

After Forrest returns it, the man discovers that the mud has imprinted the cloth with a simple design: a schematic smiley face, consisting of two narrow oval eyes and a beaming grin with dimple-like creases at either end, contained within a circle. It’s a “Eureka!” moment: the man recognises the potential of the design at once, and we understand that he will start flogging similar mass-produced merchandise.

Forrest, of course, is a fictional character. But the man with the yellow T-shirt is an amalgamation of two real-life brothers from Philadelphia who are credited with turning the smiley face into a global fad. Recently I met one of them, Murray Spain, in his office on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

Murray and his elder brother Bernard ran a small business selling greetings cards and novelty items such as smiley-face badges. Around 1970, after these started flying out of their shops, the brothers began selling a range of smiley merchandise, including bumper stickers, cookie jars and key rings. In February 1971,