Entrepreneurs get kick
out of leg lamps

Copies of 'Christmas Story' prop are a hit

Ann Johansson / AP file

Zack Ward, a cast member from "A Christmas Story," poses with a leg lamp featured in the film.

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Hollywood Reporter

updated 8:00 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2003

LOS ANGELES - A couple from Naperville, Ill., has taken a prop from the classic 1983 film “A Christmas Story” and turned it into a profitable online business.

Specifically, it’s the infamous lamp shaped like a woman’s leg that Rob Golden has been selling over the Internet. In the film, the lamp was a “major award” won by Mr. Parker (Darren McGavin). It was despised and eventually destroyed by his wife (Melinda Dillon).

Golden, an automobile reconditioning specialist, first discovered a poor knockoff of the shapely lamp for sale on eBay and paid $100 for it so that his wife could display it at the novelty shop she runs.

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'There were other leg lamps before ours, but we took it up a notch.'

— Rob Golden
“We put it in the store window to get attention,” Golden said. “It was hysterical. People came in quoting lines from the movie.”

That’s when Golden decided to get into e-commerce, building the lamps and selling them at http://www.leglamp.com.

In fact, Golden attempts to re-create the movie experience, so the gam-lamp comes with written notification announcing, “You Won! ... Your Major Award Will Be Arriving Shortly.” Then there’s that massive crate with the “T” missing so that it reads, “HIS END UP.”

“People are real anal about us getting it right,” Golden said. “There were other leg lamps before ours, but we took it up a notch.” That doesn’t come cheap, running as high as $374 per lamp, or less if you swap the crate for a cardboard box.

Golden said he’ll have sold 1,000 lamps by Christmas. And Scott Schwartz, who fans will remember as Flick, the boy who gets his tongue stuck to a pole (while others might recall his adult-film career), has been autographing some of the lamps. Proceeds from those go to Toys for Tots.