In Print - articles about the Duct Tape Guys and Duct Tape

Here are a few articles about Duct Tape and the Duct Tape Guys from newspapers and magazines around North America. Obviously, these may not be reprinted or reproduced without permission.
Miami Herald (Steven Smith)
Charlotte Observer (Mark Price)
People Magazine (from June 1997)
Pioneer Press (Halloween book - Mary Ann Grossman, October 2003)

BY STEPHEN SMITH
© Miami Herald
published Tuesday, May 29, 2001

News flash: duct tape. It's not just for hose repair and kidnappings anymore.

There's neon duct tape and camouflage duct tape. Duct tape couture, duct tape sculpture. A whole night devoted at a Marlins game to the General Motors of duct tape, Duck Tape.

Even a couple of fellas who are such redoubtable adherents to the cult of cohesion that they bill themselves as the Duct Tape Guys, characters who have stuck to the American consciousness, leaving readers by the thousands glued to their four-part trilogy of duct tape help and humor books. (To wit: ``Lower Your Receding Hairline: Attach duct tape to your forehead, over your nose, and under your chin. When you open your mouth, your hairline will return to its normal place.'')

In an Armani age, it is a stolid strip of Americana, unabashedly low-tech, a product that binds us together with universal appeal.

``It's simple,'' says Jim Berg, one half of the Duct Tape Guys. ``Duct tape works -- people like stuff that works. There's guys like me all over the country overusing duct tape to the embarrassment or chagrin of their loved ones.''

To be sure, this resurgent interest in duct tape reflects another revered aspect of Americana: the triumph of marketing. The nation's biggest producer of duct tape, Manco, has expanded the color and texture palette, marrying form with function.

Just perfect for making a fashion statement.

And what, exactly, would such a statement say? Karuna Scheinfeld, New York fashion student, knows. In her hands, duct tape is the stuff of haute -- and, it turns out, hot -- couture.

``It's a vinyl/leather look with a social connotation -- it can go anywhere from utility craft to bondage leather. The one complaint is that it doesn't breathe,'' Scheinfeld says. ``Who knew?''

Tim Gunn did. He's associate dean at the renowned Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, where Scheinfeld is a graduating senior. Supplied with an endless stash of Duck Tape by Manco, Parsons students were challenged to engineer the metamorphosis of an everyday household caterpillar into a fashion butterfly.

``Oh God! Was that a FANTASTIC project? We LOVED it!'' says Gunn, whose enthusiasm account is nearly overdrawn at the mere mention of the duct tape designs. ``We expected it would be fun and funny, but they did really BEAUTIFUL clothes. We were quite thrilled about it.''

Designers, jaded by cotton and lycra and, yes, even polyester, are in a ceaseless quest to mine new media for their handiwork. Remember chicken wire?

So duct tape seemed a perfect, albeit snug, fit. What could be better? Material that is stitch-free. Material that you can whack into shape with a pair of scissors.

When the design project began in February, Gunn feared his faculty colleagues at Parsons might wrinkle their brows at the prospect of students dabbling in such a pedestrian material -- ``because it's not a luxury product, it's not part of the whole Seventh Avenue vocabulary, and it's not taken very seriously,'' Gunn says.

Vindication arrived with the April unveiling of the students' duct tape fashions on a Midtown catwalk. They had knit it. Woven it. Folded, spindled and mutilated it.

Scheinfeld created two pieces of men's wear -- one she describes as resembling a tight-fitting bodice of armor that a gladiator might fancy, the other combining duct tape with traditional wool pinstripe to make a jacket.

Gunn doesn't expect a duct tape boutique to open anytime soon in a mall near you. Still, he can conceive of the material lurking in designs.

``Sneaking up on people is the best strategy,'' Gunn says. ``It's similar to the rebirth of polyester. People winced when they heard polyester was coming back, but then people looked at the clothing and said, `Where's the polyester?'

``It's the same thing with duct tape -- you seduce them first with your design and then say, `Guess what?' ''

The designs the other night at Pro Player Stadium were a bit more, well . . . ad hoc. Duck Tape has attached itself to the realm of professional sports, with promotions at ballparks, where fans are encouraged to don homemade duct tape costumes.

Marie De Arce opted for a Madonna '80s motif, while Wendy Freedman, who won a competition for a weekend at a Florida Keys resort, used strips of black and white duct tape to create a prison uniform. Around her neck she slung a sign with a single word, crafted from red tape: POLITICIAN.

``It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, what income bracket you're in, you've probably used duct tape. There's nothing you can't do with duct tape,'' says Gary Medalis, a vice president with Duck Tape brand, which acquired its moniker when the company CEO capitulated to rampant mispronunciation and misspelling of duct tape.

He was joined at Pro Player by the Duct Tape Guys, Tim Nyberg and Berg, two men wrapped up in their work. They wear their passion for duct tape on their sleeves, their chests, their heads, any available square inch of flesh.

For seven years, they have been the Duct Tape Guys, divined one chilly Christmas Eve in northeastern Wisconsin (which seems vaguely appropriate) when the power failed and Berg vowed that if only he knew the source of the outage, he could surely repair it with duct tape.

A gimmick was born.

Books, videotapes and life in the suburbs of fame ensued.

``When you see something duct-taped,'' Nyberg says, ``there's just something intrinsically funny about that.''

The men, brothers-in-law, peer at each other, eyes narrowing.

Then laughter, nothing but laughter.

That the earth took only six days to create might explain why there is so much duct tape in use today. Then again, maybe we as a species feel challenged by what we can't understand.

Duct tape is an enigma: a supernatural combination of rubber that sticks like cement, cloth that rips like paper, and hair-thin plastic that holds like aluminum siding. It has the power to render the animate inanimate and the vulnerable invulnerable. Yet duct tape comes with no instructions, so like a mountain unclimbed, solving its mystery has become a purpose unto itself.

The result is people like Jack Jackson of Charlotte, who thought of wrapping duct tape around corn on the cob for slow roasting on the grill. Stan and Betty Bozeman of Salisbury, who use duct tape to put broken limbs back into trees. And the Matthews Jaguars, a youth football team that won't take the field until players have been duct-taped into their uniforms.

All believe in one thing: an all-powerful Force that is light on one side, dark on the other and holds the universe together.

"There are basically two rules in life," explains Tim Nyberg, a Wisconsin man who has co-written three duct tape books under the pseudonym the Duct Tape Guys. "If it's stuck and it's not supposed to be, use WD-40. If it's not stuck and it's supposed to be, use duct tape."

The fact that Nyberg has a fourth book due in October shows just how obsessed Americans are with duct tape.

On average, enough duct tape is sold each year to stretch to the moon 1.2 times, or wrap around the equator 12.3 times, or enclose the Washington Monument 136 times.

And what some people are doing with it is downright weird. For example, Nyberg's new "Jumbo Duct Tape Book" suggests we cut duct tape into 6-inch strips, twist it, then pass it out to kids on Halloween as "space jerky."

Furthermore, it recommends duct-taping a fly swatter to the back of a spatula to create "the ultimate barbecue tool," one that flips burgers and kills flies, depending on which side you use.

Duct tape is intrinsically funny, because any time you see something with duct tape on it, you know the person either didn't have the wherewithal to do it right, or just didn't want to take the time," says Nyberg. "Everybody has someone in their family who uses it all the time for the quick fix and it becomes a joke. The kind of person who thinks: 'It ain't broke, it just lacks duct tape.' "

Judy Yandle of Concord has a 16-year-old son named Cody who qualifies.

"He makes wallets from duct tape, wears a belt made of duct tape, a wrist bracelet made of duct tape, has 'redesigned' a pair of athletic shoes with duct tape and recently covered the front license plate of his car with duct tape. No
writing, just duct tape, "says Yandle.

She thinks it's funny, at least for now. But not everybody grows out of it.

Jack Jackson, the same one who suggested roasting corn in duct tape, admits to duct-taping his 6-month-old daughter into a diaper. In fact, he recommends it as a way to make sure a diaper won't come off. "When my wife came home, she rolled her eyes. I could tell she was wondering what else was going on when she wasn't home," says Jackson.

Husband and father Bill Corall of Charlotte knows the feeling, having earned the nickname Duct Tape King for a series of fix-it jobs that included duct-taping his kids' bikes to the family van for a beach trip. "Took nearly an entire roll," Corall says, with a hint of pride. "I wish I'd taken a picture."

Duck Brand duct tape is the nation's top brand, and company officials delight in such foolishness. The Duck people, who manufacture most of their tape at a plant near Hickory, even have a Web site (www.duckproducts.com) so people can submit new adventures. Hundreds have responded, including confessions of duct tape used for sealing shotgun wounds, making hiking shoes for dogs and repairing dentures.

Among the more bizarre was a guy who helped a premature baby kangaroo survive by duct-taping it into its mother's pouch, and a Missouri man who weathered a flood by sealing himself in the house. "The river was rising quickly and the water was lapping at the patio doors," he wrote. "Duck tape applied around the door edges stopped the leak. Seven inches of water outside the house, but none inside!"

Company officials have a sense of humor about all this, and aren't above likening their product to America's other tacky national treasure, Spam. Both are cheap, versatile and have the durability of Styrofoam.

"Face it: It's a lot more affordable to repair something with duct tape than to replace it," says Angelo Ritson of Manco Inc., the company that produces Duck Brand. "Plus, it has a certain universality about it. Duct tape knows no gender or race boundaries. It's limitless in who can use it and how it can be used. It's so American. Baseball, apple pie and duct tape, I say."

Laugh if you will, but duct tape has actually saved lives, NASA admits duct tape helped the men of Apollo 13 make it back to Earth alive. It has also been credited with aiding countless military missions, since first being invented to keep moisture out of ammunition cases during World War II.

To date, duct tape has been known to fail in only two instances.

It won't work on fire. "And it won't work on water, unless you freeze it first. Then it will stick to it," says Nyberg, who can't resist the idea of giving one last tip. "If you get a good, dry ice cube and cover it with duct tape, it won't dilute your drink."

Who'd have thought?