Limerick Ode To The Shopping Cart
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Sylvan Goldman designed something smart;
He invented the food shopping cart.
With its basket, it aids
In a task that pervades
All our lives — buying stuff at the mart.
On June 4, 1937, Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain owner Sylvan Goldman introduced his invention, the shopping cart, in Oklahoma City.
The invention did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them suggestive of a baby carriage. “I’ve pushed my last baby buggy,” offended women informed him. After hiring several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their utility, as well as greeters to explain their use, his folding-style shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire by collecting a royalty on every folding design shopping cart in the United States.
