Fitness Items Wiggle and Wave at Trade Show : Goods Sport an Exotic Touch

You say you’re in great shape. You say you got all the fitness stuff you need.

Well, step right up to the National Sporting Goods Assn. trade show in Anaheim and see the stuff you didn’t know you had to have.

Like a Vibrosaun, which looks like an iron lung, only plastic. Inside was Vicki Seznick of Seattle, who was smiling occasionally. “I’m just an innocent bystander,” she said.

“Right now,” Vibrosaun salesman Leon Love said, “it’s giving her pleasure. It’s relieving stress and tension. The fan and speaker by her head make her feel like she’s by a waterfall. And there’s dry heat like a sauna inside.” Cheap at just $5,995.

Self-Powered Gadgets

Or Kneading Fingers, one of the scores of self-powered mechanical chairs, tables or platforms that rhythmically flex, turn, twist, extend, retract, vibrate or massage some part of your body.

Kneading Fingers protrude from a pad and revolve like a pair of thumbs trying to escape. “That one looks obscene,” an onlooker giggled.

Or one of ReCreation Unlimited’s line of “Fitness Furniture,” which solves the nagging problem of where to hide that ugly exercise cycle when guests come calling. No muss, no fuss, just leave “The Woodie” in the living room, because it’s made of solid oak and brass and looks like an executive desk chair with pedals. “Much less intimidating,” said Brent Bloemendaal of ReCreation Unlimited.

More than 800 manufacturers and distributors, enough to fill three of Anaheim Convention Center’s exhibition halls, are displaying their fall lines to potential retailers during a three-day run that ends today.

Some are appealing directly to the retailers with goods to increase business, such as sexier mannequins or computer-operated embroidery machines that can simultaneously turn out a dozen intricately “hand-stitched” baseball caps or warm-up jackets.

Show the Latest

The well-known manufacturers, especially those in the intensely competitive sports shoe market, have taken out huge sections of floor space to show off their latest. And many of the old standby products--shoe deodorant and tent stakes and megaphones and duffel bags--are back where they’ve always been.

But among them are the smaller firms depending on novelty to attract business.

Are you a member of the camouflage cult but nervous about being shot during deer season? Now available: an optic-orange camouflage hat.

Does your youth baseball league have trouble getting liability insurance? Start playing with the “SafeBall,” a real leather baseball (or softball) with nothing but air inside. “It bounces like a baseball, but it doesn’t go as far and you can’t get hurt by it,” the salesman said.

Afraid a burglar will steal all your valuable guns? Buy a home firearms safe from Cannon Safe Inc. It’s a real safe--tall, heavy and black with a combination lock on the door.

“Most of our safes eventually wind up in homes,” salesman Richard Rundell said. Even Model 55, which holds 52 rifles? “Yes,” he said. “You’d be surprised.”

An entire section of one exhibit hall is devoted to retailers catering to the couch-potato sector of the sports market. Here retailing is almost as bizarre as the products.

You already have a complete set of National Football League team flags? Your fuzzy stuffed football embroidered with “L.A. Raiders?” Your insulated six-pack carrier with “Go Bruins” on the side? Your official NFL adhesive strips in case you cut yourself on a potato chip?

Set of NFL Place Mats

Well, now you can have a complete set of NFL place mats with referee-whistle napkin rings for the penalty-flag napkins, all set around your chip-and-dip server built into an L.A. Rams helmet. Service for eight: $135.95.

In this corner of the trade, winning teams make winning products. Want to know what sells now? The San Francisco Giants, first in the National League West with the largest lead in major league baseball.

What is a Giants logo worth now? Tim Slaker’s firm, West Coast Novelty, put it on men’s boxer shorts--yours for just $9.99 a pair. One price for all sizes. “It’s incredible how they sell,” Slaker said.

So West Coast put the team logo on a radio the shape of a hearing aid so you can hear the game hands-free while at the game. Just $7.99 and selling like cheap gold.

At this rate, you’d think people would buy Giants Christmas-tree ornaments. They do, at $5 each.

Meanwhile in the next aisle at the Twins Enterprises booth, the California Bears embroidered hats just sit there like puppies in the pound. “I’ve never sold one,” Brian Melaney said. “They gotta win something first.”