Fair Wares--From the Basic to Bizarre

Some things are hard to face. Like the thought of a miniature version of yourself staring out at you from a shelf at home, day after day.

Michelle Moncovich grimaced at that idea when she stopped at a Los Angeles County Fair exhibit booth where a collection of dolls now on display has a distinctly human look.

The 19-inch figures are topped with individually molded plastic faces that are imprinted with color photos of real people. There are no perfect Barbie dolls here: big noses, buckteeth and double chins are faithfully stamped onto vinyl.

The faces are framed by human-hair wigs and accented with realistic looking clothing. For $89.95, you can be yours.

But Michelle, 14, of Corona, wasn’t interested in seeing herself dolled up.

“They are weird looking,” she said with a shudder. “I’m positive I wouldn’t want to be on one.”

The Spitten Image Kids doll booth is one of 1,500 commercial displays being operated by 850 exhibitors at the 62nd annual county fair, which runs through Sunday in Pomona. The thousands of items being hawked to this year’s predicted 1.3 million fair visitors range from the basic to the bizarre.

Doll seller Ana Trujillo of Downey said her booth’s human-looking samples--including one that depicts her own daughter--are evoking strong emotions from fair visitors.

“They’re bringing some laughs. But some people say they’re scary. At first, they’re a shock to people.”

By last Friday, the fair’s halfway point, only a dozen doll orders had been placed. But Trujillo was viewing the booth as a success because of the knots of curious visitors being drawn to it.

Other vendors, meantime, have done their best to drum up their own crowds.

In the next exhibit hall over, workers selling dinnerware have parked a red Mercedes-Benz sports car atop four teacups in hopes of attracting attention. When that doesn’t work, salesmen loudly whack a dinner plate with a salad bowl.

The hammering doesn’t crack the china, but it causes passers-by to snap to attention.

“The car is more subtle than banging plates,” said Rex Newby of Oceanside, a representative of Table Charm dinnerware. “Try it with any other china and it would crush the cups. Ours is porcelain fired with fluoride--they’re stronger than your teeth.”

Fair-goer Robert L. Taylor of Burbank paused to look at the teacups, but he wasn’t in the mood to spend $492 for an eight-place table setting. He was, however, on the lookout for an extension ladder and an ironing board cover.

There is no shortage of fair booths stocked with such items. And vegetable slicers-and-dicers, “miracle” polishing cloths, neck massagers, ribbon bow-makers, doggie Flea Treats, collapsible trash bag holders and military-strength Velcro--described as the “perfect way” to keep valuables from falling in an earthquake.

Booth operators pay $2,000 each to rent 20-foot-wide spaces in the exhibition halls. Outside space costs up to $5,000, under the theory that those merchants have access to more foot traffic.

In all, there is 1.5 million square feet of exhibit space at the 487-acre Fairplex grounds.

Officials of the Los Angeles County Fair Assn., who will collect about $2.2 million in booth rental fees from commercial exhibitors this year, said vendors are not required to report their sales and there are no estimates of how much merchandise is expected to be sold.

Merchants, who were polled informally, said sales have been somewhat slow, but the vendors said they expected things to pick up as the fair moves into its final week.

The association this year refurbished and air-conditioned some of the fair’s 51-year-old exhibit buildings as part of an $11.5-million face-lifting project, which also included new plazas and fountains. But the renovation has caused some veteran vendors to grumble that they have been forced out of their usual inside locations.

Sparkletts bottled water representatives said their 16-dispenser display was moved without warning from the indoor space it has occupied for the last 36 fairs. “People can’t find us out here,” said Les Kearns, a company coordinator.

Inside one of the halls, workers at the Air-tro Inc. booth have found themselves in competition with the building’s new air-conditioning system.

Visitors going in to cool off on hot days have tended to pause beneath one of the hall’s huge new air conditioners instead of in front of a smaller unit being demonstrated at Air-tro’s booth. A cold snap and rainstorm that caused a leaky drainpipe to destroy $500 worth of company handouts during the fair’s first week didn’t help, either.

“We came to sell air conditioners. Maybe we’d have been better off bringing our heaters,” said John Helbing, owner of the Monrovia firm.

Sales have been hotter for some, such as household cleaner seller Virgina Martin. She uses a loudspeaker to drum up crowds as she demonstrates how her product scrubs badly stained carpeting.

Across the aisle, inflatable-chair salesman Dana Schuler sank with a sigh into one of his $189 seats. “I’ve got her spiel memorized,” he said of his neighbor. “I hear it at night . . . all the time. It gets in your head and you can’t get it out.”

His Touche a Tout lounge furniture seems to sell best in the Midwest, at state fairs in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota, said Schuler, of Culver City.

How’s business at the Pomona exposition? “Fair,” he said.

FAIR HIGHLIGHTS: Page 2