Selling the Wall

One man’s freedom is another’s marketing opportunity.

Hyman Products Inc., a St. Louis distributor, has managed to secure 50 tons of material that formerly helped to make up the Berlin Wall.

And Robinson’s, a Los Angeles-based department store division of May Department Stores, is picking up some of the pieces. They will go on sale Sunday for $10 each in four locations (Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Torrance and Santa Monica), with deliveries to the chain’s other 25 stores expected within the next two weeks.

Robert W. Schnur, vice president of finance for Hyman Products, said the company obtained the chunks of wall from a source friendly with officials in East and West Berlin. The concrete portions are being delivered to Hyman Products’ warehouse in chunks or slabs and are being cut down and then hammered apart into pieces weighing about 2 ounces each. Each will come with a certificate of authenticity.

The 9-year-old company said it expects to get as many as 750,000 pieces out of its current tonnage.

“Supply and demand is very much in force,” Schnur said, like a true capitalist. “Our quantities are limited.”

Hyman Products’ offerings haven’t always been so characteristic of peace. In 1988, it distributed the Pocket Terminator, a device that made the sounds of a machine gun or a missile launcher. The idea, Schnur said, was that if you got “aggravated with someone, you could blast them away” in jest rather than punch them out.