Crazy Eddie
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Crazy Eddie was a consumer electronics chain located primarily in the Northeastern United States. It was started in the 1970s in Brooklyn, New York, by businessman Eddie Antar. It is famous throughout the tri-state area for its commericals, featuring a frenetic, "crazy" character promoting the stores.
History
Eddie’s grandparents, Murad and Terah Antar, who were ethnically Syrian Jewish, moved to New York from Aleppo, Syria. One of the world’s oldest cities, Aleppo was known for ages as one of the most important trading links between the Far and Middle East and was a place where Murad and Terah worked in their market stalls alongside Arabs, Egyptians, other Syrians, and Turks. Sam Antar, Eddie's father was a retailer, and it was no surprise to the family that Eddie followed in his father's and grandparents' footsteps.The chain became well-known for its television and radio commercials in which radio disc jockey/actor Jerry Carroll delivered his lines rapid-fire, proclaiming in a loud voice that "Crazy Eddie will beat any price you find", always ending his sales pitch with the memorable tag-line "Crazy Eddie - His Prices Are In-saaane!". The hyperactive TV spokesman became so identified with the company that many viewers assumed that he was its owner, despite the fact that Crazy Eddie was always referred to in the third person.
In 1989 the chain suffered a major scandal when Eddie Antar and his family were accused (and eventually convicted) of "cooking the books" in order to skim money and inflate inventory. Antar was found to have sold used electronics as new, committed insurance fraud, faked inventory, and skimmed most of the cash payments to avoid taxes. Having taken the company public (the stock was soon worth hundreds of millions), Antar began selling his stock and the stock price began to collapse. The firm was bought in a hostile takeover by another company, but the buyers were quick to find that some $80 million in inventory did not exist. Antar fled to Israel using the name David Cohen, where he lived until 1994 when he was extradited back to the United States. He was subsequently sentenced to eight years in jail, ordered to pay over $150 million in fines and also owes more than a billion dollars from civil suits.
In 1999, the grandchildren of Eddie, Allen and Mitchell Antar revived the Crazy Eddie electronics chain with a store in Wayne, New Jersey, and as an online Internet venue. However, in 2004 Crazy Eddie went out of business again. The Crazy Eddie trademark and associated intellectual property were then acquired by Houston, Texas based firm Trident Growth Fund.
In 2006, Trident Growth Fund attempted to auction off the brand and the domain name crazyeddie.com on eBay to limited success. The auction ended without the reserve price being met, the highest bid being 30,100 USD. The "Buy it Now" price was 800,000 USD.
Pop culture
A well known brand, the Crazy Eddie trademark was referred to in movies and television shows. The mermaid in the Ron Howard film Splash learned about human culture through Crazy Eddie advertisements. "Weird Al" Yankovic also made a reference to the chain in his film UHF with a used car salesman who delivers his lines rapid-fire and is called "Crazy Ernie".In the popular television series Futurama, the character of Malfunctioning Eddie (the over-excited robot who sells cars and explodes if he gets even slightly over-excited) is a parody of Eddie Antar and the Crazy Eddie Empire. Coincidentally, when Eddie Antar fled to Israel, he adopted the false name of David Cohen. David X. Cohen is an executive producer and writer on Futurama.
The term "Crazy Eddie" appears in the book The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The entry on the book goes into detail on its rather complex meaning in the context of this 1975 science fiction novel.
References
External links
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