It’s the weirdest mystery you didn’t know existed (unless you live in a certain part of France, I guess): why have novelty ’80s Garfield phones been washing up on the French coast for decades?
Now that you know about this mystery, you’ll probably be happy to learn that it’s finally been solved.
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Garfield was everywhere in the ’80s.
Sure, there’s a dim cultural awareness of Garfield and hating Mondays and loving lasagna and all that nowadays. But back in the ’80s, the concept of a cartoon cat that ate lasagna blew people’s minds .
Garfield merch was the best merch.
Naturally, you could buy collections of Garfield comics. But the real moneymakers were things like coffee mugs, desk calendars, and cheap plastic landline phones. You know, all that good ’80s stuff.
Let’s talk about the Garfield phone for a second.
This phone wasn’t quite everywhere, but it was close. It showed Garfield, lying contentedly on his stomach, and featured eyes that actually blinked. People loved this stuff. Again, it was a different time.
In France, these phones are the gift that keeps giving.
People living along the Iroise coast in Brittany, France have been getting these Garfield phones for free for decades. They just come out of the ocean and wash up on the beach. It’s kinda weird.
The phones that have been washing up aren’t mint in package.
In case you were thinking that collector-grade vintage Garfield phones were washing up, that’s not the case. The stuff coming ashore is basically broken plastic electronic waste that’s vaguely Garfield-colored.
Someone had to solve this mystery.
After all, these dumb phones have been washing ashore in this area for more than three decades with no explanation. An anti-littering group decided they’d investigate and solve the decades-long mystery.
They tracked the source of the Garfield phones.
Volunteers from Ar Vilantsou anti-litter group tracked the orange debris, tracing it back to a hard-to-reach cave along the water. It was a significant trek to get down the cliff and into the cave.
Inside, they found an old shipping container.
The container, rusted out and dented, is barely recognizable as a shipping container at this point. It must have fallen off a cargo ship and somehow gotten lodged inside the cave.
The source of the Garfield phones was found.
The team found bits and pieces of Garfield phones all over the rocky beach, and were able to determine that they came from inside the shipping container, where they’ve been leaking out for years.
If that shipping container could talk…
Where was it traveling from and where was it headed? Was it full to the brim with Garfield novelty items? In fact, was the entire ship dedicated to shipping Garfield merch around the world?
Mystery solved?
Unfortunately, the massive shipping container is too wedged and too inaccessible to make removal much of an option. In fact, parts of it can’t be reached, meaning they could be full of Garfield swag that’s yet to be discovered.
The container will remain a mystery.
Now that the source of the Garfield phones is known, all of the plastic that can be reached will probably be fished out. But removing the whole container, or its whole payload, isn’t a possibility.
That plastic will be around a long time.
It’s a bit of a bummer in an otherwise silly story, but it’s worth mentioning that plastic takes a long, long time to decompose. These Garfield phones will easily outlive anyone alive today.
Whatever the case, Garfield’s back in the spotlight.
You can see this on Google Trends, where interest in Garfield has largely flatlined in recent years. But in March of 2019, things shot up dramatically…only to settle back down to the baseline immediately after.
Is Garfield having a moment?
It’s been a long time since this cartoon cat was on anyone’s radar. Are jokes about Mondays played-out, or refreshing? Share your Garfield memories with us in the comments!
