Remembering My Clamshell Landline Phone

Dan Lewis’ April 21, 2026 “Now I Know” newsletter covered the subject of Garfield (the comic cat) phones washing up in France. It is a good (and well-sourced) story, but here I will focus on his opening sentence: “If you grew up in the 1980s, there’s a decent chance you had a novelty telephone in your home — one shaped like a football, a hamburger, or perhaps a cartoon character.” While I was technically born in the 80s, I grew up in the 90s. Nevertheless, I do remember at least one novelty phone. For some time in the second-half of the 90s around when we acquired a still-working Newpoint Switcher 2000 Plus, we had a clamshell (as in it looked like a sea shell, not just how it opened) land-line phone that opened up to reveal the speaker and number pad. I remember it in part because I know it was our phone for at least part of the time we had AOL dial-up internet (related: see a thing I learned recently about MSN dial-up). Regarding Mr. Lewis’ opening line, I will submit that while I never had a football-shaped phone, I did have a stuffed-football-shaped universal remote from RadioShack (that was in the early-to-mid 2000s).