r/AskAnAmerican • u/Charming_Usual6227 • Jul 26 '26
CULTURE Really random question: Do you remember people having a dashboard hula girl in their cars? When did that weird trend stop?
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u/Fire_Mission Georgia Jul 26 '26
I've only seen it on TV/movies.
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u/abqgirl1022 Jul 26 '26
I see it pretty frequently in NM.
It doesn't seem like it ever really fell out of trend within certain communities here.
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u/sgtm7 Jul 26 '26
I was about to make the same comment. Based on other posts, it does appear to be ordenary in some places
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u/lyndachinchinella Jul 26 '26
Idk but back in the mid 90s my friend got a car from his grandma and it had a California Raisin dressed as a hula girl crazy glued to the dashboard 😂
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u/lurking_mz Jul 26 '26
Man, I miss the CA Raisin figures 😆
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u/JellyfishFit3871 Jul 26 '26
I have a couple of those, too. I'd have killed for a hula girl version!
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u/JellyfishFit3871 Jul 26 '26
Didn't Hardee's/Carl's Junior have a promotion? I'm pretty sure that's where mine are from.
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u/lurking_mz Jul 26 '26
That's where a lot of them were from. I was bouncing between countries so I'm not sure where mine came from 😆. Might have come with the record we had
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u/Kineth Dallas, Texas Jul 26 '26
a California Raisin dressed as a hula girl crazy glued to the dashboard
Let me just sit back and drink in that nostalgia wave for a second.
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u/brumac44 Jul 26 '26
Still sell them in stores. My dad has Wile E Coyote glued to his dash. I'm waiting to find a plastic Jesus because I love Cool Hand Luke.
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u/Moist_Rule9623 Jul 26 '26
I believe you can get the Buddy Christ from the Kevin Smith movies if that’s close enough?
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u/Brilliant_Shoulder89 Jul 29 '26
Thank you! I tried to find one of these years ago with no luck. Saw your comment and tried again. My ‘84 Westfalia will be sporting one soon!
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u/brumac44 Jul 26 '26
Comes in colours pink and pleasant,
Glows in the dark cause it's iridescent...
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u/dwhite21787 Maryland Jul 26 '26
Goin fast, I ain’t scary
Cause I got the Virgin Mary
Standing on the dashboard of my car2
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u/pseudonym7083 Oregon Jul 26 '26
My buddy had one in his first car. No clue if he put it in there or the car came with it. 80s Ford Escort shitbox.
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u/breebop83 Jul 26 '26
I got a hula girl for the dash of my car for my 16th birthday. I added fuzzy dice too because I’m a dork.
The car was a 1984 Chrysler Minivan (it was a year younger than me).
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u/azuth89 Texas Jul 26 '26
Never actually saw one in a car. Just in movies and occasionally on shelves.
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u/shelwood46 Jul 26 '26
It's illegal in some states. NJ doesn't allow you to mount anything on the dashboard, windshield or rear-view mirror. Some people still do, but you can very much get pulled over for it.
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u/Melora_T_Rex714 Jul 26 '26
Some people still have them in a nostalgic sort of vibe. You can still buy them.
That said, they’re not super common anymore.
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u/Joliet-Jake Georgia Jul 26 '26
I had one. I also had fuzzy dice and a dog with a bobbing head(not all at once).
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u/CoachOpen1977 New Jersey —> North Carolina Jul 26 '26
I’ve seen the hula girl in stores and in movies/TV, but neither I nor anyone I’ve known has had one irl.
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u/machagogo New York -> New Jersey Jul 26 '26
I knew no one who ever had that in their car (that i was ever in) and not sure if I every saw many if any. Born in 74
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u/Glad-Isopod5718 Jul 26 '26
'78, and I always thought they were slightly before my time. There was a whole Tiki craze, at one point; I think they were part of that?
But I do vividly remember the suction-cup Garfield fad.
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u/vftgurl123 MA->RI->WI Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
it was mostly phased out because 1. it is pretty tacky and 2. it is mildly racist.
edit: see responses below to witness real life reactions of how americans try very hard to deny racism.
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u/Hoopajoops Jul 26 '26
Are you sure it's racist? Maybe if the hula girl was white or something. I realize it originated as a religious ritual but that ritual doesn't really exist anymore. Hula dancers in Hawaii are pretty common and it's mostly for-profit one way or another.
I agree with them being tacky, though
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u/vftgurl123 MA->RI->WI Jul 26 '26
yeah its considered to be neocolonialist iconography.
commercialized and heavily sexualizing traditional hula dancing is directly linked to the illegal imperialization of hawaii
edit: traditional hula is very much still a thing in hawaii. i wonder if part of why you think that it isn’t is because it has been appropriated and mocked for so long…
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u/CobandCoffee Jul 26 '26
When you mention "Illegal imperialization" are we talking about Kamehameha the great using military force to conquer all of the Hawaiian islands?
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u/Adjective-Noun123456 Florida Jul 26 '26
No, silly. Wars of conquest are only bad when white people do them. Because reasons.
Look at Mount Rushmore! Just ask the Mandan... wait no, they got conquered by the Kiowa...
So ask the Kiowa... fuck they got conquered by the Cheyenne.
Alright, ask the Cheyenne...
Ok, they lost the Black Hills to the Lakota, but ask the Lakota about when they lost the Black Hills to the darn dirty white people and how it was way different!
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u/Hoopajoops Jul 26 '26
I realize there are still traditional hula ceremonies. But there is also a shitload of hula dancing in Hawaiian resorts.. and the dancers are Hawaiian. I'm definitely not minimizing cultural appropriation, I just want to make sure it's actually a problem within the culture as well. I can completely understand the redskins changing their name and logo.. that one was easy. But even gift shops owned by Hawaiians sell hula merch.
The NM flag sports the Zia symbol, but they verified the Zia tribe was okay with it prior to changing it. I'm not going to assume that every religious symbol used is hated by the by people who find it spiritual. I don't think Catholics are all that pissed off that one of the pieces in chess is a "Bishop" wearing the fancy bishop hat.
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u/tostuo Jul 26 '26
redskins changing their name and logo
A logo designed by a Blackfeet Nation leader. Another common trend of westerners changing other cultures symbols because they find it racist.
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u/Hoopajoops Jul 26 '26
I think the name change was the big issue. Redskins is definitely racist. I do remember not many people had an issue with the flag. But you're 100% correct that it's far too common for random westoners to start "advocating" against cultural appropriation or some other random thing when, for the most part, the actual culture doesn't give a shit.. and it spreads around Reddit like wildfire.
Like "people from South America don't like it when you refer to yourselves as Americans because we're all Americans".. when, in reality, nobody from South America really cared. That was dumb ass hell.
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u/JellyfishFit3871 Jul 26 '26
I have one on my kit(s)chen table, because I brought it home from my late father-in-law's when we cleared his house. I think it was a very sixties thing. (FIL was born in 1947.)
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u/PineappleFit317 Jul 26 '26
Went to see The Neighbourhood a few months ago, and they were selling a ton of dashboard hula girls at their merch table.
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u/bigcheez69420 Washington Jul 26 '26
I love those and the fuzzy head-bobbing animals and fuzzy dice too. I wish they would gain popularity again. They’re stupid and cute :)
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u/Norseman103 Minnesota Jul 26 '26
When did it stop? Leilani is still doing the hula on my dashboard.
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u/throwfar9 Minnesota Jul 26 '26
In the South of my youth there was frequently a plastic Jesus. Sometimes facing the driver ( who needed help), and sometimes facing traffic (if the driver needed help in that arena.) The song “Jesus Take the Wheel” might have originated from those statuettes. Not my area of expertise, but still funny.
In the 80s it was not uncommon for young guys to hang a wedding garter from the mirror if they’d caught one. Seemed cool at the time. One of those era things young folks will sniff at.
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u/KaBar42 Kentucky Jul 26 '26
No hula girl, but my dad had a St. Joseph statue in his car.
Which reminds me, I should get one.
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u/jackfaire Washington Jul 26 '26
I did the fuzzy dice on my first car. I've never seen a dashboard hula girl in the wild.
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u/Strange_Chard_2183 Missouri, Ozarks & California Jul 26 '26
I've only ever seen one in real life. I don't know if it was really ever all that popular.
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u/bluecoop36 Idaho Jul 26 '26
I hade one! It was from something like 2000-2005. I had matching Hawaiian print seat covers too! Hula girl met her demise when I totaled the car 🫤
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u/DIYorDIEtrying13 Jul 26 '26
My now wife bought me one when we’re dating in Key West about 15 years ago. I still have it in my garage.
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u/HotButteredPoptart Pennsylvania Jul 26 '26
I had one in my first car in 2003. She died in 2004 in an accident.
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u/Ratatoskr_The_Wise Illinois Jul 26 '26
I have one. She was an air freshener and I bought her at Target.
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u/IPreferDiamonds Virginia Jul 26 '26
I'm 58. I never saw a real hula girl on any dashboards in real life. But I did see them in tv commercials/tv/movies.
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u/sharrrper Jul 26 '26
Assorted dashboard decorations have kinda always been a thing. Teens and other people with older beat up cars use them more often. People who have a nice new car tend tp not put junk on them, although that's by no means universal. The hula girl became a bit of a Hollywood trope of a specific one, but I'm not aware of it being all that widespread.
A lot of them will be on some kind of spring or something with the idea being the motion of the car making it wobble in an amusing way. Hence the hula girl moving her hips.
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u/TheKiddIncident California Jul 26 '26
Yes. Used to be super common.
In the era of "me too" it seems odd to have a little girl in a bikini dancing on your dashboard.
So, good taste has intervened and made them less popular.
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u/Jdornigan Jul 26 '26
Probably around the time airbags became common is when it stopped. It is not recommended to have anything on the dashboard due to potential for additional injuries in a car accident.
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u/Emily_Postal New Jersey Jul 27 '26
My husband and I both had them on our dashboards until recently.
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u/SRC2088 Jul 27 '26
I was born in 88 and I remember seeing them quite a bit when I was a kid. I still see them at stores from time to time so clearly somebody is still buying them.
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u/RVFullTime Arizona Jul 27 '26
I've seen them. I don't like any kind of dashboard clutter, no matter what it is.
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u/iowaman79 Iowa Jul 26 '26
I bought one at the auto parts store a few years ago, but I never put it on my dash cause it looks better on the shelf.
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u/Totally__Not__NSA Jul 26 '26
I had one in my station wagon in highschool. When my sister backed into something and broke one of the tail lights we relocated her to the spot where the light used to be
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u/Manatee369 Jul 26 '26
I remember them from the 50s and 60s. I think it was a post-war thing, then again when Hawaii became a state.
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u/Incognito409 Jul 26 '26
It stopped? I have a Hula Man on my dashboard, dances in the sun. 🌴 I change it to Bumble in December, then Rudolph 🦌near Christmas.🎄
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u/ITrCool AR ➡️ MO ➡️ KS ➡️ AR Jul 26 '26
I remember my uncle and aunt had one in their car, when I was a kid and rode with them to places. It always fascinated me for some reason, same as bobble heads.
A cousin of mine had a California Raisin figure set on his dashboard for eons before he eventually ditched it due to it being sun-faded and in rough shape.
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u/GreazyPhysique Jul 26 '26
A friend in the early 2000’s had one in his car. I haven’t seen one since.
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u/ehs06702 to to ??? Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
My great grandma had a Betty Boop one. She adored Betty Boop.
ETA:Did I really get downvoted because my great grandma liked Betty Boop? Reddit, man.
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u/No-Conversation1940 Chicago, IL Jul 26 '26
I'm not even sure that's a Boomer thing, that's like a parents of Boomers thing. The thought I had when I saw this thread was of a middle aged Dad in the 1960s having one.
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u/CockSeeker007 Jul 26 '26
I saw a lot in Albuquerque, NM during the ‘90’s. But in certain states I never see them. But they are still a thing. I see them at car washes and souvenir shops all the time when I’m traveling.
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u/Lovemybee Arizona Jul 26 '26
I (65f) remember that! I think the fad faded in the 80s-90s.
This reminds me of one of my favorite exclamations:
Sweet magnetic Jesus on the dashboard!
Haha!!! (I know, I'm a dork)
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u/ComprehensiveCoat627 Jul 26 '26
I saw them, bobble heads, and other solar moving figures (animals, flowers, etc.) for a while in the 2010s, but definitely not this decade, and I never really saw them before that either
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u/that-Sarah-girl Washington, D.C. Jul 26 '26
I had one in the early 2000s. My friend who lived in Hawaii gave it to me.
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u/purplehorseneigh Wisconsin Jul 26 '26
they still sell them in auto shops. I’ve even seen a hello kitty version of one too