MishM*A*S*H 48: M*A*S*H Beach Towel (1974)

Over the last year, I have featured a number of M*A*S*H licensed products. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Twentieth Century Fox Television licensed M*A*S*H and there was a variety of products ranging from M*A*S*H themed alcohol, action figures, Halloween costumes, games, a train set, toys, and clothing (I previously wrote about a licensed products kit distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Television). Since these products were produced late in the show’s run, the items featured the final cast of the show. This means that there are very few products that feature the original M*A*S*H cast including Col. Henry Blake, Trapper John McIntyre, and Major Frank Burns. The M*A*S*H products also rarely featured Radar since he left the series in 1979. That is what makes today’s objects very unusual, and something I have only seen a few times. A M*A*S*H beach towel from 1974.

When I first saw this beach towel for sale I was struck by two things. First, I noticed the design of the towel itself. The bold M*A*S*H logo in red is not in the traditional stencil script but instead solid block letters. The bizarre ambulance in the background has six wheels. Then there are the four characters in the foreground: Radar, Hawkeye, Trapper, and Margaret. The unmistakeable curly blonde hair of Trapper is certainly not B.J. The illustrated style of the towel is bold, and I like the design of the characters. It does look the four characters it represents. However, what really caught my attention was the copyright information below the image. The date is 1974, but the copyright holder is Columbia Broadcast System, Inc. So, CBS produced this beach towel instead of Twentieth Century Fox Television. The question is, why did CBS produce this towel? Was it a promotional item? Was it given to the cast and crew? Sadly, the tag on the towel is of no help since it has no manufacture information.

Most of the cast of crew of M*A*S*H lived in California, so a beach towel made sense as a cast and crew gift, if that’s what this is. After owning this towel for nearly two years, it is still a mystery. There is very little information I can find, and one rarely comes up for sale. The last one I saw sell was badly worn and ripped, and the seller didn’t have any information about its origins. Sometimes I get lucky and learn that an object belonged to a relative who worked for CBS or Fox, which helps connect the dots as to an object’s origins. I’ve had no luck with this beach towel. Despite the mystery that surrounds it, this is a very unique and rare early M*A*S*H object that features members of the original cast.