Before full color, television manufacturers decided to try just one color first. They picked magenta.
For six mercifully short months in the early 1950s, every show was broadcast in shades of magenta. Picture your favorite sitcom bathed in Pepto-Bismol light, its cast in sickly purple complexions and clothes that could give a migraine to a statue.
The cause was a technical mishap in the move from black-and-white to color. Engineers eager to add a splash of vibrancy to the monochrome world found a rogue frequency that turned everything on screen a nauseating pink, and then, being engineers, left it on to see what would happen.
What happened was eye strain, headaches and a nationwide craving for bubblegum. Fashion collapsed as magenta became the color of the era, and Americans redecorated to match their televisions.
The stars were not spared. Lucille Ball's red hair turned fuchsia. Ed Sullivan's dapper suits looked like a swarm of radioactive grapefruits, and he hosted the entire period without once acknowledging it.
Engineers eventually found the fault and shut it off. Historians date the end of the Magenta Menace to the moment a technician asked whether anyone else's hands looked weird.
