by Nicolette Felice

Created on: April 17, 2009

What ever happened to the Trapper Keeper anyway? As I remember them they were really big, bulky binders that barely fit into your backpack. Some had cool designs and others were one solid color. Everyone would draw on them to make theirs different from all the others. All the cool kids had one, all the nerds had one, everybody had one! Then, all of a sudden, they just disappeared, never to be seen again. Did they just stop making them, or did no one buy them anymore? Did everyone get tired if ripping holes in their bags just to get them to fit, or did everyone just agree that they weren't as cool as we thought they were? I guess we'll never really know.

There really isn't anything that really resembles the Trapper Keeper anymore. I think that they just weren't considered practical enough. They didn't totally disappear though, we have different versions of them now, there are the big three ring binders, and the organizers that look similar to the Trapper Keeper, the ones with a zipper, and then there's those accordion looking things that we separate our bills in. Some have the rings in them and some don't. They are not quite the same, but they scream "adulthood" to me. There really isn't anything that the younger generation of today could use to store all of their important stuff, like notes to their friends.

There is one more thing out there that you can say has replaced the Trapper Keepers of old, and I am using it right now. It holds alot more than the old Trapper Keeper did, and it isn't quite as bulky. It holds and plays movies and music, you can get them in different colors or designs, and its alot easier to find what you're looking for. They have folders and sections that are much easier to organize and find. Now I don't need to worry if it will rip my bag because it comes with its own custom-made case. Our laptops are the new Trapper Keeper.

We won't ever know what really happened to the Trapper Keeper. Questions will be asked, but never answered. Maybe someone could contact the people at Mead and ask them what happened, then get nothing but run around. However, we will always have them in our memories. When your kids look at your old yearbooks and see you and all of your friends holding those gigantic binders, we can try to explain what they were, or we could just say "thats what we used to have before there were laptops."

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