Sales of Novel Singing Catfish Surge
by I. B. Lyon
Remember the Big Mouth Billy Bass from the 1990s? The singing and dancing bass that took the nation by storm. Thousands mounted the singing fish on the wall, and they’d press the red button over and over and laugh. I can hear the catchy jingle in my head even now. “Take me to the river. Drop me in the water.” A Valley company has created a singing and dancing catfish similar to Big Mouth Billy Bass, and it is flying off the shelf.
Valleyan Joe Blucatt was cleaning out his attic recently, and he came across his old Big Mouth Billy Bass. Blucatt said, “My wife had been after me for a while to clean out the attic, so I finally got around to it one Saturday. I was taking some boxes down, and I came across the Big Mouth Billy Bass. I chuckled, because you can’t help but laugh at that thing. I immediately thought about creating a catfish similar to it. It’s been so long since the Big Mouth Billy Bass hit the market that there’s a whole generation that doesn’t know anything about it. Maybe a singing catfish could catch on and get really popular too.”
Blucatt has always been a tinkerer, and he is always in his shop working on something. He didn’t really know where to start with the singing catfish though. He turned to his son, Joe Jr., who had recently graduated from engineering school at MS State. He and Joe Jr. got to work in the evenings on a prototype. Blucatt said, “Man, we didn’t really know where to start, but we eventually started on the speaker. We got that right, and then we started on fish itself. That was tough; we worked on that for months. We finally got it how we wanted it after many long evenings in the shop.”
After their prototype was complete, they manufactured about 15 catfish, and they gave them to friends and family members. The catfish sings a bluesy jingle while dancing when the blue button is pressed. Everyone loved them. “Blucatt said, “Everybody loved our singing and dancing catfish, so we thought that we might have something. My brother, Jay Blucatt, really encouraged us to start mass producing these and selling them. He said they could be even bigger than the Big Mouth Billy Bass. Joe Jr. and I talked it over, and we decided to give it a go. So, here we are now.”
Blucatt initially started selling their Cool Crooning Catfish on Facebook, and sales took off. So, they started a website and created CCC, LLC and began selling the catfish online. They’re not in any retailers as of now. Blucatt said, “I had no idea how to do a website, so Joe, Jr. built a website for us. Sales went through the roof, and we couldn’t keep up with the demand. So, we hired 7 people to help us out. I also had to expand my shop to have more manufacturing capacity. We realize our catfish won’t be popular forever, but we’re gonna ride the wave while we can.”
The Blucatts are producing about 200 units per day, but that is still not keeping up with demand. They could outsource production to China, but Blucatt said that is not an option. The Cool Crooning Catfish will always be made in the USA. It’s great to see a local Valley business doing great and getting a ton of notoriety. Will the Cool Crooning Catfish get as big as the Big Mouth Billy Bass once was? We’ll see.