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Submitted and Written by Amy N
Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s when I was a young whippersnapper, mom would take us shopping at Sears for our yearly Pro-Wing generic tennis shoes, and the salesman would whip out the trusty Brannock Device. I always felt I should get a size bigger in case my feet grew an entire size over a year…and ended up looking like Ronald McDonald in the process.
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As a kid, I loved playing with these even more than getting the new shoes!
I didn’t know they had such a fancy name! Are these still around in stores? I haven’t seen one in years.
Ooooh yah, they are still in stores. I hated them with a passion when ever I had to help the shoe guy out during my brief stint in department store hell.
You might not see them very often because adults don’t realy get their feet measured. More of a childrens shoes type thing.
Yep, you still see them in shoe stores, mainly. Haven’t seen one in a department store in a long time.
Payless has them.
yes! Rack Room SHoes has these
Ugh, my first job was selling shoes in a higher end shoe store, and one of the things we used to have to do, was measure peoples feet with these. Really easy to use, but glad i don’t work there anymore!
When I was really little I hated – HATED – going to the shoe store, because it always reminded me of going to the doctor, and it’s because of this device. I didn’t like strange people putting my feet into this metal, medical-looking contraption and sliding things against my feet. When I finally was able to grasp what the thing actually did I loved to play with them while my mom shopped for shoes!
I must be really old. These were an upgrade. In the 50s and early 60s, there were actual X-Ray boxes that read your foot size. The Atomic Age, what promise!
That is still an upgrade over what I am used to. We used a hamster on a wheel that would pull a string to measure our foot.
String? String? You were lucky. We used to dream of string.
young whippersnappers and thier ‘dreams’. When I was a boy, we wouldn’t dream of having dreams. Hamsters were people that sold hams.
Yep, those were even mentioned in King’s IT.
Oh, nice! You didn’t actually get your feet zapped by the machines, did you??
The x-ray devices that were used to look at your toes wiggling inside your shoes is an epic lose.
Yeah those X-ray boxes were pulled out of stores in the mid-fifties because it was found out that they contained high amounts of radioactive materials and were for the most part not properly shielded. They ended up giving hundreds of thousands of people cancer.
Ahh the happy memories of a bygone and atomically ignorant era!
http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/shoexray.htm
There were automatic ones at some of the stores I went to. They scared me because I thought they’d trap my feet, haha.
And the manual ones were always really colourful – not like the one in the picture. More fun than getting shoes though… I miss these.
I invented this device, you are all welcome
I invented the internet!
I invented the intern.
I invented dongs.
I invented your mom
Nowadays they have appliques or rugs on the floor that you put your foot on to see what size you are. Not nearly as accurate though because it’s hard to see what size your foot covers, because you can’t see through your foot of course.
I always wondered what you did if you were bigger than a size 15… guess? Keep trying stuff on? Is there an XL Brannock device? LOL.
Nope! Hubby’s a size 18, and it sucks.
So what they say about a guy’s shoe size isn’t true?
I meant in the shoe-shopping department. And yes, his socks are huge.
Huh, I’m 31, and I had my feet in one of these on Wednesday. Nothing like being a runner to keep you feeling like a kid.
Speciality running stores measure your feet every time.
I can’t really get nostalgic about something that is in common use nowadays. It’s not like they’re even retro-cool. Saying these are nostalgic is like getting nostalgic over a screwdriver or a pencil. When I was a kid we just got our feet x-rayed to check that the shoes fit, now that’s nostalgia.
Yeah, um. These things don’t work if you buy Converse. Converse are sized by the devil himself, I tell you. I am a size 7.5 in every. single. brand of shoe except Converse, in which I’m a 4, which in ‘conversely’ *see what I did there hahha* a very difficult size to find.
I am with you… I wear a men’s 13 in every other brand, but in Converse I wear a 12 or an 11 1/2. Sometimes a 12 1/2. Sometimes an 11.
In size 13, Converse shoes feel like floppy clown shoes on my size 13 feet.
I always liked how it tickled my arches when they were measuring my feet. Didn’t realize they had a name other than “foot-measuring thingie.”
That’s the Latin name.
Ha! I thought that was fun, too. I danced as a kid and had to be measured regularly for tap and ballet shoes. I can remember that sensation to this day!
Still in use at JCPenney. Sad part is, I know how to use the darn things.
The Zellers I used to work at STILL has them. I worked there two years, and I still don’t know how to use ‘em.
These things go back to the 60’s too, and were the bain of my existance. Shoe sellers pandered to my mother and would push the width as tight as they could, to sell bright shiny (and STIFF) shoes that my mother loved, which she was buying for her only daughter, me. Shoes which were too tight to begin with and only got worse as my feet grew. I now delight in taking shoes off as often as possible.
These things always made me feel like there was something wrong with my foot.
I also remember them!
Then again, I’m imagining a character like Al Bundy from _Married With Children_ using one. Or, anyone with a foot fetish using one.
I remember getting sized even into the 90s. The shoe store I went to had them lying around, so my mom taught me how to use them to size myself when I was eight. Good times. ^_^
Ah yes, I remember these!
They’re still around and the annoy the living hell out of me because kids decide to throw them around when I go shoe shopping.
Kids today have no respect for where they go shopping, why in my day we didn’t do such foolish things as they do!
Funny how things are…
I just got dress shoes and running shoes, and used that thing, but didn’t realize it was the woman’s size so I thought i was a 10. Oooops.
Stride Rite, where I work, still uses them. God, it’s annoying when munchkins won’t hold still for 1 stinking minute so I see what size their feet are!
we still use these in our store. only the kids one tho.
adults should know their own sises. seriously.
if your shoe is too small get the next size up. if it still fits get the same size again.
there rant over.
stupid customers.
they are useless for sports shops anyway cause every frakkin brand is a different sizing.
I want one of these! My favourite part of getting new shoes was always trying to figure out how the hell these work!
I didn’t mind this thing, but always felt silly when I had to put on the new shoes and walk back and forth in front of everyone to make sure they felt OK. It was embarrassing for whatever reason.
Ugh, I hated that too. My mom would say, “How are those, are they okay?” and the salesman would always push down HARD on my big toe to feel if it was too close to the end of the shoe! Ow!
Umm. These ARENT still around? Im only twenty years old and I remember playing with these. What did they get replaced with?
Provided hours of enjoyment when I was a child.