It used to be that, when back-to-school time rolled around, kids would want to show up on the first day with normal, run-of-the-mill status symbols: Air Jordans, a Walkman, a Tamagotchi. Heck, back in the 1990s you could be cool just by getting a certain type of pencil:

Now, however, we live in the Global Age of COVID-19, so the old way of doing things is over. Kids don't want to roll up to school with the latest Palm Pilot or the hottest Jansport backpack. No, they're looking for top-of-the-line pieces of cloth to go over their faces:

Launched at the start of the pandemic by Melinda Hwang and her husband, Ed Fu, Happy Masks has gone from a homespun project run out of the couple's West L.A. residence to a viral e-commerce hit propelled by the anxiety of tens of thousands of parents. By early this month, the company had sold masks to about 100,000 customers. But after a year or so of largely manageable growth, interest surged in recent weeks, leaving the couple scrambling to meet demand and keep the peace with increasingly unhappy customers. The situation, Hwang said, "created a lot of stress for us."

They're beating down the door and clearing the shelves for...f ace masks. Dropping $24 on something that becomes moist and saturated with saliva within like eight minutes of usage.

The product itself has developed an outspokenly devoted following:

"There is no higher praise than your 6-year-old wearing a mask all day and forgetting he has it on," said Laura Gaskill, a mother of two boys from Naperville, Ill., who has bought 25 Happy Masks. "We've been so grateful to have a little bit of control over something as completely chaotic as COVID."

Actually, there's quite a bit of things that could constitute "higher praise" than that. Then again, if you're so into face masks that you're dropping six hundred bucks on them, maybe it doesn't matter.

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