What this local city’s underpants have to do with blockbuster series

Credit: TARIQ ZEHAWI

Credit: TARIQ ZEHAWI

Potty-humor loving kids everywhere owe at least a bit of gratitude to one Dayton area town.

In case you didn't know, Piqua, (yeah, the one in Miami County), is the setting of Dav Pilkey's extremely popular Captain Underpants series.

Pilkey, a Cleveland area native, picked a fictionalized version of Piqua as the setting of his books because the real Piqua hosted the Great Outdoor Underwear FestivalNancy Spillane, children's coordinator at Piqua Public Library, told us.

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Credit: Kai Suzuki

Credit: Kai Suzuki

“They are extremely popular books,” she said. “I don’t know if the fact that Piqua is in the book grabs them as much as the titles.”

Pilkey, now 51, recently told CBS “Sunday Morning” that he first dreamed up Captain Underpants in second grade.

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His classmates love it, but his second-grade teacher threw a fit.

Pilkey said he was encouraged to write children’s books by a college professor.

About 80 million Captain Underpants books are in print. The first was published 20 years ago.

There is "Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000;" "Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman,"  "Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants;" and so on and so on.

You get the point.

The books featuring fourth-graders George Beard and Harold Hutchins are far from Shakespeare, but that's OK.

If it gets them to read, that’s the best part,” Spillane, a 41-year library employee, said. “We are happy to get them for them.”

The computer-animated film "Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie" was released in 2017.

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There is not much of the real Piqua in the book, Spillane said, noting that that actual Great Outdoor Underwear Festival was a pretty big deal.

“They had a parade, the booths and the food,” she recalled.

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WHY WOULD PIQUA HAVE AN UNDERWEAR FESTIVAL? 

The festival celebrated  Piqua’s once  booming underwear manufacturing business.

From a 1997 Dayton Daily News article:

"We had eight mills here in the early 1900s," said Patti Jenkins, a past festival chairwoman. "They made a lot of things other than underwear, of course. But we decided to call it the Underwear Festival because it's catchy."

The city’s last underwear factory left Piqua in 1993.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT THE UNDERWEAR FESTIVAL?  
Revelers  wore red longjohns and multicolored boxer shorts during the two-day, family-friendly festival.

It included the auctioning of celebrity underwear belonging to Bill Clinton, Lucille Ball, Whoopi Goldberg, George Bush and others.

Officials modeled underwear and people battled it out in something called the "Drop Seat Trot" 5K run completed in Joe Boxers.

There was music, bed races, lip sync battles, pie eating contests and “Undy 500” midget car races, according to Dayton Daily News articles.

A 20-foot-tall pair of bright red longjohns situated in the heart of it all at the entrance to Piqua's historic Orr-Statler Block was not to be ignored, according to one article.

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WHY DID THE UNDERWEAR FESTIVAL END?

The festival that drew a crowd of 10,000 to 12,000 people annually started in 1988 and ended in 1998 after volunteers could not be found to take it over, according to a Dayton Daily News article printed on Jan. 24, 1998.

"And even after 10 years, there were some merchants who complained when the street was closed, and there were those who persisted in thinking it was something wicked," Pat Best, International Underwear Ambassador and festival publicity chairwoman, said. "Many merchants helped, but not enough to keep us afloat."

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