ST. GEORGE — For many baby boomers, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth was a legend. Standing 6’4” tall, Roth was an icon of the California hot rod scene from the late 1950s and 1960s, and at the heart of “Kustom Kulture,” a world of wildly innovative hot rods and custom motorcycles.
He was also the creator of grotesque cartoon characters printed on T-shirts, posters, and trading cards, the most famous of which is “Rat Fink,” a nasty-looking rodent who could pass for Mickey Mouse’s ugly cousin.
Rat Fink became the unofficial mascot of Kustom Kulture whose popularity endures today. Roth’s legacy is celebrated each summer at the Rat Fink Reunion held in the unlikeliest of places — Manti, Utah. This year’s reunion will be held May 31 and June 1.
Roth began his career selling his imaginative “Weirdo” T-shirts, which feature a cast of phantasmagorical monsters driving hot rods that became hugely popular at car shows in Southern California. In 1959, “Car Craft” magazine wrote a feature on Roth and his cartoon menagerie that cemented his reputation.
From that beginning, Roth moved on to create a stunning series of custom fiberglass hot rods, including Outlaw, the Beatnik Bandit, and the twin-engine Mysterion. Gear heads loved them and by the early 1960s the Revell model car company was selling tens-of-thousands of plastic models of his cars and “weirdo” monsters, including Rat Fink, Drag Nut, Mother’s Worry, and Mr. Gasser.
When Mattel introduced Hot Wheels in 1968, some of Roth’s hot rods were among the first die-cast toy cars they produced.
By the 1990s, Roth’s creativity was recognized by the more conventional art world. The Los Angeles Times featured Rat Fink on the cover of its culture section, and the Julie Rico Gallery in Santa Monica hosted an exhibition that featured the work of Roth and other Kustom Kulture artists titled, “Rat Fink Meets Fred Flypogger Meets Cootchy Cooty,”
It’s fair to say that “Big Daddy” Roth lived on the wild side for much of his life, getting into scrapes with biker gangs and three failed marriages along the way. But he settled down after he and his brother Gordon joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1975.
Roth moved to Manti, where he immersed himself in the community and met his fourth wife, Irene. Toward the end of his life, he was invited to give a lecture at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, where he encouraged students to “accept criticism [and] if you can’t do it, get help.” To become a successful artist, Roth told them, “you don’t need fancy tools or a fancy garage.”
Laura Allred Hurtado, an art curator for the LDS Church History Museum who curated a retrospective exhibit of Roth’s work in 2015, said of Roth:
As much as he stood for the counterculture that resisted the pristine-ness [and] squeaky cleanness of Disney, he was fully converted to Mormonism and moved to Manti to be close to the temple. But this transformation doesn’t equate to a rejection of his cultural projection, or the unique way in which he saw the world. Nor, really, is it a rejection of his [sense of] rebellion. How else is one to rebel when tattoos become common? In the world of custom cars, Mormonism is super-strange, very out-there.
Roth died in 2001 at 69 and is buried in Manti. The Rat Fink Reunion, now in its 22nd year, is held each spring on the first weekend of June.
This year’s reunion features a model car building competition, art and pin-stripping demonstrations and exhibits, a fun run, a car show, concerts and dinners, and an appearance by Candy Clark, who earned an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress for her role as Debbie Dunham in the coming of age movie, American Graffiti.
For aging Boomers wanting to reclaim some of their lost youth, it promises to be a little bit of heaven.
Editor’s note: Sources for this article including the official Ed Roth website ratfink.com, an article by Graham Kozak in the January 22, 2020 edition of autoweek.com, a December 25, 2020 posting on Ed Roth by Peter Porzelack in porzelackpolishguy.com.au, and a June 3, 2015 article by Brian Staker in Salt Lake City Weekly.
Photo Gallery
Ed Roth with his custom car ‘Outlaw,’ holding a Revell car model of the same hot rod, location not specified, circa 1964 | Photo courtesy of Wikipedia, St. George News
Ed Roth created Rat Fink, a nasty-looking rodent who could pass for Mickey Mouse’s ugly cousin. Rat Fink became the unofficial mascot of California’s ‘Kustom Kulture’ | Image courtesy Wikipedia, St. George News
One of Roth’s early custom cars was the Beatnik Bandit, created in 1961. It was a huge hit at car shows throughout California, date and location not specified | Photo courtesy Wikipedia, St. George News
Revell sold thousands of plastic models of Ed Roth’s iconic Outlaw hot rod, date and location not specified | Photo courtesy Wikipedia, St. George News
Ed Roth in his garage in Manti, Utah, circa 1990 | Photo courtesy of streetmusclemag.com, St. George News
Candy Clark and Charles Martin Smith in a publicity photo for American Graffiti. Clark will be a special guest at this year’s Rat Fink Reunion | Photo courtesy Wikipedia, St. George News
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