Happy Throwback Thursday! Let’s take it back to 1975 – when one of the biggest jewelry fads in pop culture history first went on sale : the mood ring.
The origins of the mood ring are as colorful as the rings themselves—and still a bit murky. One version of the story credits Marvin Wernick, a jewelry designer who claims he had the idea in 1974 after reading an article about liquid crystal thermometers. Inspired, he sourced a compound that would shift from black to green, blue, and deep blue in the 90–100°F range. He developed a technique to seal this color-changing compound into rings and pendants, and began selling what he called “magical jewelry” in early 1975.
But others say it was Joshua Reynolds and Maris Ambats who truly brought mood rings into the spotlight. Reynolds, a former Wall Street trader exploring biofeedback therapy, was fascinated by how body temperature correlated with stress levels. He created a “thermal biosensor” stone and assigned emotional meanings to its seven distinct color changes—from anxious to relaxed, passionate to peaceful.
Despite mood rings selling for as much as $45 (about $250 today) for silver-plated versions and up to $500 ($1,150 today) for solid gold ones, they flew off the shelves. By December 1975, mood ring sales had totaled $15 million. Celebrities like Barbra Streisand, Cher, Joe Namath, and Sophia Loren were reportedly early adopters. Everyone wanted a piece of this “emotional” accessory.
But there was one major oversight—no one patented the invention. That opened the floodgates for mass production. Soon, cheap knockoffs saturated the market, and the once-luxury fad started losing its sparkle. Within two years, Reynolds declared bankruptcy. But don’t feel too bad for him—he bounced back big in the 90s, becoming one of the marketing forces behind another pop-culture craze: the ThighMaster.
Spoiler alert: Mood rings don’t actually read your mood. They work based on thermochromic liquid crystals, which twist and bend in response to temperature changes. This twisting alters the wavelengths of light they reflect, making the ring change color. So while a blue ring might suggest calm and a black one might imply stress, those changes are really responding to your fingertip temperature—which can be influenced just as easily by the weather or a hot cup of coffee as by your emotions.
Mood rings faded from fashion almost as quickly as they rose to fame. But like many fads, they’ve made several comebacks—most notably in the 1990s, when they saw a brief revival fueled by nostalgia. Today, mood ring technology lives on in everything from necklaces and nail polish to makeup and smart wearable tech.