Industrial designer Victor Schreckengost created "Hopscotch" pattern dinnerware for the Salem China Company in the mid-1950s. Though fashionable, it was expensive to produce, and sales lagged. The Ohio-based company simplified the design and renamed it "North Star." Sold from 1957 to 1967 in retail stores and wholesaled to supermarket chains as a promotional item, "North Star" is emblematic of modern middle-class tastes of the time.