How To Get Your Very Own Pizza Hut Lamp

Comedian Heather Anne Campbell details her quest to snag a piece of Pizza Hut history.

Heather Anne Campbell
By  Brianna Wellen

Pizza Hut is the first place Heather Anne Campbell ever saw or played the game Street Fighter. It's just one of the reasons the chain is so revered by the comedian, writer, and host of video game podcast Get Played. Growing up in Chicago, hers was a Lou Malnati's family, but every once in a while Campbell was able to return to the Hut.

"On special occasions—usually when there was a toy tie-in that I really, really wanted—my parents would take me to Pizza Hut," Campbell tells me. "It felt special, because it wasn't an everyday occurrence. The lamp represented something 'unattainable' to me as a child."

The lamp in question was the Tiffany-style stained-glass Pizza Hut lamp, an artifact that has come to symbolize days of Pizza Hut past as much as the now largely extinct Hut-shaped structures in which the restaurants used to reside. It's one that Campbell has been searching for throughout her adulthood, and as she shared on Twitter this week, she has finally hit the jackpot.

"So, I've always wanted a Pizza Hut lamp," she tweeted on Sunday. "The problem is that when they show up on eBay, they cost thousands of dollars. I needed to think outside the pizza box on this one."

As of this publication, a quick search for a Tiffany-style stained glass Pizza Hut lamp comes up empty (though you can get a single Tiffany-style Coca-Cola tumbler for a cool $22.50), making the task seem even more difficult. But going full detective mode, Campbell discovered the warehouse of the Chinese producers of the lamp shades where she found hundreds of the shades at a fraction of the cost—$99 per lamp shade, so long as you buy at least 50 lamps.

Instead of buying in bulk, Campbell opened up a manufacturing contract and asked for two samples to be shipped for the manufacturing cost of $99 each. A month later, the lamps she wanted for so long are now installed and lit in her office.

It seems like a lot of trouble for a piece of a restaurant that Campbell ranks as her fourth-favorite fast food joint behind burger-focused spots In-N-Out, The Win-Dow, and Five Guys. Though she admits she's been ordering a lot more Pizza Hut since buying the lamp, reliving the joy of her youth.

"My go-to order is Pan Pepperoni," Campbell says. "That's it, simple and basic."

 

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