Honestly, the Squiers are a dream come true for me. The classic Jaguar is my #1 guitar in off-the-rack condition. And close for the Mustang and Jazzmaster. Now I could actually afford to own more than one Jaguar, and not risk going overdraft buying it.{
The Jaguar's story has been an interesting one though. All the "classic rock" guitars (Tele, Strat, SG, Les Paul...etc) all have some famous names anchored to them - quite a few to be honest, while the Jaguar only really has Kurt Cobain as an "inconic" player, and his was not even close to stock.
Maybe Youtube has some to do with this, Fender has a channel, I"m sure they have some people who look for youtubes of people playing their guitars. Around the time I started doing youtubes of my Jag there were not many on there, and now there's a ton of videos by all schools of player playing Jaguars for everything from Jazz, to surf, to full blown Metal. It used to be the Jaguar was this "one-trick-pony" instrument that was only good for plinky surf music and died out with Don Ho and surfboards. Now it seems to hold it's own and has found it's own voice in places most people would last expect to see a Jaguar.
Some of the difference I also attribute to the music industry, way back when, us guitarists found "famous" guitar heroes to look up to, whoever was doing the flashiest, edgiest, or coolest #### around, and then their guitars became coveted items. Now who's really a huge guitar hero within the last 10 years? And to add to it, people tend to listen to music because they like it, not because it benefits them in some way, which I think is a good thing. If it were the late sixties and Jimi shouldered, lit on fire, and smashed Jaguars, we'd probably already seen them candy striped and Floyd Rosed by now after EVH would do so in the 70's and 80's, or at least see Yngwie with a Jag.
I dunno, maybe the Jag is destined to become more and more popular, it has a lot of things that make it more versitile and different from the status quo we've had around for 50 years that was not sitting for $250 in pawn shops through the 70's and 80's.
