Home Run Derby

Every time Major League Baseball comes out with more camoflague hats, more USA Flag hats, more green hats (for Earth Day or St Patrick’s day), more black caps (Just Ditch It), or those FABULOUS pastel argyle Yankee hats like Roger Clemens wears, MLB continues to bastardize and trivialize its iconic logos inthe pursit of more merchandising dollars.

I thought I had had enough.  Until …

I was perusing MLB.com because I was looking to buy my 9-week old son a Cub hat (just a plain stinking blue one like they wear on the field) … and I came across this monstrosity called the New Era “Watermelon Smoothie.”

Perhaps at first glance you might say, “Big deal, it’s a Pink hat for little girls”

But look closer – there’s cutesy little Watermelons on that cap.   Next, scratch one of the little Watermelons on your computer screen, press your nose against it, and take a whiff.   Okay don’t – the internet isn’t yet adapted for you to get the full effect of the scratch and sniff technology in that cap.

Let me let that sink in.  It’s a scratch and sniff hat. 

And check out the Watermelon-seeded underside of the brim.   Okay, that’s kind of cute … but only if it was a Strawberry Shortcake-branded cap. 

What kind of drugs do they do in the offices over at New Era? 

And does MLB ever just say “No” to anything they propose?   I am terrified of what ideas MLB actually has turned down.  

I’m reminded of a quote from Jurassic Park which seems to sum up New Era and MLB …

“so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I kept searching … wondering if this was only a Cubs thing (it could be) – but it wasn’t.  And it wasn’t limited to watermelons either. 

Here’s the “Strawberry Smoothie” model for two teams I wouldn’t have expected to sign off on this crap.

Really?  The White Sox and the Yankees?  I really don’t want to think about what happened to kids who wear these things at Public Schools on the South Side of Chicago or the Bronx.   Hockey fans are already leery of them infiltrating the copycat minds of the NHL marketing machine.

You can’t find the scartch and sniff “smoothie” caps for all the teams at MLB.com … yet.  But the Red Sox and Dodgers have them. 

You just know Alyssa Milano is totally jealous of this idea. 

Thankfully, it only comes in kids’ sizes … so far.

Mind you, I just talked to the cute little 5-year old kindergarten girl who lives in my house.  The one who this merchandise is totally aimed at.
And her response was …

“Awesome, Awesome, Awesome.  I want that.”

These things are going to be big sellers. 

But I’m still not going to buy one for her.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 10:51 am and is filed under Baseball Business, Caps, Uniforms, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.