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Those Plastic Potato Pins

11/14/2018

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​Brown plastic potato pins are ubiquitous in Idaho. Don't you have one? The Idaho Potato Commission will sell you a bag of 50 for $7. It was that commission, specifically its director Jay Sherlock, that came up with the idea for the pins.
 
It was 1965 and the Girl Scouts were having their famous Girl Scout Roundup at Farragut State Park. Idaho was famous for potatoes, but the girls were disappointed because they couldn’t see them growing in North Idaho. As quoted in a 1970 Idaho Statesman interview, Sherlock said that “Idaho First National Bank scraped up some potato banks and gave them to the girls as souvenirs.” They didn’t get pins, though.
 
Sherlock remembered a pickle company from his childhood that had distributed pickle pins, so he decided to borrow that idea. By 1967, when the World Boy Scout Jamboree came to Farragut, the Idaho Potato Commission was ready with plastic potato pins. They have distributed, conservatively, 2.5 bajillion of them since.
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    Author, Speaker

    Rick Just has been writing about Idaho history since 1989 when he wrote and recorded scripts for the Idaho Centennial Commission’s daily radio program, Idaho Snapshots. His latest book on Idaho history is Images of America, Idaho State Parks. Rick also writes a regular column for the Idaho Press.

    Rick does public presentations on Idaho's state park history and the history of the Morrisite war for the Idaho Humanities Council's Speakers Bureau.
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