Saturday, March 22, 2008

Easter ode to Peeps

Peeps.

"They're an American icon," David Ottogalli says Washington artist, whose principal media are Peeps and other vibrantly colored food products. "When blazing yellow Peeps appear on your grocer's shelves, you know it's springtime."

That's from the Washington Post in 2004. They've been on the cutting edge of Peeps coverage for some time now. Clearly visionaries. Which brings us to this season...

Peeps Show II
"The second annual [Washington Post] Sunday Source Peeps Diorama Contest drew more than 800 sugar-filled entries from our readers. A bounty of mallow rained down on us this Lenten season. The Peeps came not like locusts but like meteors of great ambition and, yes, some arts-and-crafts psychosis."


Click to see photos of the 37 best creations. One of my favorites was naturally photo No. 34, "Project Peepway." It's amazing how much the Peeps look like the principals on the show from the season just completed (PR4). "Peepator Craig's Wide Stance," No. 8 is laugh out loud funny.

Edit to add: Chris Matthews just showed a picture of the "Peepator Craig's Wide Stance" on his show Hardball. He just went up in my book.

Scientific experimentation on Peeps was a field started right here in Atlanta by an Emory pair almost 10 years ago. You can read this funny tongue-in-cheek article from 1999 about their work here. And you can read the actual results at peepresearch.org.

Edit to add: Someone else's Ode to Peeps here.

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