YOU can't make this stuff up.
Mark Leggott is packing up his Mr. Potato Head collection and moving east.
He's leaving his post as librarian at the University of Winnipeg to take up a similar position at -- wait for it -- the University of Prince Edward Island.
It's going to be interesting, he says, to see how his new neighbours react to his spud buds. "I've heard they take their potatoes pretty seriously there -- I might have to ease them in."
Leggott began decorating his downtown campus office with toy tubers about 10 years ago. "This all started out as an innocent Christmas present," he says, adjusting a Mr. Potato Head calendar on the wall. "You know how you sometimes get a joke gift? Well, it just kind of took off from there."
His crop now numbers in the dozens. Stand-outs include a Roswell-ready alien Potato Head, an egg-totin' Easter Bunny Potato Head and a Star Wars-endorsed Spud Trooper, armed with -- natch -- a potato masher. (Leggott also owns a corresponding Darth Tater but remains on the lookout for Artoo-Potatoo.)
He says his collection isn't all fun and games. "One time I was involved with a university committee that was trying to come up with new ways of doing things," he says. To get the ball rolling, Leggott fetched a Mr. Potato Head from his office shelf. He sent it around the room, asking each attendee to attach a different body part.
There were a few raised eyebrows at first but by the time the toy made its way back to him, the librarian had proven his point. "It was virtually unrecognizable -- arms were coming out of its head, its eyes and ears were all over the place. I stressed that this was the direction we needed to go; that we should be striving to be more creative instead of just doing things that were familiar to us."
Mr. Potato Head was invented by George Lerner almost 60 years ago. Lerner originally intended to distribute the individual body parts as prizes inside boxes of breakfast cereal. That notion proved a dud, so he sold the rights to brothers Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld (a.k.a.: Hasbro). The first Mr. Potato Head Funny Face Kit hit store shelves in 1952. First-year sales topped $4 million.
In the beginning, the play set was marketed as a selection of limbs and appendages only. Consumers were encouraged to play with their food by sticking the pieces into actual vegetables. At the behest of government safety regulators, a plastic potato-as-body was added in 1964. A division of "picnic pals" -- Willy Burger, Frenchy Fry and Franky Frank -- was introduced in the mid-'60s.
In 1985, Mr. Potato Head received four write-in votes in the Boise, Idaho, mayoral election. When he turned 50 in 2002, Mr. Potato Head was granted an American Association of Retired Persons card.
Dennis Martin's website, The Mr. Potato Head Collector's Page, bills itself as "the world's largest resource for Mr. Potato Head information and history." The Birmingham, Ala., television producer has more than 1,200 Mr. Potato Heads, as well as a plethora of related merchandise like clothing, key chains, wall clocks and wedding-cake toppers.
Martin even maintains a subsection of fakes and knockoffs, including Mr. Egg-Bod and Señor Patata.
"I'm a collector by nature," he says when reached at home. "I collected PEZ dispensers for about 10 years (but) PEZ got too big too fast and just wasn't fun anymore. I looked for something else to collect -- saw a 1960s Mr. Potato Head in an antique shop, bought the toy and that's what started it all."
Martin guesstimates that his collection is worth in the tens of thousands of dollars, "but I don't keep a running tab of what I have spent and I have never tried to value it." He has doled out as much as $200 for individual items but says that isn't the norm. He generally spends between $5 and $30 for Potato Head paraphernalia, the majority of which has been acquired through eBay or estate sales.
Martin is also a member of a yahoo group devoted to Mr. Potato Head (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/ group/Mr-Potato-Head/). And while he is unaware of any Canuck members, he mentions that there is one Potato Head featured on his website -- the Hockey Player Potato Head -- that was available only in Canada.
On a trip to Disney World last March, Martin hooked up with a fellow collector from Japan. "We traded items and took pictures," he says. "I guess you could say that was the first international Mr. Potato Head convention."
The father of five says his home has become a beacon for neighbourhood kids. "A lot of times when other children come over, they don't ask for my children; instead they say, 'Can we go in your Potato Head room, Mr. Martin?'"
For more information on Mr. Potato Head collecting, visit Dennis Martin's website at www.mrpotatohead.net.
If you'd like to share the story of your collection with our readers -- anything from soup to lug nuts -- please contact David Sanderson at david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca. His column appears bimonthly.
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