Anyone with a burning passion for the Phillies can now brand it into burgers, scorch it into paninis or waffles, bake it into a cake, or press it into cookies.
With a big fat capital P.
As in a Phillies logo for everyone to see.
That is, until yesterday, when I saw this: Click here to continue reading
When I moved to Minneapolis in July of last year, I signed up for Groupon as a way to get good deals for different restaurants and stores to try out in my new home. After a brief period of actually looking at what arrived in my e-mail each day, soon my Groupon ritual became a shallow scan of that day’s deals, and then that e-mail’s immediate deletion.
That is, until yesterday, when I saw this: Click here to continue reading
Your team is toast!
The hosts of “The View” TV show just told us so this morning.
Everyone seems to be talking about these new toasters. They are hot. They toast your bread, your English Muffin, your frozen waffle — and the best part is that it produces your favorite Major League Baseball team’s logo on one side.
“You don’t have to be a fan to love this,” said Josh Fink, CEO of Pangea Brands, but since we are all fans here and we eat, sleep and breathe baseball, we had to know more about the latest rage. So we bought one of our own, tried it out at home, and found it to be a little too … fun. We made more toast than we really had appetite to eat, because, frankly, we were just having a great time putting a particular team’s logo on food.
“What a great way to wake up on Saturday morning and your favorite team is emblazoned on your bread,” Fink said. “It’s comedy. We are taking this to the next level, too. This is the lower model. We have one $60 or $70 coming out, chrome. It’s kind of hard not to say it’s a fun item.”
Fink sold 350 units in five minutes recently on Home Shopping Network.
“The market is saturated, all the same stuff — enough T-shirts and caps,” Fink said, referring to the popular standards at the Shop. “When it comes to the novelty market, we are all looking for the most creative thing. You look at the Silly Bandz and think, ‘Why?’ It makes no sense to parents. But things hit. This is utilitarian, yet whimsical. It’s a product that can live and breathe in any house. You don’t necessarily have to be a fan to love this. It’s not the most expensive toaster in the world, and in some ways, it’s a toaster, but not a toaster; it’s fun.”
Some people have speculated that the idea came from that infamous eBay auction of the toast that supposedly bore a likeness of the Virgin Mary. Bidding hit the $22,000 mark before eBay ultimately removed the item as a prank. Fink said that wasn’t it.
The Japanese line of “Hello Kitty” merchandise was the inspiration.
“The way we came about this was seeing a ‘Hello Kitty’ verse on a toaster,” Fink explained. “I was looking for cool new products, and I had seen this ‘Hello Kitty’ toaster for years while on visits to Japan. I was like, ‘Hello Kitty?’ It should have Red Sox on it. It should have Yankees.
“In the back of my mind, I always thought we should do this. One day it clicked. I thought someone already had done this, but they hadn’t. I approached Major League Baseball and they were excited about it. It took us nine months to get it made and we’re still learning.”
The Pangea toasters, introduced in the last year, might be enough to tip even the most tchotchke-averse fan into must-have territory. A mere $50 buys the ability to toast the word “Steelers” into every slice. Or the Packers logo, if you’re so inclined.
But why just make your own NFL friendly food? You, too, could become an official product of the league.
“For $139.99, you can become an NFL-licensed product and collectible,” said Mike Denton, director of e-commerce for Facility Merchandising Inc., the Woodland Hills, Calif., company that has been running official NFL Super Bowl shops for more than 20 years. Read more
Josh Fink built his Pangea Brands business around high-end licensed sports products. But the discovery of a Hello Kitty branded piece of toast in Japan might have changed around how his Boston-based company does business.
Starting in May, Pangea will roll out ProToast, a line of toasters – available in every team from the four major sports – that pops out with the teams logo burned into it.
“Our motto is ‘Toast Your Team,’” Fink says.
Fink has big plans for the toast market.
He’s working on coming up with FDA-approved magic markers so that kids can color their toast and a collegiate logo toast product, called UToast, will hit stores in the fall.
Next year, he hopes to unveil a licensed panini press and a waffle maker and says it’s possible that one day we might see his toasters branding the faces of particular players into the bread.
The toasters are available in the online shops of the major sports Web sites as well as at Modell’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Sports Authority and retail for $34.99.
Copyright © 2011 Pangea Brands
