Celebrity Watch: Moving Elvis Mr. Potato Head Parts Around

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Moving Elvis Mr. Potato Head Parts Around

I?ve done two previous articles on the Elvis Mr. Potato Head figures. The first was favorable, and that resulted in me getting an e-mail thank you message from from Dean Gorby of PPW Toys, the company that makes the Elvis Mr. Potato Heads for Hasbro. I wrote back and asked if I could get some in-house photos of the Elvis Live, as the first model was called.

Dean sent me unpublished pictures of Elvis Live with the white jumpsuit, and I used that for a second ElvisBlog article. More recently he sent me photos of the ?68 Special black leather model, including a little note filling me in on the results when ?68 Special debuted at the New York Toy Fair in February.

Elvis Mr. Potato Head is front and center at the Toy Fair

Dean expressed his happiness at getting so many favorable comments from the folks coming by their booth at the Toy Fair. ?Many people said they liked it better than the first. The overall response was that people thought it was cuter because you can see his eyes, where as the first version had sunglasses.?

Elvis Live '68 Special

Sorry, but I am going to disagree with those folks. I like the sunglasses way better than the eyes. However, there is some good news. You can remove the eyes from black leather and replace them with the sunglasses. Like this.

?68 Comeback Elvis Wearing Sunglasses

The next two outfits in the series will probably be Jailhouse Rock and Gold Lam�, but both are unlikely to include the sunglasses because they are 50s themes. Of course, if you have your sunglasses from Elvis Live, you could move them around to all the models. I liked this idea so much, I asked Dean if he would send me some extra glasses, so every Elvis Mr. Potato Head I buy can wear them. They just came in, and they are very cool. Thank you, Dean.

While we are talking about moving Mr. Potato Head parts around, here?s another idea to think about. It sure looks like the mask and helmet of Darth Tater would fit nicely over that black leather suit. And, you know you can replace that mic stand with the light sabre. Remember how Elvis always imagined Captain Marvel Jr. as his alter ego. I wonder what he would think about being Darth BlackLeather.

Speaking of mics, Dean recently told me about the bonus goodies they inserted into 500 packages of each model. Their experiences with Elvis Live and ?68 Special were quite different. They produced 500 gold mic stands, and randomly mixed them in boxes of the black leather Elvis above. It didn?t get noticed. However, the 500 gold guitars they placed with the white jumpsuit Elvis had quite an effect. Dean said he has seen many for sale on line, and they have consistently sold for about $100 each.