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And now a word from our sponsor.

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

There’s an interesting trend in this year’s U-S stamps: commercialism. Not all of them, no,
but some of the 2018 stamps immediately make you think of products. We’ve had a Scooby-Doo
stamp, with a vague link to volunteering and bigger links to Scooby-Doo videos and
generating interest in stamps.

Then there are the ten Hot Wheels stamps, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Mattel
toy cars, and Christmas stamps featuring the art used in the iconic Coca-Cola ads of the
mid-20th century. The Santa stamps include a collector sheet that even has a bottle of Coke
in it.

We’ve had stamps for movies in recent years whose sequels were about to be released,

The first reaction of many traditionalist collectors was anger or annoyance, and I have to
admit I was one of them.

The Postal Service’s guidelines on stamp subjects used to say “no commercial products.” The
agency even took out the Ford logo from a stamp honoring the Model T. But that rule isn’t
in the guidelines any more.

And after some thought, I’ve decided “why not?” Ours is a consumer culture, and advertising
plays a large part in it. Those paintings of Santa that Haddon Sunblom did for Coca-Cola
from the 1940s into the early 1960s largely shaped our image of Santa Claus.

Many of us grew up with Hot Wheels cars, or watching Scooby-Doo cartoons on T-V. Some popular
and funny catch-phrases came from commercials, and many still do. If you say “tastes great,”
you know someone will chime in with “less filling!”

Ads and commercials are part of our pop culture.

Postage stamps not only celebrate history, art and important people, they also reflect who we
are, what we did and what we like.

And if the always-broke Postal Service got something in return for these stamps — and I don’t
know that it did — I’m okay with that, too.

I’m Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting,
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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