Cities and states can get tetchy about major corporations suddenly packing up and moving to greener (or at least, less brown) pastures. When a big company ups and moves its headquarters, it can take a lot of jobs with it, many good-paying jobs. It can also take a big dollop of a locality’s tax base with it as well. Now, when the original pasture is Rhode Island and the greener one is Massachusetts, one has to wonder just what the company in question thinks they are gaining.
But move they did. The company is Hasbro, the famous toy company, and the old pasture, Rhode Island, is responding by taking away the option for Rhode Island car owners to have Mister Potato Head plates. I guess they really have a chip on their shoulder over the whole thing.
It’s been no small potatoes that Rhode Islanders have been able to choose the image of Mr. Potato Head as a specialty license plate for decades.
Yet with Hasbro’s decision to move its headquarters from the smallest state in the U.S. to Boston, two lawmakers say it’s time to hash out whether Rhode Island should continue promoting one of the company’s most iconic characters.
It seems there’s quite a bit of history between Rhode Island and Hasbro. One would think that both state and corporation would be content to curry on as they were, but Hasbro must have seen some advantage in peeling off their Rhode Island operation and heading north.
Under the proposal introduced earlier this month, Rhode Island’s Division of Motor Vehicles would stop providing Mr. Potato Head as an option for a specialty license plate. Currently the plate costs around $40, with half of that amount going to help support the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.
Rep. Brian Newberry, a Republican from North Smithfield, said in an email that he filed the legislation because Hasbro leaving the state will cause “untold economic harm and loss of tax revenue.”
“There is no reason we should be advertising their products on our license plates,” Newberry said. “It may seem trivial compared to many other things but it’s a matter of self-respect.”
Now that’s actually a fair point; this does kind of smack of advertising a Hasbro product on a government-issued license plate. But… I mean… It’s Mister Potato Head. If Brian Stelter was a toy, this is what he’d be.
OK, maybe that’s not the best justification.
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I yam a little concerned, though, about the proliferation of license plates some states have. Even here in the Great Land, we have several options, although it’s not like we have other states adjacent to ours. When we lived in Colorado, I had it on good authority that the local cops and the state police hated that state’s numerous license plate options; it was confusing, and some of them were hard to read. As for me, I just don’t see the a-peel.
Meanwhile, it may be that Rhode Islanders may have to face the future without Mister Potato Head plates on their cars. I’m sure they are taterly saddened. It’s going to be a spud life without them.
I’ll show myself out.
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