Week 22: Purple Passion

My Valentine's Day car pick: a Pearl Pink 1949 Mercury* tearing down the road like a high speed Valentine's Day card.

Valentine's Day cards, the yearly showcase of red and pink, flowing script and hearts...
 unless you're a kid.

Then it mean means tiny cards with licensed characters and bad puns.

That twist on a romantic tradition hasn't changed much since I was a kid in the early 1970s. I remember decorating shoeboxes to hold those odd little cards, and then, as now, not exactly understanding why Valentine's Day cards were to be given to every kid in the class. Why was I required to ask somebody who tried to beat me up to be my Valentine? That just seemed a bit extreme.

Over the years, characters on those cards have merged in my mind so that I no longer remember if they were sent or received by me, my oldest son (now 21), or my now fifth grader. Images of the Transformers, Peanuts, Looney Tunes, Garfield, Shrek, Power Rangers, Batman, and Lost in Space have all shown up and ended up on the kitchen counter.

Since the images usually have nothing in common with Valentine's Day, I've often thought it would be fun if there were boxes of those cards with inappropriate choices... characters from, say, Inception, Jersey Shore, The Hangover, or Apocalypse Now.

Or maybe not.

Still, it's that time of year again, and my son has a box of Iron Man gender-neutral Valentine's cards ready for that inexplicable February tradition, that, if not exactly fun, is special in its strangeness and love of pop culture.

As for me, I'll stick with pink cars and Malley's chocolates.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!


Photograph courtesy of Phil Pekarcik. Either there is some Photoshop involved, he blasted my car with a grow ray, or he shrunk the Edgewater Delicatessen with a shrink ray -- I didn't ask. 

* The above car is a special one: a mystery car (the ones you see in the store with the blacked-out blisterpack on the card) from the 2010 Hot Wheels lineup. This car, in a wide range of different colors and styles, has been issued and reissued multiple times as a Hot Wheels favorite. The Purple Passion was first issued in 1990, a creation of the legendary Hot Wheels designer Larry Wood.