Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993 TAG: 9308050087
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PITTSBURGH LENGTH: Medium
The pickle-shaped pins, covered with warts and imprinted with the Heinz logo, have proven as enduring - and endearing - as the Cracker Jack prize.
More than 100 million pins have been handed out at expositions, trade fairs, plant tours and to every person who writes or calls the company to ask for one.
In Pittsburgh, Heinz' hometown, the pickle pin is a badge of honor, a symbol akin to New York's Big Apple.
Women and men of all ages keep them tucked away in drawers, jewelry boxes and souvenir stashes. They are worn on lapels and hats and traded, but rarely thrown away.
"You can buy all kinds of brooches with fancy precious stones in them, but how many times can you go into a jewelry store or department store and find a pickle pin?" said John Bradley-Steck, a 40-year-old construction company manager.
Bradley-Steck often tacks a pickle pin onto his jacket, shirt or belt, especially when traveling out of town.
"Most people think it's a caterpillar," he said. "A lot of people try to brush it off."
Betty Sullivan, 76, of Paris, Ill., keeps her pin tucked away in an old cardboard ring box in a closet safe, along with legal papers and a lucky penny.
She treasures her pin as memento of her family's visit on a hot July day to the World's Fair in Chicago.
"It's a symbol of that summer of 1933 when I was 16 years old, young and impressionable," she said.
Hain Elementary School in suburban Pittsburgh has a big barbecue every spring on "Pickle Pin Day."
At this year's party in May, about 800 kids wore the pins and a teacher dressed up like a giant pickle. This year, the kids stood on the playground and sang a pickle polka with the chorus line, "Life is like a pickle; that doesn't mean it's green."
The pickle pin was created by company founder Henry J. Heinz, who was said to have had a keen instinct for marketing.
Heinz was in a pickle in 1893 when he introduced the pin to the public. He needed something to attract visitors to his food exhibits in a remote upstairs gallery at the World's Fair in Chicago.
He had boys distribute small cardboard tokens promising visitors to the exhibit a free "novel watch charm." The response was so overwhelming police had to regulate the flow of the crowd because the floor was sagging under the crush of souvenir hunters.
The pin has undergone 10 variations over the years, mostly in shape and shade of green. Gold pins were handed out in 1969 to commemorate the company's founding a century earlier.
Collectors have paid up to $100 for the original pin, which was made out of gutta-percha, a tough plastic material, said Heinz historian Ed Lehew, who as a schoolboy kept his pin with his treasured rock collection.
Arabella Belmont, 79, of Pittsburgh got her first pin as a "skinny little kid with red hair and freckles" in the summer of 1925.
She keeps three pickle pins, including the gold one marking the company's 100th anniversary, in her jewelry box.
"My grandchildren . . . always want to take them home," she said, "but I wouldn't give them up."
by CNB