Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 25, 1993                   TAG: 9308250017
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WRITING CHECKS WASN'T LIKE THIS WHEN WE WERE KIDS

Deluxe Corp., a St. Paul, Minn. maker of checks and other financial forms, says only a third of Americans are interested in methodically balancing their checkbooks to the penny.

It can be depressing enough simply having to write all those monthly checks, which may explain why Deluxe is coming up with some new designs, intended to make you smile through the tears.

Touted as checks that will take adults back to their childhood, they are adorned with seven cartoon or comic strip characters: B.C., Garfield, the Jetsons, Bugs Bunny and Friends, The Simpsons, The Flintstones and Ziggy.

The company also has an M.I. Hummel collection, featuring four of the Swiss Goebel figurines.

The company's press release came with a trivia quiz, also designed to keep your mind off the more serious side of check writing:

What was Jane Jetson's maiden name?

What's Garfield's favorite food?

What grade is Bart Simpson in?

Answers: Meltdown, lasagna and fourth.

Spirit-raising for the crowd going back to school in the next couple of weeks comes as a merger of classroom supplies with baseball.

The Mead Corp. has developed the Major League Baseball Upper Deck Collection of school supplies that aims to send students the message: "Go ahead and have fun trading cards, but don't forget to do the math homework."

The planner collection features items such as a pocket portfolio that has frames in which you can insert baseball cards, or notebooks and memo pads that feature reproductions of cards.

The portfolio even has a chart that outlines the way to rate cards. The centerpiece of the collection, though, is the Five Star First Gear Day Planner, just like those expensive but trendy personal planners that busy moms and dads carry around.

McDonald's is on a sports card kick, too, with its NFL Kickoff Payoff promotion, in which customers get game pieces that buy them free food or NFL Point Values that can be traded for cards.

Economists have declared inflation tamed, but you may have noticed a rise in the grocery bill. The latest survey shows food costs up this month in all four major metropolitan areas of Virginia and 4 percent higher in the Roanoke Valley than last year's level.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services each month compiles its Market Basket survey, based on prices of 40 commonly purchased goods in supermarkets.

In Roanoke, the basket cost $76.96 this month, up 1.6 percent from $75.74 in July and up sharply from $73.96 in August 1992.

Elsewhere in Virginia: Norfolk's food basket cost $79.45, up 0.8 percent in a month and 2.5 percent in a year; Northern Virginia's was $84.93, up 2.6 percent in a month and down 0.4 percent in a year, and Richmond's was $80.26, up 2.1 percent in a month and 2.6 percent in a year.

Roanoke's total was pushed up by what the agency termed significant increases in the prices of frozen fish, fresh meats, oranges and corn flakes.