Looking down on me from the top of a bookcase in the corner of my office, Mr. Peanut watches my every move. A coin bank that stands just over 8 inches tall, the plastic figurine mass produced decades ago by Planters Peanuts seems a bit out of place next to a media award that’s leaning up against a 1964 team-autographed football.
The item has sentimental value. It had belonged to my dad when he was a child and ended up in my possession after he passed away, tucked in a box filled with things he had collected in life. It strikes me as sort of an odd thing to hang onto for a lifetime but it obviously meant something to him.
In 1916, Planters staged a contest to help the company come up with a mascot. A 14-year-old boy named Antonio Gentile won when he came up with Mr. Peanut (although, I’ll add here that a commercial artist added the monocle, top hat and cane to create the final image).
I can imagine my dad collecting pennies and nickels in the Mr. Peanut bank — and then retrieving them when he was allowed to have candy from the downtown drugstore in the small Nebraska town where he grew up.
A couple of years ago, I purchased a bank for my then 5-year-old son. It’s not a plastic figurine but a replica of an ATM or miniature safe and he can feed it paper currency or drop in coins. The door in front resembles a vault and features a keypad where you punch in a set code to open it up.
The days of collecting pennies and nickels have been replaced with quarters and dollar bills. Heck, these days, you have savings accounts for children that are set up to receive automatic transfers each month from their parents.
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
