Unused ‘fitness’ stamps lie waiting in Postal Service warehouse
The US Postal Service is going to take another shot at developing stamps promoting Michelle Obama’s fitness campaign after White House officials vetoed the ones they came up with last year.
The stamps, costing $146,250 to print and worth more than $22 million if sold, were never distributed.
Now, officials at the money-losing agency are getting ready to try again.
“We are continuing to develop plans regarding a fitness-themed stamp series,” USPS spokesman Mark Saunders told The Post.
About 45 million of the stamps were left in a warehouse after the president’s fitness council expressed concerns that kids in the cartoon images weren’t wearing safety equipment. Read more
USPS had planned on releasing a sheet of stamps in May 2013 to raise awareness about the importance of physical activity in achieving a healthy lifestyle. The ‘Just Move’ stamps featured an illustration of a different child engaged in one of 15 activities, in addition to a short phrase or descriptive word in white text and an action verb in dark blue text. But for some unknown reason USPS decided to delay the release of the stamps until 2014.Why?
According to Linn’s Stamp News, the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition and Lets Move (a White House backed organization) raised safety concerns over 3 of the 15 stamps. The three stamps that the groups objected to were a swimmer doing a cannonball dive, a child doing a headstand without a helmet and skateboarder not wearing kneepads.
The White House did not review the stamps until USPS Chief Marketing Officer Nagisa Manabe wanted Mrs. Obama to participate in the first-day ceremony. Again, according to Linn’s Stamp News, after the objections were raised, Manabe–not the Postmaster General made the decision to destroy the press run of the Just Move stamps. The PMG told Linn’s that he knew the “USPS had been working with the White House over the Just Move Stamps, but was not familiar with any decision to destroy the stamps.”
Really you sound like an Obama hater, money we don’t have, say what, we have plenty of money to throw away just ask Bush and Cheney on WMD, we are still paying for and dying for even in 2014. I guess you are in top shape.
Good example of poor planning, wasteful negligence and caving in to peer pressure. Seriously, is any child in America going to be influenced by a stamp? Are kids going to ride skateboards without helmets because they saw it on a stamps. What this REALLY shows is how litigious a society we’ve become.
All it takes is one kid, who probably never saw the stamp, to fall and hit their head and the parent would sue the USPS for encouraging the behavior. The stamps were pulled not because of real safety concerns, but legal and liability concerns.
$22 million in stamps means about 44 million total stamps. That means about 8.8 million “objectionable” stamps. I think Ms. Manabe should spend the rest of her postal career with a marker, drawing helmets and pads on these kids so we can sell the stamps.
Thank god for these stamps. Otherwise people would never know that exercise is good. Maybe Obama can spend more money that we don’t have, reminding everyone to breathe.