Kickstart: Plastics and fan loyalty

It has been a long time since Cracker Jack was a big incentive to take anyone out to the ball game. If professional sports teams want to make sure they get a consistent crowd now, then they need to invest in giveaways of items such as tumblers, bobbleheads, coolers, reusable bags and other plastic tchotchkes. Not to mention the New York Yankees Stadium's offering of tiramisu in a plastic helmet.

Jon Springer at our sister paper Advertising Age writes that teams from across the professional sports spectrum are boosting their budgets for giveaways. Mike Downey, director of marketing and promotions for the Chicago White Sox, notes that his staff saw a 20 percent increase in spending to prepare for the team's 125th anniversary in 2025.

The White Sox promotional calendar will see it give away nine different bobblehead statues, a model of Comiskey Park that is also an AM/FM radio, blankets and replica uniforms for the anniversary. Those are in addition to the usual range of items related to pop culture and area colleges.

Obviously, the best way to get a crowd is to have a team in contention for the playoffs, but that's hard to control from a marketing perspective. And attendance can easily drag during the middle of a long season.

Enter collectible plastics.

A Hello Kitty bobblehead giveaway by the New York Mets, for instance, saw the baseball team draw 41,000 fans, marking one of its largest crowds of 2024.

Do you remember what you did with your solar eclipse glasses after the total eclipse in April 2024? Because people living in the northeastern U.S. and Canada, parts of Europe and even North Africa will have a chance to put them into use again early on March 29.

The conditions for the eclipse are the same as those from 2024 as the moon passes between the Earth and the sun. But the three bodies aren't perfectly lined up, so no one will get a total eclipse, according to NASA. Instead, the highest level of coverage, 87 percent, will be visible in Greenland. Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. John's, Newfoundland, will have about 83 percent coverage. The U.S. city with the most coverage will be Portland, Maine, with a little more than 60 percent.

North American skywatchers will have to get up early, however, with the eclipse already started at sunrise and finished by about 7 a.m. Eastern time.

NASA warns that even in a partial eclipse, viewers need to use eye protection, such as the special glasses with coated film that sold in 2024 as quickly as Tennessee-based American Paper Optics could make them.

California-based electric vehicle maker Lucid Group Inc. is having to recall nearly 4,300 cars because the all-weather thermoplastic elastomer and textile floor mats won't stay put.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent out a notice March 24 stating the mats can become loose and "move and trap the accelerator pedal, causing unintended acceleration."

The mats are made by Netherlands-based Visscher-Caravelle. Lucid told NHTSA it became aware of the problem when one of its employees noticed the pedal became briefly stuck. The carmaker, which has manufacturing in Casa Grande, Ariz., will replace the mats.