The beaming yellow face of Mr. Peanut greets visitors outside of the otherwise prim and stately historic Governor Calvert House.
“He’s cool, he’s dapper, he’s, need I say, sexy?” said Scott Schmitz, the president of the Peanut Pals Club, a group dedicated to the monocled mascot of Planters peanuts, during their annual meeting in Annapolis over the weekend.
By their own admission, these are the legume’s most “die hard” fans; if it’s related to Mr. Peanut, they either have it or they want it. Collectors, most of them grey-haired retirees from across the country, sat at tables showing off their wares — like Mr. Peanut purses, paint kits, even an 80 year old candy bar wrapper preserved and valued at $1,000 dollars.
Tony Scola’s first experience with Mr. Peanut wasn’t actually a good one. He was a baby on the Atlantic City boardwalk when a costumed Mr. Peanut appeared.
“He stuck his face in the stroller, and I lost it. I just had a meltdown. Started crying,” he recounted. “So when I was a kid, when my brothers and sisters wanted to torment me they would say, ‘Mr. Peanut is going to come and get you.’ And then I would just, again, start having a meltdown.”
But now the retired radiologist from outside of Philadelphia, who is also joined by his wife Lenore, is a Mr. Peanut aficionado, serving as somewhat of a researcher and historian for the group. Out of his large collection, Scola’s favorite item isn’t particularly flashy.
“It's basically a label that would have gone on a can of oil. But they're rare because most of them were lithographed right on the can. You don't really see the paper label just by itself.”
Everyone has a different reason for getting involved with the top-hatted and bespectacled character. For Scola, one could say he got into collecting in part as a way of getting over his fears.
“Fast forward, like 40 years… My brother was a psychiatrist, sent me a little Mr. Peanut statue, and he said, ‘May your fears become your strengths.’ And so I said, Oh, that's like a good thing to live by,” said Scola.
The Scolas, like many of the attendees, are avid antiquers. And many of them described that at some point, between the flea markets and estate sales, there’s an item or character that just sticks out and becomes your passion.
The anthropomorphized peanut was created in 1916 by a young schoolboy as part of a contest and then a Pennsylvania commercial artist added the dandy tophat, cane, and monocle.
There’s so much memorabilia in part because Schmitz, the club president, says Planters was an early adopter of advertising to kids.
“Just like McDonald's, you walk in, you could buy some peanuts, but you could also buy a plastic knife for spoon set you could for the kids. You could buy little Mr. Peanut mugs and banks for 10 cents,” said Schmitz.
At one point, he says there were 69 Planters peanuts stores at Main Streets all over the country.
The hey-day of Mr. Peanut and his illustrious fans may well be waving out the rear-view window. Recently, Planters has steered away from a lot of the physical Mr. Peanut merchandise that is so valuable to collectors in favor of digital advertising.
“That sort of slows down the collecting process, because he's not out there as much as he would be, let's say, when I started collecting back in the 80s and 90s,” said Schmitz, noting that younger people aren’t really jumping on board.
As for the current Pals, they’ll keep going. Schmitz said the group has meet-ups planned out for the next three years. In the meantime, the fans will have plenty to keep busy. Afterall, there’s one thing that the Peanut Pals have never found: a Mr. Peanut aluminum lunchbox.
