USPS "Spongebob Mailpants" Letter Writing Promotion

Apparently Viacom/Nickelodeon and the US Postal Service have teamed together in a kids letter writing campaign called "SpongeBob MailPants" with postage paid cards given away to kids at 25,000 post offices nationwide and even special "SpongeBob" mailboxes in select cities:

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/...ckelodeon01/

Here is a photo of one of the 30 mailboxes that received the special "wrap" to look like Spongebob.



Looks like postal stationary collectors will have a unique item to chase just before the holidays!

Michael Mules

Somewhere around 2000 our stamp subjects went from fair to bad and now to worse. I don't like the labels being created, I am not a Labelatelist, just my opinion. I guess that's why my collections all stop at the year 2000.

Art

I personally do not take issue with the USPS printing a stamped postcard and offering it free to children to teach them the benefits of letter writing. I also don't think it is necessarily a bad thing for the USPS to print a series of stamps that appeal to youth - even though this is not the case in the "Spongebob" promotion - as this is just a single stamped postcard.

If you would like to open up a discussion on the topic of stamp subjects on another thread, I would love to discuss.

Michael Mules

Stamp collectors should keep in mind that this promotion (and these SpongeBob postcards) are merely giveaways and are not considered postal stationery items, thus they will not be included in future stamp catalogs.

It appears they are merely preprinted with a "postage paid" indicia featuring SpongeBob. Although collectors are free to collect anything they want, these particular items would be more properly relegated to those interested in postal ephemera.

Here's a cute little video on the transformation of converting a blue US Mail Collection Box into the SpongeBob MailPants variety:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs8FR98TUKg

GOT ONE! A SpongeBob MailPants Postcard as shown below. Although it took a bit of trying (had to stop by 4 or 5 local post offices) before I found a postal clerk who knew what I was talking about. Also, they were stored in the Supervisor's Office in back; not on the front counter where they would be free for the taking.

Anyway, here's a close up of the postage paid indicia along with the postcard itself. At a rather large 8.5" long by 5.5" high, the postcard is oversized to the point that had it not been postage paid, it wouldn't qualify for a postcard rate (33c) stamp, but would, in fact, require a full first class stamp (46c) for mailing.

Congratulations, wt1, on finding the cards. Was the post office that had them larger than the others you tried? I checked with my local post office (the bigger of the two we have) and they didn't have any. I'm wondering if it's worth trying out smaller post offices in near-by towns.


Welcome to the group, pnc5. It's nice to have another Wisconsinite on board.

Found it at a relatively small town post office (pop. <8000) ... and they even have an old time wooden Mr. ZIP life size display sitting in their lobby!

I live in a neighboring town of 30,000+ and no SpongeBob postcards available here (at least not yet). It may very well be all post offices will have them eventually, it's just left up to whenever local post office officials take the time to put out the display and/or make known that they have them available to the public.

wt1, that's interesting. The population of my town is 63,000. It might be worth my time looking in smaller towns. Do you know if there is a list of towns that received the postcards?

On a side note, we did get the Harry Potter stamps here, which surprised me. They are all sold out now, though.

You should take a picture of Mr. ZIP. That is so neat that they still have him up.

Found one at my local PO. It was the yellow Sponge Bob one. Actually there are three designs. Crud, now I have to wander the streets looking for the other two. Nick pays the postage on these things. They were out on the counter at my PO. Must have been a lot of "kids" taking them, were only 5 left in the display box after I got a couple.
Even though these will not be in the Scotts catalogs of US postage, it would really be interesting to get a legit used copy for the completeness factor.
Oh well, what else do I have to do than bother people at the PO? Ha!

Interesting. One thing that I don't think has been published is exactly how many of these postcards were actually distributed nationwide. I did see one news article suggesting that they were distributed to "25,000 post offices" but since there are more than 31,000 USPS-operated post offices, we can only assume that the smaller post offices did not get any at all.

In fact, if the general distribution is that larger post offices are only getting a few (or even a few dozen) postcards that get taken as quickly as they are put out on display, this could become more of a collectible than we realize.

This is a photo of the display with 2 different postcards that were available. One pictures Spongebob and the other (posted elsewhere in the thread) has 7 characters from the show.



The card that pictures Spongebob alone has a different image for the Postage Paid indicia than the other card - see below.



Michael

I suppose it's not surprising that these SpongeBob postcards are already showing up for sale on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SPONGEBOB-S...em2ecc9eadb1

For the record, my PO is a VERY small one, tier 3 or something, out in the rural badlands. I chatted with the postmaster yesterday, and he said that is all they sent him, just the one design (SpongeBob) card. There are a bunch of small PO's out in my area, I was going to call around and see if any of them have the other designs and then venture over there to get the different ones this Saturday (if they have them). None of the PO's here have gotten the Harry Potter stamps yet, maybe Albuquerque main, but NOT going to deal with traffic to get one. There is always Kansas City....

I'm for anything that will get young people interested in stamps. I'll be curious to see if the program is deemed a success or not. I wish that this packet of cards etc. could have been sent to the grade school teachers.
Tom