July 16, 2012: "Am Not!"

Author:
M. Agre

Concept:
Well, this time we were trying to find some sort of new way to highlight the frankly ridiculous (though always popular) variety name of this lovely gem copper when all of a sudden my wife shouted out the ubiquitous "Am Not!" line used as a witty retort by school children.

Just as Ms. Liberty might have reacted had she known that some later-19th century numismatic scholar decided she looked like a ‘Booby Head’ (i.e. an awkward or foolish person).

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
There were a few this week, starting with "Sometimes referred to as the Blue-Footed Tropical Seabird Head Cent.", a play on the name Booby for seabirds in the genus Sula. That however, was rejected as both too silly, and too long.

Which led us to the customer-suggested, multi-layered "One of Seven Type Coins you Cannot Show on Television.", playing up a naughty angle that doesn’t actually exist here coupled with a classic George Carlin routine.

Alas, while we thought that was very clever, we decided it was simply too risque for two guys advertising a coin in a newspaper.

So we went with the relatively tame version in our final ad.