Fox News - Americans will soon have a chance stay stuck on their favorite celebrities in the form of a U.S. postage stamp. The U.S. Postal Service is reportedly changing its longstanding policy to allow images of living famous people, like popular music artists and politicians, to appear on postal stamps. USPS executive Stephen Kearney told Reuters Monday that he hopes to have at least one "living subject" to have his or her first stamp by 2012. The old policy required that a person be dead for at least five years before they could be memorialized on postage, according to the New York Post. The newspaper reported that the change is part of an effort to increase postal stamp collecting and raise revenue. The USPS is reportedly encouraging people to mail their nominations in or post them on Facebook and Twitter. The USPS is also allowing ordinary Americans to upload photos on the USPS website to create postage stamps using their own pictures.
Finally! It's about time the US Post Office came to the realization that stamps have more value as a collectors item than for actually mailing things.
For years the post office has been going about this all wrong. Instead of catering to the 3% of people who still actively mail things and senior citizen collectors they should have been targeting the younger demographic. It just makes sense. Nobody mails stuff anymore, and if your main consumer group is 75+ years old, well you're going to run out of customers at a pretty alarming rate (due to natural attrition).
But if you go younger? Look at Pogs. Circle pieces of cardboard with a cartoon picture on them. Kids went ape shit for those things, myself included. Hell, I still have tubes of pogs and slammers in my parents attic, just in case that fad comes back in style. There's no reason stamps can't be the same way. You start slapping tamaguchi's and piccachu's on those things and kids will be lining up so fast to buy stamps you'll have to start opening kiosks at the mall.
My top suggestions:
1) Snooki - If only to see my grandfathers face when he adds Snooki to his collection, right next to Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Part horrified and part confused as to who the oompa-loompa is and why she's famous enough to be on a stamp. It would be priceless.
2) The Biebs - Justin Bieber drives young girls crazy. Young girls drive the economy. Ergo de facto, put Justin Bieber on as many products as possible and watch this country rise out of the recession, stamps included.
3) Lady Gaga - I just feel like the Gay and Lesbian market is probably a tough market to reach in the stamp game. These are sophisticated people, they're not mailing things. But they'll sure as hell support Gaga since she gets up on her soap box for them every chance she gets.
4) Barrack Obama - Just kidding, post office would probably have to shutter its doors forever.
