SpongeBob SquarePants would, in theory, have little use for stamps. They would get soggy in that pineapple under the sea.
Neither would Patrick Star (no fingers on the ends of those arms), Mr. Crabs (claws) or Squidward Tentacles (his name says it all). One could argue that even the fans of “SpongeBob SquarePants” wouldn’t have much use for stamps. That crowd doesn’t go in for snail mail — although Gary the Snail might.
Nevertheless, the whole gang from Nickelodeon’s long-running animated show — even Sandy Cheeks, the squirrel in the diving suit — is featured on a new set of commemorative Forever stamps, according to the U.S. Postal Service.
But the point isn’t to use them but to collect them, and perhaps look at the yellow, smiling, gap-toothed face of SpongeBob when you need a quick pick-me-up.
If you happen to be in New York City’s Times Square on Aug. 1 from 8 to 10 a.m. Eastern, you can get your hands on the new stamps. The event is free, but the stamps you’ll have to pay for. (A sheet of 16 will cost you $12.48. They’re 78 cents apiece.)
That’s 40 cents more than each stamp would have cost when “SpongeBob” premiered 26 years ago.
The USPS art director, Greg Breeding, designed the stamps with Nickelodeon artwork to guide him, according to the Postal Service. He’ll be on hand for autographs.
The world of Bikini Bottom was introduced in May 1999, and the show began a full run two months later. Creator Stephen Hillenburg, who died in 2018 at age 57 after battling Lou Gehrig’s disease, was — appropriately — a teacher of marine biology in Southern California before switching to animation. He created colorful teaching tools as well as wrote and illustrated stories with the characters who came to populate the show, as The Times wrote in Hillenburg’s obituary.
To set the record straight, stamps have, in fact, been used in Bikini Bottom.
One example: In the Season 13 episode “Patrick the Mailman,” the starfish delivers a letter to SpongeBob and asks him, “Do you know where this Spon-gee-Boob Squir-pa-Nants lives?” He then makes SpongeBob his postal pal.
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