Richard Chin, of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is credited with being the person who introduced Peeps diorama contests, in 2004. The newspaper needed a filler column and, while he’d heard of many other things being done to peeps, he’d never heard of a diorama contest with them.
It may have been the first such contest, but it certainly seems like they’ve been around for longer than fifteen years. Every year, people attempt to outdo each other for originality, size, and complexity of their Peeps dioramas, and in so doing they produce a little bit of humor and occasionally even awe for their viewers.
This year is no exception. Peeps may be a bit of a latecomer to the traditional Easter basket when compared to chocolate bunnies and jellybeans, but their photogenic nature has given them a whole life outside of the green plastic grass that other modern additions like Cadbury creme eggs and Reese’s eggs can’t begin to duplicate. Here are some examples from Twitter to brighten your early morning:
First, the winners of the Washington City Paper contest, which stepped in when the Washington Post retired their competition.
The top prize went to the Aretha entry:
Then for the literary, we have Goodnight, Peep
Others went big for their displays.
And, because everything’s political these days, some of the Peeps displays have political agendas. But even as communists – sorry, “democratic socialists”, anti-Semites and white nationalists have become mainstreamed by various parties, there’s still one group that gets pretty close to universal disdain. The Owl tries to stay away from politics, but this one’s not especially controversial, except for people who truly hate puns…
Now, for an Easter special question of the night. My wife, who contributes here as MsMaryLou, has assembled a mass of Peeps to use in recreating a scene from one of her favorite movies. The scene will be forwarded to the director as a birthday surprise. With that in mind… from what movie would you most like to see a Peeps scene constructed?
Please be encouraged to make multiple suggestions, and to signal agreement with others’ choices. She’s going to have Peeps left over, so the odds of the movie with the most votes getting a diorama scene is fairly high.
