KC-Based Greeting Card Company Hones Its Edge With Celebrity Lineup

August 24, 2007

Paris Hilton and Martha Stewart go to jail. Britney Spears steps out of a car wearing no underwear.

And we’re not supposed to make fun?

Hallmark decided it can’t ignore such great material. So this summer it has taken edgy aim at the likes of Hilton, Donald Trump and others on new celebrity-oriented Shoebox cards.

And when we say edgy, we mean over-the-edgy.

Let’s just say that there are a handful of words we thought we’d never see on a Hallmark card. “Skank” probably would have been near the top.

“New! Paris Hilton Perfumes!” screams the cover of one new card.

Three perfume bottles are pictured: “Daddy’s Money,” “Vodka” — and “Skank.”

The punch line inside? “It’s your birthday. Do I smell a party?”

“We look constantly at new ways to connect people,” said Tina Neidlein, senior lead writer for Hallmark. “And with humor, one really common thing we have to make fun of is celebrities.”

And why not? It’s not like “you can gossip about your co-workers and your friends,” she said.

(Well, we can, but we shouldn’t.)

Some stars, it appears, are riper for the teasing. One card names Donald Trump “Conservationist of the Year” — for releasing his hair back into the wild.

When the Hallmark crew heard that Hilton was going to jail?

“That was one of those days we went, ‘Yes! This is going to be an easy day,’ ” Neidlein said.

To stay fresh, she and her fellow writers have to “get that gut feeling that it’s going to be funny in a month or two months.”

Which may be one reason that, honestly, they are so-oooo over Paris.

So who else is fair game for the Shoebox gang? Tom Cruise and Scientology? Britney in rehab?

“There is a fine, a fine line,” Neidlein said. “We don’t want to go after anyone who’s down and out. We’re not going to make fun of Britney in rehab. It gets to a point where it’s mean.”

Some of the cards depict famous folks as paper dolls, outfitting them with “star” accessories. The “Fun with Tiger Woods” doll, for instance, comes with keys to “the Buick he pretends to drive.”

He also has “keys to sports car he really drives.”

Simon Cowell?

He comes with 365 black T-shirts.

Martha Stewart has a bag of fan mail “from the ladies back at the joint.”

Ooh, ooh. Can we try?

Here’s FYI’s “Fun with Mark Funkhouser” paper doll.

Are we hired, Hallmark?

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The Mark Funkhouser paper doll comes with:

An expired license plate.

A T-shirt that says: “I got elected mayor and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.”

A bodyguard for town hall meetings.

A self-help book titled: How To Do 350 Things Well.

A cell phone with AAA on speed dial.

Credit card to “Wilt Chamberlain’s Big and Tall Shop.”

An Excalibur-like sword for fending off the “forces of evil.”