What’s with this Idaho Potato Drop?

Editor’s note: This column has been updated to make it clear that the Idaho Potato Drop is put on by a small, independent organization and not by the Idaho Potato Commission.

Boise did it again. It ushered in the New Year with the Idaho Potato Drop in front of the State Capitol. It’s a decided contrast to the gleaming silver ball of geodesic design dropped at Times Square. But let’s not knock the potato, at least as I think about it on my plate. Is there anything more appetizing than a loaded baked potato sitting on the plate next to a nice, big, juicy steak?

On the other hand, is there anything less appetizing than the Pillsbury Doughboy’s potato dropped on Boise’s New Year’s Eve celebration? No offense to all those potato farmers out there, but it will never win the Miss Vegetable contest for its beauty and style. In fact, there’s that most indelicate problem with the Idaho Potato Drop and that’s what else its shape and color might suggest. Best to leave that thought right there.

In fact, the potato is not even at the top of the Idaho Department of Agriculture’s list of commodities with the most value. It ranks third behind milk and cattle. Boise could drop a replica of a gargantuan dairy cow in front of the state Capitol.

Why does Boise pay homage to the potato at New Year’s anyway, not to mention its namesake, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl? It may be on the license plate, but couldn’t we find something to drop on New Year’s Eve other than the overgrown likeness of a root vegetable grown in potato fields miles from Boise. Hats off to the powerful and influential Potato Commission that really knows how to market its product, but how about a Drop more akin to Boise’s reputation as a go-to city? Although, according to that test, the dairy cow gets ruled out, as well. (To be clear, the Idaho Potato Drop is put on by a small, independent group, not the Idaho Potato Commission. The commission is a sponsor and hosting partner.)

If not the potato or the dairy cow, then what? Apparently, Boise has this compelling need to drop something on New Year’s Eve. This year, Boise could have dropped leaflets of renditions of the expensive new library design, an F-35 supersonic jet and a baseball stadium — three things dropped as a result of the recent Boise election. But let’s not inject politics into the art of The Drop, especially in front of the Capitol where statesmanship reigns and politics rarely rears its ugly head.

How about dropping a monstrous replica of an HP printer — the Idaho HP Printer Drop? You can’t swing a dead cat in Boise without hitting someone who works for a firm that spun off of HP or whose entrepreneurial or technical expertise can be traced back to HP. (No cats were injured or killed in the construction of that sentence.) It is hard to imagine a software engineering economy in this Valley without former HP talent building new firms, adding workforce opportunities and branding our tech economy as a satellite of Silicon Valley.

What about Micron, a start-up planted right here in Boise by the Parkinson brothers? The Idaho Memory Chip Drop! After all, Micron has not only been a major employer in Idaho and Boise for years, but the Micron Foundation has played a major role in helping higher education compensate for the lack of state funding.

Where do we go from here? How about The Great Stethoscope Drop, highlighting the Mountain States Tumor Institute’s fight against cancer, distinguishing its work way above what you would expect to find in a mid-sized city. That Drop could also showcase our high-quality medical professionals across the Valley you usually find in larger cities.

How could Boise have overlooked The Great Tractor Drop? Simplot and JUMP have so many of the late J.R. Simplot’s tractors taking up space on its downtown campus. Surely, they could spare one, to be dropped on a truck bed filled with one of its fertilizers so no harm is done to the tractor. Perfectly timed and placed since it won’t be too long, and legislators at the Capitol will be knee-deep in that stuff anyway.

Food, that’s it, the grocery business. The Great Shopping Cart Drop is a winner. Once it was Albertsons and Winco, but Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s moved to town recently. Just look at what Whole Foods has done for Boise and, no, not the store’s connection to local growers. It’s the message it sent to Albertsons that something cooler than any one of Joe’s stores had gone in down the street from its store at Broadway and Beacon. Not to be outdone, it built one bigger and better. That’ll teach you, Amazon, maybe you should stick to non-perishables!

The Great Shopping Cart Drop would also remind us of the Albertson family’s J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, that has played a key role in sparking educational reforms in Idaho schools.

Enough is enough! There are way too many candidates out there to replace the Idaho Potato Drop and we haven’t even considered the 16 Ounce Beer Drop celebrating Boise’s very tasty craft breweries having craft brewery babies all over Boise.

It’s time for your thoughts on a likely successor to the Idaho Potato Drop. And just in case the Potato Commission flexes its spud muscles and the Potato wins out, let’s at least do something about that color brown. A blue and orange potato makes some sense.

This story was originally published January 12, 2020 at 8:00 AM.