Archie McPhee’s Bacon Boutique

We were on the Food Network last night! It was an episode of Unwrapped that focussed on, what else, Bacon! We got an interesting peek into their production process.

They filmed at our store over a year before the segment was shown on TV. If you look at the picture of the two adorable customers above, you’ll notice Bacon Pennants behind them which have been discontinued. Not only that, but the whole store moved from Ballard to Wallingford! You know, unimportant details like that.

They filmed for four hours to get the three minutes they ended up using. Shana’s greatest fear was realized. They used footage of her flossing with Bacon Floss in the finished story. I had never thought about it, but I guess it is unglamorous to floss on TV.

As soon as they post the show, we’ll link to it. In the meantime, if you are a new customer just click here to make all your bacon dreams come true!

THIS VAN IS ROCKIN'!

Rockin' some new decals, that is! Try not to get in an accident when you see the giant, terrifying Finger Monsters cruising by on the freeway!

McPHEE ON TV

Archie McPhee's new Wallingford store will be featured on KING 5's Evening Magazine (sans John Curley) on Thursday, June 6th at 7 pm. Be sure to tune in!

THE LAST RUBBER CHICKEN IN BALLARD

Reposted from Slightly Less Disappointing Blog:

After 10-1/2 years, at 3:37 p.m., on May 31, 2009, the last Rubber Chicken at the Ballard Archie McPhee store was photographed, tagged and taken away.

The floors were swept, the cornucopia of stuff hanging from the ceiling taken down and the giant devil head transported eastward in the back of a pickup truck beneath strangely sunny skies.

The Roman gladiator, our guardian, was carefully moved and the private museum of bad art (paintings of big-eyed children and garage sale macrame) that decorated the employee bathroom was dismantled and put in storage, pending final negotiations for transfer to the Smithsonian.

Computers unplugged, phones disconnected and final readings for power, gas and water were made.

At 3:37 p.m. I said, “Shut her down, Shana.” Click, click, click, went the lights for the last time. And it was done. Darkness comes to Ballard. And we are gone.

Thanks to all our loyal friends and fans and the Jacobsen family, for letting us be our eccentric selves on the west end of NW Market St. the past 10-1/2 years — seven days a week, seeing people come in grumpy or stressed and seeing most people leave happy. It is what we do here, our simple purpose in a crazy world.

Thanks to all for spending some of your hard earned money with us, for getting our jokes and giving us meaning in our lives!

Now it’s on to Wallingford and a new saga starting at 9 a.m. Monday morning!

Mark

FRESH PAINT

We've given our website a fresh coat of paint to match our new store which opens in Wallingford on Monday, June 1st (in case you haven't heard)!

VIDEO OF STAFF'S FAVORITE BALLARD MEMORIES

The Ballard News-Tribune did a video interview on Archie McPhee's final month in Ballard and asked the store staff what their favorite Ballard memories were.

Click here to watch the video.

WALLINGFORD STORE TAKING SHAPE!

The new building looks more and more like the future home of Archie McPhee with each passing day. Gone is the drab, oppressive grey liquor store. The corner of 45th and Stone Way is turning into a wonderfully radiant red and yellow eyesore. The new awning just went up complete with a delightful fez-wearing monkey and an endorsement by the Council of Monsters. Meanwhile the interior is looking like a bowl of rainbow sherbet.

Click here for more pics of the new store!

As the new location keeps getting better and better, our soon-to-be former home in Ballard is clearing out. We're taking down all the treasures that have been hanging on the walls and ceilings for the past 10 years and it's starting to look pretty cavernous in here.

While everyone is focused on moving preparations, we also got in a handful of delightful new items recently - including temporary knuckle tattoos, mirror decals to make your reflection wear silly facial hair, glasses, or even a monocle, ice molds shaped like guitars, elegant silver roman numeral and candelabra birthday candles, a spoon with a spring handle for launching your food, and a set of wee hors d'œuvre plates with rings on the underside so you can wear them on your finger and keep a hand free at parties. Bon appetit!

McPHEE IN THE MEDIA

On Wednesday, April 1st, KING5's Evening Magazine ran a great story about Archie McPhee and April Fool's Day! It featured this year's April Fools products on mcphee.com as well as some of the previous year's shenanigans. Click here to watch the video.

My Ballard blog also interviewed Shana about Archie's upcoming move to our new location in Wallingford. Read the entire article here.

NUNS HAVING FUN

We all know that over the years Archie McPhee has made and sold a variety of products that involve nuns. The list includes punching puppets, snack boxes, salt & pepper shakers, lawn ornaments, wind-up sparking nuns (aka Nunzilla), finger puppets, soap, snow globes, squeaking nuns, a dashboard nun on a spring, a bottle opener, a candle and the Nun Chuck.

What you may not know is that over the years Archie McPhee has been visited by real life nuns who, without fail, always love our nun products. For years a pair of nuns always set up a table of religious merchandise at the annual Ballard Seafood Fest. These particular nuns wore light blue habits and had painted one of our yard nuns to match! This little blue nun always received prominent placement on their merch table. I loved watching them walk back to their car proudly carrying a mini version of themselves along with them.

Well, last Sunday there were a couple young nuns browsing around the store. At one point I noticed them closely inspecting all of our saints. Later on one of them approached me at the cash register. She was holding a Tub o’ Nuns and had a wide smile on her face. She told me that she thought the wee nuns were wonderful and really liked the Nun Chuck as well. So our happy nun record remains unsullied, but that’s not what really makes the evening noteworthy. Shortly after the nuns had made their purchases and left, I was approached by a gentleman with a worried expression on his face who asked me if I had noticed that there were two nuns in the store. He was clearly alarmed so I told him that I had indeed noticed them and that one of them had even come up to express her delight about the Nun Chuck. He was shocked. He proceeded to tell me that while he was shopping around the store he came across the flingers and catapults and that the Nun Chuck in particular caught his eye. But right before he reached up to grab one he noticed the two nuns beside him inspecting the very same item. It completely spooked him and made him feel so guilty that he decided not to purchase it.

RECENT PRODUCT SIGHTINGS

Jeff spotted our Jesus bobblehead prominently featured in a recent episode of Weeds on HBO. Not only was it clearly in sight, but it was covertly being used by characters as a hidden camera in a car. Sneaky Jesus! Jackie also spotted one of our original style Pirate Lunchboxes in the possession of a female character in the movie Get Shorty.

BLOOD DRIVE

Our Halloween Blood Drive was on Friday, October 24th, but did you know that this year (and for the last several years, in fact) we’ve gotten some extra special promotional help from a rather unexpected source? Each year lately there seems to be a new SAW movie coming out, full of extra super violent gory gore. Well when the SAW people are preparing their promotional posters they find out if there are any blood drives happening in town on movie release day and advertise it on their movie posters. So our Halloween blood drive receives some welcome extra attention thanks to one of the goriest movie franchises currently in business today!

GOBS OF NEW STUFF!

Just sit back and try to picture these modern marvels: a cooking timer that looks just like a classic metal alarm clock, mini oil cans reminiscent of a certain character from The Wizard of Oz, a truly, if unintentionally, creepy make your own doll kit, the one and only Spider of Doom, stretchy sling-able fast food food fight food for all your food fighting needs, a robot bubbler, stretchy gems, nostalgia books listing all sorts of noteworthy tidbits that took place within a selection of years from the forties into the seventies. Maybe we have your birth year among them! But that’s not all! We’ve also got classic pin-up girl coffee mugs and mirrors, a Spiderman shower curtain, Mad Libs Junior in prehistoric and candy land flavors, fabulous Catwoman and Spiderman lined journals, Sugar Daddy, Dots, and Blow Pop logo beach towels, and, last but not least, an irresistibly comfy fleece blanket with an enormous blue and purple portrait of the one and only Elvis Presley on it. But wait! That’s still not all. This is just a sampling of the wondrous new products gracing the shelves of Archie McPhee. To get the complete experience you really must head on over and check it all out in person.

OUR NEW LOCATION!

As you may know by now, Archie McPhee will be moving early next year. Although we are sad to leave Ballard, we are also excited by the possibilities of a new location. So, where are we moving? (Drum roll please) WALLINGFORD! That's right, our new location will be in Wallingford on Stone Way. You may remember we were on Stone Way in the '80s and '90s, so this completes the circle and brings us back to Stone Way in a new location. Sign up for our EMAIL NEWSLETTER and we will keep you up to date with the latest info, so stay tuned!

Thanks to Ballard and our landlord for 10 great years at this location!

Don't forget to visit us during our last Halloween and Christmas season in Ballard!

MORE HALLOWEEN STUFF!

It's official... we have more awesome Halloween merchandise this year than ever before. Nearly an entire quarter of the store is full of just about everything you need to concoct a fabulous Halloween costume. We've got Star Wars character masks, Batman and Joker masks, V for Vendetta masks, animal masks, beaks, snouts, ears, and tails, hats, hats and more hats, wigs aplenty, boas, gloves, tights, sunglasses, eyelashes, make-up, wounds, monster masks, monster hand gloves, skeleton hand gloves, nun, doctor, clown, Superman, Wizard of Oz and Elvis costume accessories, spray-on hair color, swords, knives and other cutlery, devil horns and tails, ears, teeth, noses, feet, beards, wings, bags of spider webbing and so much more! I havent even touched on all of the spooky decorations and housewares yet. You're kidding yourself if you think you dont need to check this out. We'll be waiting.

NEW HALLOWEEN STUFF AND CELEBRITY SIGHTING

New stuff! New stuff! New stuff! We’ve practically got new stuff coming out our ears. Our Halloween section is turning out to be larger than ever before. More masks, more wigs, more makeup, more more more! Jackie and Steve, our resident merchandizing mavens, have been very busy making room for all of it. Unicorn horns! Crazy wigs! Makeup! Colorful hair goo! Capes! Fake blood! Fake gory skin! Oh my! New this year we have fantastic Princess Leia hair buns worn like earmuffs and sunglasses that spell out the word cool.

---COOL---

Can you picture it?

We had an unexpected celebrity visitor last week. Blayne from Project Runway was in the store, not once, but twice. He revealed himself to be an Archie McPhee regular and bought Pop Rocks and a bunch of bunny ears. Archielicious!

TATTOOS FOR FOOD LOVERS

Our set of Temporary Tattoos for Food Lovers was recently featured in the Seattle Times and ever since people have been coming in and asking for them. Seattle’s foodies are proud of their passion and rightly so!

AUGUST'S NEW STUFF!

August has arrived! What does that mean here at Archie McPhee? It means that the first of the Halloween items are starting to arrive. Have you begun scheming about costumes yet? We have! The very first Halloween items of the season this year are 4 fabulous wigs. First up is a curly, shoulder-length brown number suitable for all the aspiring Mojo Riders out there. Then there is a delightful blonde Swiss Miss-esque wig with two long braids down either side. Next up is a black wig completely bound up in fat pink curlers and covered with a black hair net for those folks going after an Elizabeth Taylor getting ready for night out on the town sort of look. And, last but not least, we have a truly dazzling, if not outright shocking, rainbow colored wig that looks exactly like the hair on the heads of those little troll dolls that were all the rage in the sixties – otherwise known as the Technicolor dream wig. Come on over and check them out! Stay tuned, this is just the tip of the Halloween iceberg.

SEATTLE WEEKLY'S BEST OF SEATTLE

Archie McPhee was listed in the Seattle Weekly's Best of Seattle's Reader's Poll as "Best Spot for Knickknacks and Kitschy Weirdness."