Hillary Gets Cranky

Love was in the air yesterday as Hillary Clinton celebrated Valentine’s Day aboard her plane, serving a tray of chocolate to the press corps and even apologizing to reporters’ girlfriends for keeping their beaus away on a holiday. We know we can be cynical sometimes, but we have to admit that’s really quite charming. Then again, being the greedy, semi-dieting people that we are, we had to wonder: Really, just sweets? Why no gifts? (Okay, ethics stuff, but bear with us.) As it turns out, the perfect present for the Clinton crew doesn’t come out till March. “Last year, when the election started to get interesting, we just thought, ‘That’s it! Hillary Clinton!’” says Heather Courtney, the co-owner of Pop Art Creations in California and the co-creator of the “Hillary-in-the-Box.”

A pop-up toy featuring a grinning Clinton, it plays “Hail to the Chief” and sports side panels featuring the candidate as the Statue of Liberty and as a national monument. And Hillary is the only candidate that Pop Art has put in a box. “We thought her to be the most well known of all the candidates, and that she could sell a lot of boxes with her history-making candidacy,” Courtney says. “She was the front-runner when the idea surfaced. Being a small company, we knew we could only really afford to pick one candidate and give it all we had.” Interesting! Well, candidates talk a lot about how they’ll help the small-business owner, so how will recent developments along the campaign trail affect this young company in particular? Is there a Barack-in-the-Box in the works, you know, just in case? “For now, we’re sticking with Hillary,” says Courtney, acknowledging that she’d consider expanding the line. Anything’s possible, she says, but at the moment, that’s the extent of the planning. “We are not terribly interested in doing a McCain jack.” —Lori Fradkin

Hillary-in-the-Box [Official site]