I have been waiting for MONTHS to show you my amazing new custom Minnie ears, and the day has finally come! After all, it’s Halloween season, and what could be more appropriate than discussion of my latest race costume?
Remember when I ran into Katie of Riverbend Ear Design while in line for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure? She makes detachable ears that can be swapped off and onto one headband; very clever and versatile. Her husband happened to mention that she’ll do customs for a fee, and darned if I didn’t have a commission idea two days later.
On my last day of that trip, I took in the Vacation Fun movie again just to get away from the Studios crowds. For the uninitiated, Vacation Fun is an assembly of clips from the modern Mickey cartoons, and includes – wait for it – a good portion of the Potatoland short. Should we just watch it real quick? Let’s just watch it real quick:
Anyway, while packing in Vacation Fun, Mickey ends up in a pile of Potatoland merch, including an ear hat. The gears started turning…
MY POTATOLAND MINNIE EARS
To make an already long story slightly shorter, Katie made me my own special Potatoland ears! She was able to brilliantly synthesize my ideas into the real thing, and I am absolutely in love with them. Look!
The individual parts consist of two potato ears plus the Potatoland sign attachment, which all slide into place on the designated headband areas. Like this:
Convenient for packing, plus I can swap out ears if I want to get more. I’m not saying I’m chucking my entire Disney-produced ear collection (perish the thought!), but it’s nice to have options, no?
Okay, obviously these are AMAZING and I will be building my entire Wine & Dine Half Marathon race costume around them. Wanna see the full outfit? I’ll drop my Flat Runner on Instagram the right before the race. I know, I know; such a tease. But, uh, I’m not done assembling it, so there you are. We’ll all be surprised on race day! (I will demonstrate how they look when worn next week as part of my trip wardrobe post, so stay tuned for that.)
GET YOUR OWN CUSTOM EARS
I would of course be remiss if I didn’t drop the info on how you, yourself, can get custom ears made by Riverbend Ear Design. It takes a little while to work your way from concept to design to prototype, so keep that in mind for any hard trip/race dates, but if you’ve got the time and the cash I’d say it’s well worth it! (And just to be clear, this is not a marketing plug – I paid for my ears outright.)
Katie hasn’t put together a commission page on her site yet, but she said it was 100% okay for me to tell you all she does them! You can email her at riverbendears@gmail.com with your custom ear idea and she’ll get back to you with her thoughts and a price quote. Shipping is free, which is awesome.
Alternatively, if you like the whole swappable ear concept but can’t or don’t want to go custom, there’s also a whole slew of pre-made designs ready to ship.
None of them are quite like mine, though. Mine are unique to America’s Potatoland!
Don’t forget, you can follow FRoA on Twitter @fairestrunofall and on Instagram @fairestrunofall. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or email fairestrunofall@gmail.com. See ya real soon!