Opinion: Obama hot sauce, action figures turn up the heat in D.C.

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

WASHINGTON -- On a frigid day, John Sherman had the hottest inauguration souvenir: Barack Obama Hot Sauce.

‘Bring change to your dinner table,’ said Sherman, 44, a filmmaker from Houston who dabbles in hot sauce.

He’s sold his BJ’s Hot Sauce in Houston stores for 15 years. But he took his recipe on the road, slapping a red-white-and-blue label with Obama’s picture on bottles of the orange sauce and driving to Washington. He sold dozens of bottles at gas stations along the way before setting up Thursday a few blocks from the National Mall. All told, he had sold 700 $5 bottles of the sauce through this afternoon.

‘It tastes good, and I thought people would get a kick out of it,’ said Sherman, who noted that some inauguration-goers simply took a picture of the bottle without buying it. He didn’t think it was disrespectful to use Obama’s popularity to hawk his sauce.

‘It really shows the admiration for the man,’ Sherman said.

Lance Hill, 49, of Brooklyn, N.Y., had more than admiration for Obama. He was promoting him as an action figure.

‘Keep it in the original box,’ he told people as he sold the plastic Obama dolls in boxes stamped with the line: ‘An action figure we can believe in.’ The action figures, which feature Obama in a black suit with blue tie and slightly oversized ears, were made by Jailbreak Toys of Plainview, N.Y.

When Hill, who cleans New York City subway cars, saw the owner of the company on TV recently, he decided the action figures would be a hit in Washington. He spent three days in a Baltimore motel, commuting to Washington to join the hordes of street vendors looking to help people commemorate Obama’s historic occasion with souvenirs. He esimated he sold 500.

‘What do they do?’ one man asked as Hill stood on a street corner near the Mall with a large black duffel bag filled with dozens of Obama action figures he was selling for half-price — $10 — after the inauguration.

‘They move around and do karate, guy,’ Hill said.

Of course, only if you take it out of the box first.

-- Jim Puzzanghera

Come back often for coverage of the Obama inauguration and the new administration. Register here for cellphone alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we’re now on Amazon’s Kindle as well