San Diego Is In for Super Bowl Blitz of Goodies

The nonprofit San Diego Super Bowl Task Force Inc. is gearing up for the “Super Bowling” of San Diego. For $94.90 (wholesale) you can buy nearly two dozen products--including T-shirts, shot glasses, visors, hats and bumper stickers--bearing the task force’s stylized logo.

The logo, a trademark of the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force and the National Football League, has already popped up near cash registers at restaurants and hotels. Merchandise bearing the logo will provide a decorative backdrop for Charger officials during today’s NFL draft proceedings at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Most of the county’s 1,100 tourist and curio outlets will offer Super Bowl merchandise, according to product distributors. A Horton Plaza cart operator began selling merchandise earlier this month, and Nordstrom and Woolworth will begin selling “Super” merchandise later this week.

The Kearny Mesa Rotary Club is selling Super Bowl items as its major fund-raising event. During coming months, San Diego Transit Corp. bus drivers, Pepsi-Cola route people and Mesa Distributing drivers will incorporate the logos into their uniforms.

The Super Bowl Task Force, which was formed to attract Super Bowl XXII and which now operates as the city’s liaison with the NFL, is acting as host for the Jan. 31, 1988, game.

The group hopes to gain about $125,000 from the sale of merchandise, task force spokesman Les Land said. The task force will receive about 25% of the wholesale cost of items.

“This is the first year that a host city is merchandising product in this way,” according to Bob Hood, owner of Gateway Promotions, a San Diego-based promotional and marketing company that has contracted with the task force to handle merchandising.

If you don’t find what you like, just wait a few months. The regular wave of generic Super Bowl merchandise--bearing the NFL’s Super Bowl design--will crash down on San Diego a few weeks before the Jan. 31 kickoff.