Stealth Kits Take Wing

While Testor is still in the hangar over whether to issue a model of the B-2 Stealth Bomber, a small importer in the City of Industry is selling out its own tiny version of the controversial $500-million aircraft.

Marco Polo Import Inc. has sold 22,000 bomber kits since June, according to Vice President Anthony Chin. The kit, which retails for $9.98, is manufactured by DML of Hong Kong. The kit also contains a model of the F-117A Stealth fighter as a bonus.

“Our kit hit the hobby stores in early June,” Chin said. “Our timing was perfect.”

Although Chin says Marco Polo may not match Testor’s $7-million sales for the Stealth fighter, the imported bombers have already broken Marco Polo’s sales records.

Icy Reception for Select Few

How does a newly imported vodka from Iceland get noticed in Los Angeles?

It gets into the right hands. Hands like those belonging to former President Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson and Steven Spielberg, to name a few.

Last week, special gift packages of the vodka--complete with special vodka glasses, caviar and even mother-of-pearl caviar spoons were delivered to the homes or offices of 23 of the Los Angeles area’s most familiar names. Behind this public relations campaign is Brown-Forman Corp., the U.S. marketing and distribution arm of Icy Vodka.

“We figured the best way to introduce Icy to the L.A. area was to have it seen among the right people in the right places,” said Melinda Lande, a spokeswoman for Icy. Each package cost the company about $30, she said.

Who was snubbed by Icy? Well, for one, Mayor Tom Bradley wasn’t on the list. But Merv Griffin, Michael D. Eisner and Zsa Zsa Gabor were. “Obviously, there are hundreds of people to choose from in L.A.,” Lande said. “We just made deliveries to people we felt entertain a lot.”

Dots That Go the Distance

U S Sprint, the nation’s third-largest long-distance carrier, is first when it comes to making life a bit simpler for the blind and sight-impaired. It offers the first Braille-coded card for charging calls.

Lorraine Rothenburg, a Sprint staffer in Sacramento, said a sales rep asked her last January if the company’s calling card was available in the Braille code of raised dot patterns. Dumbfounded that it wasn’t, she passed on the request to David Arthur, who supervises distribution of Sprint’s “Foncards.”

The next half year was spent developing computer software to analyze customer account numbers and convert them into dots. Students at the Kansas State School for the Visually Handicapped tested the prototypes, and Sprint incorporated their suggestions into the new “Braille Foncard,” available without charge.

PUC’s Inclusive Amendment

When the California Legislature required the state’s major public utilities to set goals to increase buying of supplies and services from firms owned by women and minorities, the law seemed to the Public Utilities Commission to have, by inadvertence, excluded a prime minority group: minority women.

“Without a specific goal for minority women, minority women could easily fall outside the focus of programs addressing either category (women- or minority-owned business),” the PUC noted last week. “Theoretically, the minority goal could be met entirely by minority men-owned businesses, and the women goals by non-minority women-owned business.”

So the PUC amended its General Order 156, which governs the purchasing program, to require utilities to set targets for purchases from minority women-owned businesses and warned that such contracts “can be counted toward either the minority-owned or women-owned categories, but not toward both.”