STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
A Famous Idaho Potato made its debut at the Sun Valley Film Festival Thursday.
The six-ton concrete spud made the journey from Idaho’s capital city to help celebrate the One Potato Short Screenplay Competition held Thursday evening at the nexStage Theatre.
Its presence on the streets around the nexStage Theatre brought traffic to a halt as motorists jumped out of their cars to take pictures.
The 28-foot long, 12-foot wide and 11.5-foot tall spud was sculpted by a husband-wife team from Weiser to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Idaho Potato Commission.
It was designed to truck around the country for one year. But it proved such a hit it kept going, said Larry Bathe, who drives the 48-foot-long Big Idaho Potato Truck.
The No. 1 comment its handlers hear is: “Is it real?”
That’s a testament to the sculptors, who took nearly a year to build it, Bathe said.
The no. 2 question handlers get is: “How did you get it out of the ground?”
“All the comments we receive are positive,” Bathe added.
The potato weighs 12,130 pounds—equal to 32,346 medium-sized Idaho potatoes. That’s 1,102 times heavier than the largest potato ever grown, which weighed in at 11 pounds.
The potato will be parked outside Albertsons today and Saturday, March 5, in an attempt to remind grocery shoppers of the health benefits of potatoes.
Representatives will offer such games as Spud Hole for children from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
DID YOU KNOW?
It would take more than 10,000 years to grow a real potato this large.
This potato would take two years and nine months to bake, if real.
A potato this size would make 1.4 million French fries.
It would make 30,325 servings of mashed potatoes.