New Era's "Local Market" hats

[Moose Milligan]

Not sure if anyone saw this yesterday.  New Era (who I hate for having to have their logo emblazoned on the side of every MLB hat) released these terrible "Local Market" hats.  Basically they were standard on-field MLB hats with the team logo but littered with other things that are special local to the area such as area codes, popular food local to the city, buildings, or anything else that the city is known for.  For example, the Orioles hat had 410, 443, a crab and Edgar Allen Poe and some other stuff in addition to the regular cartoon bird.  

 

The Braves hat apparently had a UFO on it and no one knows why.  Some people were saying it was for ATLiens, the Outkast album.  Tampa Bay had their area codes but oddly enough not the area code for where their stadium is located.

Someone at New Era had to have lost their job over this, they were terrible. They didn't last online for even a day before people roasted them, New Era ended up pulling them down.

https://sports.yahoo.com/new-era-mlb-local-market-caps-mlb-twitter-001629228.html

[ChrisP]

The Dodgers hat made me laugh/cringe. They had like 16 zip codes. 

[DrungoHazewood]

Clearly targeted at a demographic that's different from 99.99% of baseball fans.  Also perhaps humans in general. 

That was probably the point.  Someone in MLB's front office suggested that New Era make some hats that will appeal to the youths, maybe even those urban kids that listen to that rap music. Need more of them as baseball fans.

[Redskins Rick]

I do not like these new era hats, sam I am.

 

 

[SteveA]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Clearly targeted at a demographic that's different from 99.99% of baseball fans.  Also perhaps humans in general. 

That was probably the point.  Someone in MLB's front office suggested that New Era make some hats that will appeal to the youths, maybe even those urban kids that listen to that rap music. Need more of them as baseball fans.

It's amusing.   Yes, there are some areas where certain young people have self-labelled their regional pride using their area code, such as The 757.

But to go from that fact to somehow thinking that putting 6 area codes lined up in two columns on a hat to represent a region might resonate with people is just kind of bizarre.

[Sports Guy]

Really really dumb

[O's84]

Now that's the kind of of thing that would've lured Teixeira to Baltimore!