The Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph reported a huge throng of people came to U.S. Cellular Coliseum to see the last stop Saturday of the 50-city tour of life-size characters from the Disney-Pixar “Cars” movie.
Organizers were expecting 5,000 people over a six-hour span. But they surpassed it within the first hour.
Bloomington’s reaction is typical of the other 49 towns on the tour’s four-month route, said Shawn Doering of Orlando, Fla. He works for Becker Group, a marketing company promoting the tour.
At times, he pulled his semi (which hauls the replica cars) into rest areas when he saw carloads of families who wanted to get a better look. At Battle Creek, Mich., “about 150 stopped in an hour,” he said.
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Bloomington was the last stop on the tour, but Doering thinks the tour may resume because it’s proved so popular. The cars also will be shown in Chicago during State Farm conventions later this month.
I noticed a table in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal showing recently released movies, ranked by last weekend’s box-office take.
“Cars” was about halfway down the list for last weekend, but it’s ticket sales to date are listed as $219 million. Not counting toys, not counting DVD sales, not counting foreign ticket sales.
Yesterday at the NAPA (car parts) store on 66, in Grants, NM, (just recovering from “Fire and Ice”) I picked up a Valvoline coupon good for a “free” Cars baseball cap…. a very cool look to it, too.
“Legs”, indeed!