April 12, 2010: "Wardrobe Malfunction"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
As always, our goal was to highlight the most interesting or compelling feature of the coin shown in our ad, which in this case was undeniably Ms. Liberty’s controversial, revealing and short-lived attire (or lack thereof).

And while we’re not real proud of the fact that the caption is based on a lame Super Bowl halftime bit gone wrong, we have to admit that the phrase it coined (no pun intended) is now part of the lexicon, seemed to describe the situation aptly, and was the sort of thing we thought might get noticed in the typically dry sea of ads in an average numismatic publication.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
Earlier iterations of this ad took the halftime gag and ran even further with it, like this: “Mint Director Timberlake would later claim that this was simply a wardrobe malfunction.”

But we were afraid that some of our readers would have no idea who ‘Timberlake’ was, and/or would think he actually was the Mint Director and, if he was, that this was something he actually said.

Which sounded like an excellent reason not to use it (even though I thought it was a ‘hoot’).