Easter Eggs for the 4th of July

As I was thinking about a topic for this week’s blog post, my mind wandered to Easter. Fortunately, that brought a scene from the classic Rankin and Bass TV movie, Here Comes Peter Cottontail, to mind.

The premise of the movie is that Peter Cottontail has to deliver a certain number of eggs on Easter to become the next Easter Bunny. Unfortunately, Peter oversleeps and through various circumstances, has to deliver the eggs on other holidays to become the next Easter Bunny. While this is typically thought of as a simple children’s show or the figments of one’s nightmares depending on your viewpoint, Peter Cottontail does demonstrate some good and bad sales techniques when having to “sell” his Easter eggs during different holidays.

During the 4th of July specifically, Peter Cottontail dresses up as Uncle Sam. After overhearing his customer’s pain of not having any firecrackers, Peter Cottontail jumps out and introduces himself to his customers. This was a good first start to Peter’s sales pitch, but he quickly veers into the realm of bad selling. To sell his Easter eggs, Peter proceeds to lie about what his product actually is by telling his customers that the eggs are firecrackers. Peter also spilled some of his candy in the lobby by giving his customers more facts about the “firecrackers” than they asked for. By doing this instead of understanding that those customers did not have the pain that Peter was able to solve, if you continue watching the clip, the deal turns sour and Peter ends up with all the Easter eggs back.