Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Review: State quarters - Kentucky




"My Old Kentucky Home" -- I've never heard of it.

It must be the official song of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but it's meaningless to me and everyone else from the other 49 states. So this design gets off to a bad start right away.

But, you know, that horse is a good image to have on there. Really, besides bourbon, what is Kentucky the most famous for? Yes, a little horse race they hold at Churchill Downs every year in May. So the likeness of a horse would have been powerful and strong all by itself without any other imagery. Too bad they had to go and mess it up with that stupid fence. I wonder how that decision went down.
Coin designer 1: Hey, we have a beautiful Thoroughbred looking great in all its graceful majesty on our little coin. What could be better than that?

Coin designer 2: I know! Let's block half of it off with a bunch of horizontal lines. Something like a fence, maybe.

Coin designer 3: Brilliant!

And the house on the hill? Mmmmm -- I'm not so sure about that. It's not entirely bad, but whose house is it supposed to be, anyway? Is it a famous house? Is it just a generic house that is supposedly representative of Kentucky architecture? Does it even matter? I'm going to say, no. So it would have been better just to leave it off.

Kentucky, if the U.S. decides to do this program again, stick with the horse. Just the horse.


Overall rating - 2 - Mediocre

Stay tuned for Tennessee.

2 comments:

AlanDP said...

I thought "My Old Kentucky Home" was one of those songs everyone has heard, like "On Top of Old Smoky" or "My Darling Clementine."

Albatross said...

I can't recall it at all. If I've ever heard the song before, I just don't remember it.

Of course, then again, I learned "On Top of Spaghetti" and "Found a Peanut" before I ever heard of "Old Smoky" and "Clementine." Maybe that's my problem.

:-)