Summer time is the time for county fairs and the big state fair. As a child I can remember being loaded up in the family sedan and driving to the State Fair every summer. It was an all-day event. There were rides to ride, exhibits to see, carnival games to play, and, of course, lots of food to eat. One of my fondest memories is going by the various booths where vendors of all sorts would be hawking their wares – from beef jerky to hot tubs. And one that always stood out to me as the cheesiest, and therefore the most fitting for the State Fair, was the booth where you could have a picture of your choosing put on a personalized coffee mug.

New Meaning to the Phrase Mug Shot

We always had to stop and look at the sample mugs and talk about who we could send a set to for a Christmas gift. Usually, it was to someone we weren’t very close to or we didn’t like very much. Of course, my grandparents were not in either of those categories and I always thought they would love a set of personalized coffee mugs with our pictures on them. But I was always voted down, being the youngest in the family and all.

Still, the process fascinated me – how did they get that photo on the mug? At first the procedure was fairly low-tech. It involved simply sliding a photo behind a clear plastic sleeve wrapped around the mug. The sleeve was then sealed and the picture was protected behind the plastic. These mugs did not go over very well because, no matter how they were sealed, it didn’t take long for moisture to get in behind the plastic and ruin the photos.

The next generation of personalized coffee mugs used a more advanced process of lamination and this seemed to work better. The photos stayed protected better and the mugs were more attractive.

With the advent of the computer age, came a quantum leap in personalized coffee mug technology. Now any photo can be downloaded onto a computer, printed out and affixed to almost any kind of coffee mug. Photos can also be screen printed onto mugs, opening up the doors to creativity, making your imagination the only limit to what can be put on a personalized coffee mug. They still are a bit cheesy, but the memory of where the technology began will live happily with me forever.

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