Kansas tag woes

You have to love the concept: A Kansas license plate with a buffalo in the middle of it. Finally. A design we can all get excited about. Granted, it’s only available as a vanity plate, but it’s a great improvement and a step forward as we "brand" our state. Trouble is, from a distance — say, about one car length away — it looks like an old rusty plate. Maybe there’s just no pleasing us, but perhaps a different, less rusty-looking color choice would have been better.
Kansas keeps going with these faint images on our tags that aren’t really visible from a few feet away. Our Capitol building with the cloud above it just looks sort of like a big mushroom cloud from a short distance. Wait. Maybe that’s appropriate. Let’s see how the Legislature’s special session turns out.
Posted by Richard Crowson

3 Comments

  1. Joe Williams
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 8:41 pm | Permalink

    I think our current plates are not good at all. Nobody cares about the Capitol Building in Topeka. I don’t know what brought about that design, but I assume it was the people of Topeka.

    The Buffalo is pretty cool, and I agree, it should be a better color. I miss the old days when I was a child when we had the wheat stalks.

  2. Rodney Boehme
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 9:46 pm | Permalink

    As a relative newcomer to Kansas (from Texas), I thought that these buffalo plates were actually old and weathered plates. The current baby blue plate with the capitol is still better than the current Texas plate. However, in the past (when living in Texas), I always did like the blue plates with wheat stalks that I would occasionally see.

  3. Jerry Davidson
    Posted June 23, 2005 at 8:20 am | Permalink

    It’s a license plate not fine art. It’s also overpriced. I’d suggest that the tags be made of a more durable material and that the tag stay on the vehicle for the rest of its useful life, but this would eliminate a source of income for the state so it’s not likely to happen.