Unocal’s New Owner is Taking Them All Down!
Hear the Car Nut Interview With The BALL’s creator here.
Sign The SAVE THE BALL Petition here!
Anyone who ever traveled the Great American West (or visited a race track where NASCAR ran events), knows well the large, round, orange balls twirling perpetually high above “Union 76” gas stations (later known as “Unocal”).
Well, Unocal’s new owner, ConocoPhillips, has begun removing ALL the BALLS, an advertising gimmick which has become nothing less than an icon of the American west of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, those years when millions migrated from east to west, and saw the great BALLS as heralding their arrival in the great new land. From the original Mother Road, Route 66, to the interstates which eventually replaced Bobby Troupe’s and Nat King Cole’s favorite road, the BALLS were shorthand for “The West”.
Sadly, Sunoco (which has a strong east coast presence) has also replaced Unocal and 76 as the “Official Fuel” for NASCAR, so the BALLS are no longer displayed at race tracks nationwide.
The huge BALL in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, revolving perpetually above a googie space-age Unocal gas station, served to alert uncounted millions worldwide who ever watched a Dodger game on TV anywhere in the world that this game was being played in Los Angeles, the Heart of the West. Even that BALL is gone!
Steve Parker, The Car Nut, recently interviewed the creator of the original BALL which was used as a promotional gimmick for the Union 76 Sky Ride at the Seattle World’s Fair some 40 years ago. Ray Pedersen’s stories of actually making the first BALL, flying it all over the West in his private plane and having it photographed at Western iconic symbols such as the Grand Canyon, is MUST listening for Fans of The BALL. Hear it by clicking here!
And SIGN THE PETITION to SAVE THE BALL here!
Ray Pedersen and HIS BALLS thank you!
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