The Mystery and Allure of Pangea Brands

When I moved to Minneapolis in July of last year, I signed up for Groupon as a way to get good deals for different restaurants and stores to try out in my new home. After a brief period of actually looking at what arrived in my e-mail each day, soon my Groupon ritual became a shallow scan of that day’s deals, and then that e-mail’s immediate deletion.

That is, until yesterday, when I saw this:

That’s right. An “NFL Sandwich and Waffle Grill.” And it was discounted.

Now, there’s no way that I could buy this—even for its bargain price of thirty bucks—and not have my girlfriend berate me for days about, you know, buying weird junk that we don’t need. Never mind the fact that buying one (and then writing about it, as I’m doing right now) would enable me to write the purchase off on my taxes as a business expense. She would object to the very existence of a Panini press capable of emblazoning the logo of one of my favorite sports teams onto our food.

Personally, I can see the beauty in such an item. Call it “kitsch,” call it “irony,” I am a total sucker for stuff like this. There is a certain undeniable power in branding your very food, that which gives you life and energy, with the sigil of power related to your favorite organized squad of footballers.

Also, I should note I just started reading the Game of Thrones books, and there’s a lot of banners and emblems and crests and whatnot—and we all know that kind of thing was the medieval equivalent of football team logos.

Anyway, I had to know more about what kind of company would create, much less sell many of, a thing like the NFL-themed sandwich and waffle grill. Made by a company called Pangea Brands, the sandwich and waffle grill is but one of their many, many ludicrous and therefore amazing team-themed offerings.

Sadly, at the time of this writing, their website, Pangeabrands.com, seems to be down—probably due to all the traffic their Groupon deal generated today. Had I stopped there, the mystery of Pangea Brands—like the mystery of the ancient super-continent of Pangea herself—would be lost to me. Not to be dissuaded, however, I took to Amazon to see what I could find from this, my new favorite manufacturer of things-I-want-but-don’t-need.

Unsurprisingly, typing “Pangea Brands” into Amazon’s search engine turned up incredible results. In addition to sandwich and waffle grills, the company creates team-themed pop-up toasters.

And that’s awesome. Just imagine eating a piece of Mets toast! Then imagine eating a piece of toast with the logo of a team that actually wins—it’s an even better fantasy that way. And if you want to brand food that’s not made of puny bread, the company also makes BBQ branders for various kinds of meat, a must have for any future tailgate grilling party, now and forever.

In addition to products that literally burn logos into food items, Pangea also offers iPad cases, iPhone cases, Shrinky Dinks (!), leather wallets, wireless USB keyboards, drinking straws, cake pans, and various canvas and leather bags. How they managed to secure the rights to logos from the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NCAA, I’ll never know. Even more of a mystery is how the NBA somehow escaped Pangea’s seemingly endless grasp.

But my biggest question of all is how one company can make so many different things. I imagine they must have sub-contractors and suppliers for the various different items, which they then pay to make and stick on the different logos they’ve secured. But what led to the decisions to make and sell those particular products? I could even understand it if Pangea sought to become the premier logo-burning-into-your-food-thing maker in America—but then where do the straws fit in? And the wireless USB keyboards? And the Shrinky Dinks?

And that raises a whole other question: they’re still making Shrinky Dinks?

This bizarre assortment of products and the inexplicably missing webpage makes me feel like I’ve stumbled into a really, really crappy episode of Lost.

Stay tuned as I investigate, and try to penetrate the veil of Pangea Brands. Pray that their assassins don’t find me first.