MARK MY WORD: NO MATTER WHAT THE FUTURE BRINGS, KETCHUP WILL STILL FLOW

Forget Y2K, ketchup is here to stay.

There's no need to worry about the millennium bug with this stuff.

The Heinz Co. is so sure that ketchup will be popular well into the future that it is unveiling a new Heinz Ketchup Pin.

The pin is the company's first commemorative pin in more than a century. It last unveiled a pin, the Pickle Pin, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Visitors flocked to the Heinz display to sample food. Each visitor received a tiny green pin in the shape of a pickle. Company founder Henry J. Heinz reportedly handed out a million of the pins.

No doubt, they're collector items. I'm sure it won't be long until they start showing up regularly at antique road shows.

In the meantime, we can all look forward to the company's new pins.

The ketchup giant plans to hand out a million Ketchup Pins in 2000, beginning with New Year's Day crowds in New Zealand, Sidney, Jakarta, Beijing, New Delhi, Paris, London, New York's Times Square, Hawaii and the 2000 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena.

An inaugural batch of 80,000 of the inch-high, red ketchup-bottle-shaped pins will be stamped with a 2000 mint mark to commemorate the millennium year.

Of course, purists point out that the new millennium actually won't begin until Jan. 1, 2001. But I don't think that bothers the ketchup guys, who no doubt are only concerned with providing us the first of a zillion commemorative pins that businesses will want to hand out in the new year.

A press release from Heinz World Headquarters in Pittsburgh even touts a ketchup float for the Rose Parade.

If this isn't a reason to rise and shine on the first day of 2000, I don't know what is. It's not every day you get a chance to see a ketchup float.

The ketchup bottle for the float is about a billion times larger than the Ketchup Pin, the release points out. It's nice to know that Heinz has someone who can do the math.

The Heinz Ketchup bottle has been sculpted using onion and red clover seed, strawflower and chrysanthemums into a 28-foot-tall centerpiece for the company's "Ketch'n the Future" float.

The float, we're told, depicts a tomato factory in which 57 giant tomatoes are magically processed into roses.

There's nothing, I'm sure, more entertaining than a bunch of giant tomatoes in Pasadena.

But our children would prefer a ketchup bottle that has real ketchup. Flowers are nice, but you can't pour them on chicken fingers.

Becca and Bailey survive on ketchup. They love the stuff. It's amazing how quickly they can go through a large bottle of ketchup.

No small bottles of ketchup for us. We buy the big bottles and even those don't last long with Becca and Bailey around.

Now, our kids would be favorably impressed if the float featured a 28-foot-tall real bottle of ketchup with side orders of chicken fingers.

In their minds, it isn't food unless it is served with ketchup.

Even the Barbie cake for Bailey's fourth birthday can't compete with ketchup. Turning 4 hasn't changed her appetite for the red stuff.

Seven-year-old Becca finds it easy to clean her plate when it is covered with ketchup.

So it's reassuring to know that the ketchup gurus aren't concerned about a Y2K computer glitch and instead are pinning their hopes on the future.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.