New Georgia License Plates Just Peachy

Oh delicious blog-fodder – you are truly worth your weight in pixels!

I’ve never understood why Georgia’s license plates weren’t a bit more artsy compared to neighboring states.  I thought that perhaps there was some sort of convict-union agreement with the state that Georgia license plates remain pretty basic, with at most a little square picture of cats and dogs kissing or a Georgia Aquarium logo.  (What?  Convicts don’t hammer out license plates on rocks anymore?  Seriously, authenticity is truly dead.)

Anyway, it seems like Georgia is finally getting into the snazzy license plate race, with eight, very orange contenders looking to become the state’s official generic tag.   The state is asking for internet savvy residents to vote on their favorite plate with the winner announced July 15th.

I don’t know about you, but the top-right plate with the moldy peach and the Atlanta skyline juxtaposed against a giant chicken processing facility is really speaking to me!

h/t: Fresh Loaf

85 thoughts on “New Georgia License Plates Just Peachy”


  2. Tag #4 looks exactly like a horses behind. It would be absolute hilarity if it won.

  4. Might as well narrow your favorite down to one of the “In God We Trust” plates. One of them will surely win. And yes, I just called you Shirley….

    2. Wouldn’t that be covered by the county marker? Or would that be removed altogether?

  6. I’m pretty sure the “In God We Trust” is just a sticker that goes where the county sticker goes and not part of the tags themselves. You can buy them in tag offices to put on whatever tag you have now. Which has always made me wonder what the point of having the county sticker is.

    1. So could I put a decal over the county sticker that says, “In Rationality I Trust”?

        1. +1
          Or maybe “In ‘Pay Attention!’ We Trust”
          “In Democracy We Trust”
          “In Separation of Church and State We Trust”

  8. Perhaps these wouldn’t look so horrid if a proper design firm had been sought out. Instead, we have this, which is what you get when the “award” is a photoshoot with some politicos and a commemorative plaque.

    1. I’m indifferent to the IGWT wording, but I have to assume it’s legal, since all American money has it prominently printed on the bills/coins. And I believe it would be “opt-in,” so you wouldn’t be required to have it.

    2. I very seriously doubt that a sticker at the bottom of a license plate is state “establishment” of a religion, any more than requiring school kids to receite the pledge of allegiance violated the establishment clause. But that’s my opinion today. Since we have a living, breathing constitution, it may change tomorrow.

    3. How did I miss your question?!? Arguably, it’s legal– example: US money (see Token’s observation); plus, as someone else pointed out, it’s also going to be elective, rather than mandatory. It may still get challenged, but who knows?

      1. It’s not elective in Indiana. You have to pay exrtra to get a non-religious plate.

    4. No law was passed establishing a religion, nor was a law passed restricting the exercise of a religion. Non-arguably, it does not violate the Constitution.

      1. Sorry Walrus, but you’ve clearly never taken a proper Con Law class if you think *anything* is non-arguable!

      2. Arguably, “non-arguably” or “nonarguably” are not real words unless they are a law or philosophy term that I cannot find in a reference. “Non-arguable”, “nonarguable”, “inarguably”, and “unarguably” are all findable in one dictionary or another, but not “non(-)arguably”.

        1. I am aware. I just used it that way to emphasize my point (whether that makes sense or not, I don’t know!).

  14. I’ve been trying to find out for awhile now if the “in God we trust” plates will actually say that, or if that is just to show that the sticker will continue to be offered. Everyone just seems to be assuming that the plates will say IGWT.

    1. Moving to the country
      Going to eat a lot of peaches
      Moving to the country
      Going to eat me a lot of peaches
      Moving to the country
      Going to eat a lot of peaches
      Moving to the country
      Going to eat a lot of peaches

      Peaches come from a can
      They were put there by a man
      In a factory downtown
      If I had my little way
      I’d eat peaches every day
      Sun-soaking bulges in the shade

      1. Nice work!! Also:
        Millions of peaches, peaches for me
        Millions of peaches, peaches for free

  20. I wonder why our state symbol’s Peaches are ripe yet unharvested on all these designs?

      1. But I thought our governor was busy coercing a new worker class to undercut a free labor market.

    1. Probably not. But there was a deer head nailed over the door of the roadhouse in the vicinity of Peachtree Rd/Roswell Rd/Irby St back in the late 1910s, when my great-uncle would travel from Macon to court my soon-to-be great-aunt who was in nursing school at Emory.(They married in 1920.) He was once invited to go hunting out there (which was far beyond the end of the streetcar line at the time), meeting his hosts at a place they called “Buckhead.”

      1. Some history, Peachtree Street actually got its name by mistake. The Creek Indian settlement in the area was called “Standing Pitch Tree”, and that eventually got corrupted to “Peachtree” by the English speaking inhabitants, so in reality it should be Pitch Tree Street.

        1. Apparently, pitch trees don’t look as nice on a license plate as orange pony buttocks.

    1. No matter there. How many people associate lighthouses with Mississippi?
      http://www.15q.net/ms.html

    3. Having lived in SC some 25 years before, thankfully, finding Decatur it’s well documented they out grow GA by nearly tow to one. Of course they also out grow GA in pot lol

  26. I remember when I first moved (back) here in the early 2000’s there was a big push to create a new tag. The current tag only read ‘Georgia’ and some wise person suggested that ‘Georgia.gov’ would create more tourism. So every plate in the state would need to updated. A little inane to suggest that .gov would enable someone to learn more about a US state on the web. It struck me as one of those stupid, unnecessary changes that cost taxpayers money and achieve NOTHING. Shortly thereafter the economy went in the crapper, so the plan was dropped. And that’s why you see some tags around that only say ‘Georgia.’ (http://www.15q.net/ga.html) Now, someone tell my WHY it’s necessary to change the state license plate. It’s just doesn’t compute for me. Not only will it require production level changes, it will also require processing costs to get this ‘new’ plate to existing plate holders.
    Why can’t Georgia be smarter about this kid of malarky? Take Delaware for example. I personally find theirs the most attractive state plate because it’s changed so very little over the years. http://www.15q.net/de.html

    If we are going to change plate graphics yet again, let’s go back to the 1969 black plate and be done with it.

    Above rant aside, all of these designs are atrocious.

      1. It’s similar to the state stamp series from a few years ago where the design was made to look like a 30s/40s tourist brochure or postcard, you know “Greetings from Idaho!”: https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10052&productId=10001217&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=10000000&top_category=10000000&categoryId=10000010&top=&currentPage=0&sort=&viewAll=Y&rn=CategoriesDisplay&WT.ac=10001217

  30. How about “In Buddha we trust”? Oh, I forgot this State promotes only Christian religions.

    2. I’m not a fan of any language like this, but is reads In “God” We Trust, which can encompass most religions.

  38. Sure am glad I have my Historic Preservation tag. Seeing these samples of entry-level possibilities makes the annual fee look REALLY reasonable.

  40. First we get the Pro-Life plates, now the “in god we trust” stuff.
    Why can’t i have a PLEASE ABORT YOUR BABIES tag?

        1. To be fair, the plates say “Choose Life” and not “Outlaw Abortion”. It’s just some friendly advise…

          1. “Choose Life” always seems like ironic wording to me because most folks faced with the choice didn’t exactly choose to get into their predicament–they got there, um, accidentally. The slogan should be more like “Now that you’ve blown it and have few options left, choose life.”

          2. Just friendly advice, right–and Intelligent Design is a scientific alternative to evolution.

              1. I wasn’t implicating you, I was referring to the euphemistic way people try to “innocently” cram their ideas into others heads. Carry on, sir.

  42. Again, with a projected 1.3 billion projected budget deficit for 2012, (that’s with a B), why are doing this? Let’s cut funding to Pre-K that directly impacts the salaries of teachers but let’s get a purty new car tag because all our neighbors have one.

    1. I certainly support salaries for preK teachers over Peach plates. But I have always assumed that vanity plates are a fund raising mechanism. No? Why do them then? I remember having vanity plates once years ago in California and they cost a lot more than regular plates.

      1. These aren’t vanity plates. The lucky winner will replace the state’s current generic plate.

        1. Oh. I think the generic plate should be generic. I could see spending money modifying it to make it clearer or more functional, e.g. for law enforcement purposes, but I agree that modifying them for aesthetic purposes only shouldn’t be a high priority.

          UNLESS the modification was thought to increase revenue in some way, e.g. encourage tourism. I could see how “Land of Enchantment” license plates or “Land of a Thousand Lakes” might do that. But the Peach motif doesn’t seem to be a tourism draw. “Hey Thelma! Let’s spend our $800 of summer vacation savings on picking peaches in South Georgia this year!”? I don’t think so. Not to mention the disappointment when folks find out that we don’t even have many peach trees left. If the idea is to stimulate an association with “Peachtree” and Civil War history or antebellum grandeur or Margaret Mitchell, I’d recommend being more direct. Just put a silhouette of Clark and Vivian or a background of historic Savannah on the plates.

          Or are we trying to support Georgia agriculture? Do we have much of a peach crop left to promote?

          1. “Hey Thelma! Let’s spend our $800 of summer vacation savings on picking peaches in South Georgia this year!”
            That’s what the Governor would have you do. He’ll even pay you $7.25 an hour.

          2. A plate is never going to promote tourism. I would start with providing out-of-staters something more thrilling than a museum dedicated to soda pop.

  44. I see our tag as a tribute to The Allman Brothers Band, one of our state’s greatest legacies. So, if In God We Trust was replaced with Eat A Peach, I think we’d be getting somewhere.

  48. This morning’s Atlanta Business Chronicle email says that the “In God We Trust” would still be stickers available for purchase for $1 and not included on the basic plate.

  50. My favorite tag would include In God We Trust. That would open an opportunity for the entrepreneurs amongst us to create their own stickers to overlay it. My personal suggestion, in keeping with the politics of the new millenium, would be “Trust No One”, but that’s just me. There are lots of others (some above) that would work. Since we have freedom of religion in this country, this shouldn’t be a problem. We do still have freedom of religion, right?

  52. More song lyrics — with both peaches and Jesus and thus appropriate to the topic — from John Prine’s “Spanish Pipedream”:
    Blow up your T.V., throw away your paper,
    Go to the country, build you a home.
    Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
    Try and find Jesus on your own

  58. I hate every one of those designs. HATE.

    Why must we have a cartoon-colorful billboard on the back of our cars? And why must we change the design every couple of years?

    But I do like the idea of alternatives to an In God We Trust sticker. That could turn out to be a lot fun.

    1. “And why must we change the design every couple of years? ”

      I think it’s been several years – at least 7 or 8.

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