Kiss of French, a potato-flavored balm in a lipstick-style case suited for Valentine’s Day gift giving, proved a hot commodity for the Idaho Potato Commission.

The lip balm is crafted with real Idaho potatoes mashed into the formula. People snapped up all inventory within two days of the item’s Feb. 11 release, commission CEO Jamey Higham said.

“It’s fun and not super serious,” he said. “It’s something people love to pick up.”

Like IPC’s previous malt-and-fries ice cream and potato perfume promotions, the balm effort reached many people through social media, news and other platforms, Higham said.

French fries are a favorite and a staple, as Americans consume over 9 billion pounds of fries every year, he said in a news release.

“With Kiss of French, we’re taking that obsession to a whole new level — bringing the appeal of fresh Idaho fries to an unexpected and unforgettable form,” Higham said.

“We love when our consumer efforts get creative,” Ross Johnson, the commission’s vice president of retail, said in an interview. “It drives additional business for Idaho potatoes. It really helps drive consumer awareness.”

Potato sales traditionally surge during the holiday season and drop in January. Idaho potatoes sell well in February, which is Potato Lover’s Month, helped by promotions including a retailer display contest now in its 34th year.

The commission as part of its Idaho Potato Lover’s Display Contest is giving away three state-of-the art jukeboxes — one for each winner in the commission’s three U.S. regions — and other prizes.

“We anticipate it being a very, very high participation rate this year compared to the last couple of years,” Higham said.

The contest helps the commission and its retail partners to move potatoes, and is “a way for us to give back to the front-line employees at these retailers,” Johnson said. More than 2,500 individual stores are expected to enter.

The commission traditionally prints enough point-of-sale kits for the duration of the Feb. 1-March 31 contest.

“The reception has been the best it has ever been to date,” Johnson said Feb. 13. “We already moved through all the kits we had in stock, and so we had to produce more this year.”

Factors include the 2025 contest’s setup — top prizes are attractive and every entrant wins a prize — recently hired IPC traveling brand ambassadors who executed the promotion superbly, and many retailers’ renewed interest in selling 10-pound bags of fresh potatoes, he said.

Most retailers in the last decade had moved away from the 10-pound bag in favor of packs half that size, but the commission found that the 10-pound bag drove retail sales around the U.S. in 10 of the last 15 months, Johnson said.

“Just like the commission exists to help family farms, it also exists to assist retailers and their front-line workers,” he said.