Many of the things that drop are out of the ordinary things, but many towns in Pennsylvania leverage their local corporate citizens and drop a local product. I was most intrigued by Bethlehem’s dropping of a peep, a product made by the Just Born Company. I struggled to find a photo of the 25-pound fiberglass peep, because it is not featured on the web site of this year’s celebration. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but I am hopeful there will be a better picture forthcoming.

Bethlehem is a city in eastern Pennsylvania, United States, with an estimated population of seventy thousand. It lies in Northampton and Lehigh counties. Bethlehem borders with the cities of Allentown and Easton and is part of the greater Lehigh Valley community.

And here are some fun facts about peeps:

• In 1953, it took 27 hours to create one peeps marshmallow chick. Today, thanks to advances in technology, it takes six minutes.
• Just Born produces enough peeps marshmallow candies in one year to circle the earth twice.
• Yellow is America’s best selling color of peeps chicks and bunnies.
• If you had 8,000 peeps bunnies, and you stood them in a straight vertical line, you could reach the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago.

In my continuing search for things that drop on New Year’s Eve, I have found:
A possum (Brasstown, NC)
A lighted beach ball (Carolina Beach, NC)
An orange (Orange County, CA)
A new Ford Edge (Buffalo, NY)
A carp (St. Feriole Island, WI) 2008 Update: New article
Bologna (Lebanon, PA) 2008 Update: New Article

and a long list of things from a giant red shoe carrying a drag queen (Key West, FL) to a wrench (Mechanicsburg, PA) on Wikipedia.