At Kern's, each day is a parade
By Karen Haymon Long of Tampa Tribune

Tampa Bay, Florida (November, 1999) Fred Flintstone awaits. so do Rhett Butler, Wonder Woman, King Kong, Hulk Hogan and Marilyn Monroe. They're standing around

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$32 million theme park planned for North Gulfport
By Bill Brocato of the Sun Herald

GULFPORT, MS (May, 1999) - A $32 million multi-attraction theme park proposed at Interstate 10 and U.S. 49 could get the go-ahead from financial backers within the next 90 days, the park's developer says.

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T-Shirt City Finds Hook
By Bill Brocato of Sun Herald

GULFPORT, MS (May, 1999) The largest great white shark in the United States has beached itself off U.S. 90, apparently lured landward by the hot pink color of T-Shirt City near Rodenberg Avenue

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Mardi Gras Returns to Universal Studios Florida

ORLANDO, FL (February, 1999) – For the fourth consecutive year, Universal Studios Florida at Universal Studios Escape invites party-goers of all ages to experience the wildest, longest running and most authentic Mardi Gras celebration found outside the Big Easy.

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VIVA Las Vegas
By Leslie Snadowsky of Times Picayune

NEW ORLEANS, LA (February, 1998) Barry Kern had a million problems. Bell, 1.6 million to be exact. Customs officials in Anchorage, Alaska were holding hostage 1.6 million of Kern's sculpted hand-painted M&M's. It seemed customs wouldn't allow the "food" to enter the country from China, where they were manufactured.

Kern soon proved that his $100,000 display of faux candy wouldn't melt in the mouth or in the hands, and the shipment arrived just in time for the October grand opening of M&M's World on the Las Vegas Strip

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"Like Santa Clause"
By Graham Button of Forbes Magazine

New York, NY (October 9, 1995) If you revel next year at New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, you can thank Blaine Kern for much of the fun. Kern, 68, is the creator of Mardi Gras’ most spectacular floats. For this year’s $2 million Endymion Mardi Gras parade, Kern built a 120-foot float that carried 120 masked riders and depicted old and new New Orleans. Mounted on the back was a giant slot machine that spat out thousands of doubloons featuring the Endymion club’s logo and motto. Kern is also the man most responsible for opening the once-snooty carnival to ordinary folk.

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He doesn't do Mardi Gras
By Katherine Hart

NEW ORLEANS, LA (January, 1998) Barry Kern didn't notice the giant Cat in the Hat bobbing along Newton Street in Algiers. His eyes were on the parking lot next to Mardi Gras World, as he picked up some stray candy wrappers.

"It's a habit," he explained as he deposited the wrappers in a garbage can. By that time, the float with the Dr. Seuss characters was somewhere else on the Kern compound.

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