Some groups want to put smile on your plate

Charles Ball thinks he has an answer to road rage in Boston: a Smiley license plate. After all, who would cut off someone with a bright, yellow smiley face on their backside?

The "Smiley Plate," based on Worcester artist Harvey Ball's 1963 creation, is one of 10 concepts for specialty plates that Governor Mitt Romney signed into law Wednesday.

"We're going to eliminate road rage for all time," said Charles Ball, who is the artist's son. "It brings with it a sense of obligation."

The governor's approval does not guarantee that every design will appear on a plate. It just allows groups to seek final approval from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Each group must meet various requirements, including finding 1,500 buyers up-front and delivering an additional 1,500 customers within two years, according to the Registry.

The groups' plates would sell for $81, $40 more than a plain, white plate. The extra fee supports the causes behind the designs: firefighters, public education, youth baseball, and diabetes research.

Ball, who heads the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation, plans to use Smiley Plate money to offer grants to teachers who "may just need a few hundred dollars" for a project.

But will a smiley plate sell in Massachusetts, given the woes a plate with a smiling sun faced in a southern state?

Some disgruntled Kentucky drivers have opted for specialty license plates instead of their state's official plate, which has a tiny smiley face and yellow rays poking up behind the license numbers.

Ball agrees that Kentucky's plate isn't that hot. "It's like a fake smiley face," he said of the timid little sun. But he says he can't fathom why anyone would oppose a smile.

The late Harvey Ball loved his invention, his son said. Never trademarked, the commercial artist made only $45 from his famous image, which is used on coffee mugs, T-shirts, and buttons around the world. Watching smiley's success was good enough for his father, Ball said.

"He would say, 'You can only drive one car at a time,' " Ball said.

Another license plate design will probably have guaranteed mass appeal in Boston. The Mini-Fenway Park plate, benefiting the effort to build a perfect half-size replica of the ballpark for young players in Quincy's Blue Hills Reservation, is ready to go, said Rick Iacobucci, chief executive of Mini-Fenway Park Inc. The plate embeds the ballpark image in a home plate.

Don't like the Red Sox? The Cape Cod Baseball League has a more generic concept for its plate: a mitt and a ball, a scaled-down design from the original idea.

League volunteer Jim McGonigle said he had thought of putting an apple pie in the corner of the plate.

The plate will support the amateur league, which has hosted about 190 players who went on to play professional baseball, including Sox star Nomar Garciaparra, McGonigle said.

Prefer bicycling to baseball? MassBike, a bicyclist advocacy group, is planning a plate urging drivers to "Share the Road" with bicyclists, but still lacks a design, said Dorie Clark, executive director. The group will probably base its design on bike safety plates in other states.

Plates "generally involve yellow, a 'Hey! Watch out!' kind of color," Clark said. "They have nice little bikes on them."