What do candy, Mack Trucks and strawberry pie have in common? In Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, all three have ended up on merchandise from the region’s Minor League Baseball team.
The Lehigh Valley IronPigs are the Triple-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies. The team recently joined forces with MIKE AND IKE on a collection of candy-inspired jerseys, shirts and caps, along with a dedicated theme night at Coca-Cola Park. As WFMZ reported, the collaboration pairs two brands tied to the same place: MIKE AND IKE is made by Just Born Quality Confections, headquartered in nearby Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The merchandise goes further than a local company placing its logo beside the hometown team. The MIKE AND IKE collection blends the two brands’ visual identities, with MIKE AND IKE’s familiar green and candy colors running across IronPigs apparel and the team’s name getting a candy-inspired treatment of its own. The theme night then carries the idea into the ballpark through branded activities and promotions.
It would be easy to read this as a particularly colorful one-off. But the IronPigs have been repeating the approach for years.
A Recurring Playbook Built Around Place
Earlier in 2026, the IronPigs partnered with another company with deep Lehigh Valley roots: Mack Trucks. Mack was headquartered in Allentown for more than a century and still manufactures trucks in the region. That history shaped “Pigs ’n Rigs,” a collaboration created for the IronPigs’ Salute to the Lehigh Valley.
The merchandise combined visual assets from both organizations. The IronPigs’ pig met Mack’s Bulldog, Mack’s silver joined the team’s uniform palette and truck imagery appeared throughout the collection. Because the idea reached beyond apparel, Mack trucks – both historic and contemporary – also became part of the experience at Coca-Cola Park.
Two years earlier, the team took a similar approach with another Bethlehem-based name. The 2024 PEEPS x ’PIGS collaboration turned the team into the fictional “IronPEEPS,” complete with PEEPS-inspired jerseys, shirts and caps. A corresponding theme night brought the idea into the stadium, fans were invited to submit ideas for a PEEPS-inspired ballpark menu item and a portion of merchandise sales benefited IronPigs Charities.
Candy, trucks and baseball share little on paper. In the Lehigh Valley, they share a home. Far more than a particular product category or visual style, that sense of place is what connects the collaborations.
The City Series Takes the Idea Beyond Brand Partners
The clearest evidence of the strategy is a program that needs no partner brand at all.
In 2023, the IronPigs launched their City Series to celebrate individual communities within the Lehigh Valley. For Allentown, the team asked fans what should represent the city, and the answer was remarkably specific: Hess’s Department Store.
For generations of local residents, Hess’s was an Allentown institution, and among its best-remembered attractions was the strawberry pie served at its Patio Restaurant. The IronPigs turned that pie into baseball creative. The resulting Allentown City Series identity inspired a jersey, logo and merchandise, and a ticket package even included a slice of strawberry pie.
When the City Series moved to Bethlehem, the references changed. The Bethlehem edition drew on the Bethlehem Star and the region’s steelmaking history.
Across both formats, the team looks for cultural material its audience already recognizes: companies, foods, landmarks, memories and symbols that carry meaning in the region it represents. Merchandise gives the IronPigs a way to remix that material into something new.
Why Local Specificity Matters
Marketing often pushes toward ideas that as many people as possible can grasp at once. These collections go the other way.
A shirt inspired by the strawberry pie from a long-closed Allentown department store rewards anyone who understands the reference. So does a Mack Trucks crossover in a community where the company has been part of the economic and cultural landscape for generations.
That gives the individual ballcaps or jerseys a different kind of value. A fan wearing the merchandise can show affiliation with the IronPigs while also signaling where they’re from, what they remember or which community they consider themselves part of.
Apparel travels far beyond the stadium, meaning that expression of identity can continue long after the game that introduced it. Physical objects can also carry details too niche for a mass-market campaign, and in these collections that niche detail is much of the appeal.
What this means for marketers: A reference only a specific audience will recognize can be a strength in merchandise, not a limitation.
What Marketers Can Take From the IronPigs
It’s easy for collaboration merchandise to begin with two logos and a product. The IronPigs’ playbook suggests starting with what the brand and its audience have in common.
What history do they share? Which places matter to them? What references will they recognize immediately? What might make someone look at the finished piece and think, “That’s for people like me”?
Designers then need enough freedom to act on the answers.
Each example shows a different expression of that approach. The MIKE AND IKE collection works because the candy brand reshapes the visual language of the IronPigs. Pigs ’n Rigs works because Mack’s history and iconography are built into the creative. The City Series lets the audience itself identify which pieces of local culture deserve celebrating.
There is also a broader campaign lesson. In these examples, merchandise rarely operates alone. It connects to a theme night, a stadium experience, food, fan participation or a larger celebration of the region.
The product becomes the lasting part of the experience.
Planning principle: While working with your merch agency on any product, ask what you and your audience already share that would be worth turning into something tangible.
The IronPigs keep arriving at answers that could only come from the Lehigh Valley, and the merchandise carries those answers out of the ballpark.
