It's been a bad week for Mitt Romney and a good week for Ohio Art: the latter produces the popular toy Etch A Sketch, which got a helping hand from the Romney campaign. On Wednesday, Romney strategist Eric Fehmstrom made an unfortunate analogy when asked about his candidate's ever-changing policy positions.

You hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.

Since then, Rick Santorum has brandished an Etch A Sketch at campaign rallies. Newt Gingrich has said, "Having an Etch A Sketch as your campaign model raises every doubt about where we're going." And Ohio Art has reaped the benefits.

The Etch A Sketch first hit the toy scene in 1960, and we haven't exactly been buzzing about it since. But Fehmstrom's questionable word choice has done wonders for Ohio Art's stocks, which tripled in value this week. Stores selling the Etch A Sketch have also reported feeling the effects of the "Romney bump."

Bill Southard, who handles promotion for "Etch a Sketch", admitted the publicity associated with the the Romney camp's comments has been an expected windfall. "It's kind of like a Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky amount of media interest," said Southard. "This is the kind of publicity flurry you usually only see in a crisis or a product malfunction."

It's unclear whether the people buying the toy are using them just to brandish at Santorum rallies, or if they're actually trying to draw on them. The Etch A Sketch isn't merely a poor political analogy — it's also frustrating as hell to use.

[Image via AP]