A Queens small fry who didn’t bottle up her imagination has become one of 12 students to win a national ketchup-themed design compe- tition.
Melissa Rueda, 11, of Flushing, was the winner in the fifth-grade category of the Heinz Ketchup Creativity Contest.
The third annual competition invited students in grades 1 through 12 to create designs that will appear on 200 million packets of ketchup. There were 45,000 entries.
“It feels really great,” said Melissa, who attends PS 20.
Melissa, who loves listening to music, said that thinking about a concert helped her come up with the idea for “a ketchup bottle as a rock star surfing a crowd of french-fries fans.”
“In the background, you can see a stage and some french fries playing instruments and singing,” she said. “It looked really fun.”
Melissa, who hopes to become a veterinarian and “a dancer, too,” plans to put most of her $1,000 prize money toward college — but will use some to buy her parents “something they would really like.”
Her art teacher at PS 20, Phyliss Grodofsky, said when she told Melissa at lunch time that she was one of the winners, “she was jumping up and down.”
“It was great,” said Grodofsy.