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timelightbox:

Grant Cornett for TIME

From Herman Cain’s cowboy hat and Stephen Colbert’s super-PAC fun pack to binders, Big Bird and bayonets, objects became the visual sound bites of the 2012 election. TIME presents 100 objects that made their debut during this election.

Pictured: Joe Biden Teeth — Since 2008, comedian Jason Sudeikis has played Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live. Sudeikis has been helped by this prosthesis, molded on his teeth and painted by makeup artist Louie Zakarian to match the Vice President’s smile. Biden—or Big Daddy Joe, as he’s called on SNL—likes to talk, and his gaffes (when he jumped the gun on the President’s supportive statement about same-sex marriage, for example) have been a trademark of his time in office. His teeth, however, took the spotlight after the VP debate on Oct. 11, when he smirked and laughed so often at Paul Ryan that his smile took on, in critics’ eyes, an aggressive, condescending life of its own.