If Steve Levin and John Williamson have their way, road rage will become a thing of the past.

Instead, when that guy riding your bumper on the 405 sends your blood pressure skyward, you’ll bite your tongue until you get to a computer, log on and e-spew your personal venom to them and head to your local Hallmark store. There, providing others share your boiling point, you’ll find a colorful and plush little toy with “Tailgaters Fire My Cylinders,” or something like that, on their bellies. And you’ll buy it, for about $8.

Launched early this year by Pet Peeves LLC, the line of plush toys tries to put a cute, fuzzy spin on personal annoyances such as loud talkers, slobs or rude people.

Bearing messages across their bellies to convey annoyances “Grouches get my goat” and “Cell phones make me scream” are just two the company is promoting the idea of expressing displeasure in a kinder, gentler way.

“We wanted to keep everything upbeat and positive, to put a positive spin on all the negative things out there,” said company president Levin. “People’s lives are filled with stress and there is very little out there to help diffuse that and bring about positive fun.”

The eight friendly and soft stuffed figures are currently in Hallmark stores, Osco and the Paper Store, as well as various airport stores, bookstores, casino and hotel gift shops. More are on the way, too new Pets are being launched later this year, including office annoyances like micromanagers and speakerphones.

Levin and Williamson, the company’s vice president of marketing, started conceptualizing the cheerful brand in 2004. The two execs worked together at label giant Avery Dennison in the 1990s. They went separate ways after departing the company, but stayed in touch and searched for a project to make use of their background in consumer packaged goods.

The Pet Peeves characters started to take shape when Williamson hired market research firm TNS NFO to survey 1,000 consumers on their annoyances. The research showed the top annoyances at the time were telemarketers, tardy people, being ignored, cell phone abusers, tailgaters and bad customer service.

This year’s poll had cell phones at the top of the list, while telemarketing barely registered at all something Williamson and Levin said makes continual research a necessity to keep the brand alive.