Some kind of cross-promotion between Grand Theft Auto, Ruger weapons and Dum-Dum lollipops seems like a natural, though I can’t suss out the package designs or what grocery isle they’d go in.

deg

He came up with a Vulcan medal called the IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) and wanted Nimoy to wear it on the show so fans would buy it up. If I recall, Nimoy refused, and Gene had some other way of getting it on the show, can’t recall how or which eps.

However, I do know the Nimoy did end up wearing it in the eps., Is There No Truth In Beauty. Fitting title.

Man, I wish I had onea those IDIC medals…

deg

BTW, does it come with cake?

deg

It dealt with an elder race of advanced creatures, posing as necromancers, this imagery tapped from the thoughts of the crew’s darkest fears.

Not spot on, but pretty close to your request.

Cake Town: EAT IT!

deg

Cake Town: EAT IT!

deg

The kids loved it!

How many? One? Ten? All of them? I don’t know and won’t even guess. Throwing a question out like that without any examples doesn’t support your position.

But taking your point, why not go even farther? Everything is a product.

Think of anything, anything at all, however abstract or outlandish. Then think about how it is somehow being packaged and sold to us every day. War, politicians, education, fear, disease, nature — even thought as been productized. Anything on the news becomes a product because the news itself is being sold to us.

Can you come up with any counter-examples, anything that hasn’t been the subject of some kind of advertising campaign? I can’t, not at the moment.

The focus of the piece was movies and comics because of their recent cross-pollination and apparent adoption of each other’s marketing models.

Have publisher’s been pimping Vonnegut on cereal boxes? Chevy trucks on potato chip bags? Are Rolling Stones concerts sponsored by Geritol? They should be by now. (OK, that was a cheap and easy shot, unworthy of my fine writing skills, but you get my point.)

The only musical act that might have shown up on a cereal box is Hannah Montana, maybe the Wiggles. They don’t count, in my opinion, as they are owned by DisneyCorp, who is already in bed with the fast food and breakfast industries, so they’re exploiting existing marketing methods.

As far as entertainment being products companies are trying to sell, no, that hasn’t been forgotten. In fact, that is reinforced every time X character is plastered on the front of Y box of cereal — especially when there is no reason for that to happen other than pure pimpage.

Look, it’s not about selling something or making money — I’m all for making a buck. I’m all for spending a buck, too, but what I’m buying better be worth my money and time.

What this is about — what it’s always been about — is what I can only call non-sequitur merchandising and its correlation to a movie’s suckiness. To restate: the number and diversity of products tied to a movie before it hits theaters, the worse the movie will be.

However, this doesn’t mean the movie won’t make money or otherwise be considered a box office hit (Transformers, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Shrek 3, Happy Feet, Jurassic Park 3).

That’s all generally speaking. Having yet to run actual numbers on this leaves this in the realm of hypothesis.

Thanks for the comments and ongoing discussion. Good stuff.