Every since Planet of the Apes and Star Wars, just about every movie out there that boasts itself as a blockbuster has some sort of license product attached to it. If it isn't a toy, it's some music video or other media.
In recent years, toy companies have begun to shy away from movie toy licenses because the performance of most toy lines linked to a movie has not been as good as toy lines that are NOT linked to a movie. (How many kids still want How the Grinch stole Christmas toys?) If you go to Toys R Us and look at the some of toys out there that are linked to a movie, they aren't selling well. Planet of the Apes figures (From Tim Burtons version), Jimmy Nutronic, Matrix and even Star Wars: E1 are still sitting on the shelf. The Toys R Us here in town has a section set up for ET toys in anticipation of the re-release of that movie. No one has touched them. Every week I see the same figures and toys in the SAME positions. (They will be moving soon though, our Toys R Us is scheduled to be closed soon.) Hasbro, the company that produces Star Wars toys, indicated that toy sales for Episode 1 did not meet their expectations. They had over produced the toys. They even sighted that as a reason for some of the layoffs they did that year.
A recent trend in movies is the music video tie-in. MIB, Wild Wild West, Titanic (even though at first it was not going to have one), even Mulan have music videos of songs from the movie. Now I do not know much about the performance of music associated with a movie. (Toys I do know, it's my other hobby.) Does music linked to a movie really do that well? If it is like the toy industries performance, why do it?
All these multimedia hype on movies has gotten to the point were now when you hear that a new movie is coming out you also get: trading cards, book adaptations, comic book adaptations, toys, candy, music CDs, Music Videos, Video Games, Making of the movie documentaries, and a whole list of other stuff. (I doubt when George Lucas was writing Star Wars, he thought that kids would be wearing underwear with his name on them and the pictures of the characters he created)
What do you think of all the products linked to movies we have now?
The worst license to movie ratio in the UK at the moment is Monsters Inc, every time you turn the TV on theres some advert that boast "Together with Monsters Inc we're making the world a better place!" thats from the Powergen advert, what the hell has Powergen got to do with Monsters Inc.
Licensed movie stuff.......how it moves, depends on the degree of movie suckage. Also, the sheer commercial luggage that comes with a flick these days, make me cynical...well, more so then useual....and it makes me want no part of it. Some ship models are cool (X-wing, Enterprise A, Starfury,ect), but i don't get a lot of Character stuff. The last one, last year, was a Spirit Figure i got couse i'm a Will Eisner fan. And on that note, it worked for me, because it wasen't part of some Corperate money gouge, but a cool representation of a favored Hero. The expectation of profits is just greed. The Spirit was not part of that, at least to me, and so i let my nostalgia fork over the modest price of $15 for the dude.