Plastic STICKS. Oh sure, they’re labelled as wands, but I always pictured the wands in the books as magicians wands (and the movie’s not out here yet), and these hunks of plastic look like the sticks in my backyard. Only plastic.
I mean, come ON! I used to like Harry, but everywhere I go now there’s plastic sticks, edible owls… it’s worse than star wars!
Having worked in the children’s section of a large bookstore, I can vouch for the existence of freakin Harry Potter OWL POO DISSECTION KITS. Now your child can experience the joy of dissecting an owl pellet (yes I know it’s not technically poo) with crappy plastic instruments with the Harry Potter name on them!
Funny, we didn’t sell many of those last Christmas, though someone did buy the $70 trivia game.
As further proof of my amazing prophetic powers, let me point out that a few years ago, before I had ever heard of HP, I wondered whether the trend towards “extreme candy” (super-sour this, atomic-hot that) would lead to feces-flavored jellybeans. I think earwax- and booger-flavored HP jellybeans count as a definite hit.
-Ben
Please don’t accuse me of getting WHOOSHED, here, but I was in Toys “Backwards R” Us yesterday, getting Michaela’s Xmas wish list entered into their computer*, and I saw the bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans ($2.99 for four ounces of Jelly Bellys – nice work if you can get it, eh?), and I broke into one of the sacks to read the flavor list that was promised to be within. Don’t worry, I didn’t violate the integrity of the packaging, but it was just the standard set of Jelly Belly flavors. The earwax and booger teasers on the outer label were just that: teasers.
I have purchased packages of them and they include black pepper flavor, along with booger, sardine, grass and horseradish. In fact, I have a package here with me now. While I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the booger flavor–can’t bring myself to try it–I can say that the pepper and horseradish taste pretty much like jelly beans with pepper and horseradish flavor added. So,it’s not all just a marketing scheme. Incidentally, the “strange” flaovrs of beans are mostly listed last in the descriptions–at least in the packages I have seen.
Well, no. The action figures are standard for any movie (except Batman, which had the Thomas and Martha Wayne inaction figures). So are the toy sets, happy meals, and sex toys. I guess that’s what the plastic “wands” mentioned in the OP really are…
Seven-part. One for every year he’s at school. Next one due out in June 2002.
I work in a bookshop. Our window is full of Harry Potter stuff at the moment. T-shirts, bookmarks, CDs, games, the lot. At least three times a day I get:
“Do you have Harry Potter?”
No. What is this Potter of which you speak? :rolleyes:
We stopped in Burger King over the weekend. We got a Pippin figure that has a glowing torch (tiny batteries and cheap LEDs are your friends), and you can join it with a gazillion other figures into a grand assembly that does everything when you move the One Ring. There’s also a Burger King crown with the Ring Inscription written on it.
I think a lot of Tolkien fanatics are now breaking downb and crying. The Trilogy seemed so safe from mass-market sleaze before this (Nothing like this happened when the Bakshi rotoscope came out a quarter of a century ago.)
Me, I’ve read the books so many times I’ve lost count. I’m curious to see what happens when this wave of highly specialized, non-“Americanized” (“Sorceror’s Stone”, my butt!) wave crashes upon the General Public. Culture shock, I hope.