For years, the entertainment industry has harbored a dirty little secret: Sometimes reviewers are sent friendly reminders of upcoming titles in the form of free gifts. What's the difference between these items and bribes? Not much. Of course, the highly ethical, unswayable critics of The A.V. Club find these cheap stabs at manipulation absolutely… adorable! (There's something inherently amusing about a bribe consisting of awful, inedible food or a dysfunctional wind-up toy.) Here are some of the more interesting items we've received recently, and what we thought of them.
Item: An eight-ounce bottle of "hand & body lotion," with a label that says in block letters, "It rubs the lotion on its skin"
Promoting: A new DVD release of The Silence Of The Lambs
Relevance to product promoted: Reasonably high. Lotion doesn't play much of a part in the film's serial-killers-vs.-FBI plot, but the line quoted on the label is one of the film's most memorable, and most-repeated.
Item quality on a scale of 1 (instantly trashable) to 5 (cool even if it weren't free): 4. The lotion itself is a little greasy, but it has a pleasantly citrus-y smell, and the cute little attached tag, which evokes the other half of the famous line—"It reviews the Silence Of The Lambs Collector's Edition DVD or it gets the hose"—is pretty hilarious, and gives the bottle a high office pass-around amusement value. The jury is still out on whether regular use of the lotion will make the user's skin more pliant and useful to serial killers making woman-suits.
Item: Plastic gloves, scrubbing cleanser, and a wash pail
Promoting: The Mommy Dearest "Hollywood Royalty Edition" DVD
Relevance to product promoted: Reasonable. This cleaning kit riffs hilariously on Joan Crawford's obsessive-compulsive need to keep her house immaculate. 'Cause what's funnier than mental illness and child abuse? It should be noted, however, that the Mommie Dearest promotional cleaning kit contains no wire hangers. Ever.
Item quality: 4. The Mommie Dearest cleanser is Ajax Bleach Cleanser with a new label slapped on. The dodgy-looking fake-fur-lined rubber gloves are almost glamorous. Finally, you can clean your house in the gayest manner possible.
Item: A severed, bloody fake ear in a Styrofoam box
Promoting: The theatrical release of 2006's The Hills Have Eyes remake
Relevance to product promoted: Reasonably appropriate. It's gory, graphic, unpleasant, and tawdry, just like the film. It also amounts to fair warning: Anyone who can't handle the bloody plastic version of a severed body part is probably too weak-stomached for the cinematic version.
Item quality: 1. In fact, it was so instantly trashable that we trashed it before taking pictures of it. Alas. (Also, it made us feel guilty looking at the thing, and imagining some poor intern tasked with squirting fake blood over hundreds of rubber ears and shipping them to unsuspecting people.)
Item: A helmet
Promoting: FX's Iraqi war drama Over There
Relevance to product promoted: Perhaps too high. Like the protective armor given to our troops in Iraq, this laughably cheap helmet is woefully inadequate to the task at hand. Unlike our troops' protective armor, however, the Over There helmet at least owns up to its inadequacies with a sticker that reads "Warning! This Is A Toy. Does Not Provide Protection. Caution: Helmet Are Not Safety Protective Devices." [sic.]
Item quality: 2. This flimsy piece of plastic couldn't protect the wearer from squishy foam Nerf weapons, let alone shrapnel or cluster bombs.
Item: A Sony Discman, cardboard pyramid, and soundtrack CD
Promoting: The Da Vinci Code DVD release
Relevance to product promoted: Alternately high and bewildering. The pyramid-like case containing the film's press kit and score certainly recalls the film's climax, but the Discman is nearly as cluelessly anachronistic as Tom Hanks' modified mullet.
Item quality: 3. The Da Vinci Code pyramid seems solid enough, and while the Discman has yet to break, its promotional Da Vinci Code sticker has faded beyond recognition. Damn you, Sony! Damn you and the cheap stickers you affix to your absurdly over-the-top promotional items! Just for that, we're going to retroactively give The Da Vinci Code a negative review. Oh wait, we already did. Never mind.
Item: Unclosable CD packaging for Of Montreal's 2007 album, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Four overlapping petals bearing deliciously psychedelic, kaleidoscope-like patterns fold in over the CD. A little circle of adhesive is supposed to hold it all together, but it wears out pretty quick. Instead of liner notes, a matching paper disc inside includes the album credits, which don't take up much space, because mastermind Kevin Barnes played nearly everything on the album.
Promoting: The album
Relevance to product promoted: Well, it does contain the product, however precariously.
Item quality: 4. The CD's vulnerability may lead to heartbreak for disorganized indie nerds everywhere, but once the songs are safe inside your computer, there's no reason not to enjoy the package's acid-scorched novelty.
Item: A black-and-red Essential Dating Kit with "foreplay dice," red and orange condoms, antibacterial moist wipes, gel lubricant, and a "Just Do Me" breath mint
Promoting: Date Movie
Relevance to product promoted: High. Date Movie apparently involves dating of some sort, and the "Essential Dating Kit" provides all the essentials for the low-rent lothario in everyone. Just like the movie it's promoting, the "Essential Dating Kit" is cheap, sleazy, mildly ribald, and painfully unfunny. All that's missing are excessive clumsy references to pop-culture phenomena from the past 20 years.
Item quality: 1. The cheaply packaged foreplay dice are particularly creepy, with their seemingly homemade packaging and cryptic tagline, "Passion And Sexy Action With Each Roll." Use these items at your own peril, or risk having a painful conversation somewhere down the line where you confess to your child that his or her entire unplanned existence stems from reliance on a faulty orange promotional Date Movie condom.
Item: Beanbag "Bloo," a 12-inch stuffed blue blob with embroidered eyes and a friendly smirk
Promoting: The DVD release of season one of Cartoon Network's Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends
Relevance to product promoted: Unquestionable. It's a squishy, 3-D version of one of the main characters.
Item quality: 4. It's a well-made toy—the only thing wrong with it is that it's completely useless. But its weirdly pleasant silky texture and gooshy bean interior may cause otherwise-irascible TV critics to sneak into the office when no one's looking, and hug it on the sly.
Item: A shower radio with a little American Idol logo on it (Note: Not the microphone-shaped model)
Promoting: American Idol
Relevance to product promoted: Obvious. Belting along to interminable Top 40 hits—even while not in the car or the club—will help doomed wannabes practice the "frantic post-rejection medley" technique so popular among the show's less-fortunate contestants.
Item quality: 2. Stamped on the radio's generic grey surface, the Idol logo is entirely perfunctory, and the piece of plastic that attaches it to the showerhead seems flimsy and unreliable. Be prepared to step on it and break some vertebrae during the third chorus of Jason Mraz's "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)."
Item: A weird little wind-up woman with spider legs
Promoting: The DVD release of the Russian fantasy-horror film Night Watch
Relevance to product promoted: Tolerable. A similar, though far more active, little spider-legged woman briefly appears in the film, as a sort of short-lived magical defense device.
Item quality: 2. Once you've seen the film, it's actually a less creepy, nigh-incomprehensible toy—the film itself is still creepy and nigh-incomprehensible, but the little spider-legged woman is just one little touch of strange among innumerable many. To fans and tyros alike, though, the toy is still going to be a cheap hunk of plastic that doesn't work very well, and tends to stall, go in jerky circles, or get its legs caught on everything around it, including whatever surface it's traveling on.
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