Item: A hideous paper mask bearing Rowan Atkinson's face, complete with vapid smile and swarthy stubble
Promoting: The upcoming book Mr. Bean's Guide To France and simultaneous film Mr. Bean's Holiday
Relevance to product promoted: Presumably negligible, unless the film contains a V For Vendetta-like sequence where an entire crowd of people dons Mr. Bean masks in order to stymie the fascistic manipulations of a totalitarian state.
Item quality: 1. It's a flimsy paperboard mask with cheap rubber bands attached, unsuitable for anything but making co-workers twitch via its sheer ugliness. Or alternately, for making yourself twitch—just leave it on your desk and see how long you can keep working with its eerily empty, soulless eyeholes watching you.
Item: A plastic turkey baster.
Promoting: Christopher Guest's recent film For Your Consideration.
Relevance to product promoted: Bafflingly unclear. Frankly, For Your Consideration was a turkey, especially compared with Guest's previous films. But that probably wasn't the point. Home For Purim, the film-within-a-film at the heart of For Your Consideration, is definitely a turkey, but is that enough of a connection? Eventually, pandering studio execs change the title to Home For Thanksgiving, which would imply a turkey connection, but… Are we overthinking this?
Item quality: 1. A plastic turkey baster? Seriously?
Item: An overflowing tray of Thanksgiving crap: french-fried onions, a bag of miniature marshmallows, a baster (good Lord, this is the year of the promotional turkey baster!), cornbread stuffing, powdered mashed potatoes, pumpkin-pie filling, jellied cranberry sauce, yams and green beans
Promoting: 10 Items Or Less
Relevance to product promoted: Unsettling. The TBS sitcom 10 Items Or Less takes place in a grocery store, and this big tray of promotional Thanksgiving crap belongs in the reject bin of the nastiest Aldi ever encountered. It'd be tempting to give away this crap to the local food pantry, but even the homeless and poverty-stricken have standards.
Item quality: 1. None of this food seems remotely edible. What human being in their right mind eats powdered mashed potatoes? (That overly optimistic "Homemade Has Met Its Match!" tagline isn't fooling anyone.) The 10 Items Or Less Thanksgiving tray does for food what the Date Movie Dating Kit does for sex: makes it look repellent and stomach-churning.
Item: A plastic basketball hoop and rubber ball
Promoting: The theatrical release of the Aardman Animations film Flushed Away
Relevance to product promoted: Nonexistent. Both hoop and ball have "Flushed Away" printed on them, with sort of a blobby blue pattern meant to suggest water, but neither one really says "Talking rats in an elaborate thrill-ride slash class-conscious children's CGI adventure" in any noticeable way.
Item quality: 3. It's about as well-made as any cheap plastic office-basketball game. But shouldn't it look more like a toilet or something, like all the rest of Flushed Away's advertising tie-ins? Or maybe make a toilet-flushing noise when you sink a sweet lay-up? Wait, on the other hand, maybe it's fine just as it is.
Item: A Snakes On A Plane promotional kit, including a Snakes On A Plane T-shirt, a hat, a little wooden snake-shaped pen, and a prank envelope marked "Rattlesnake Eggs—Caution: Keep in cool place to prevent hatching…" The latter contains a little device designed to rattle threateningly when the envelope is opened. Ha ha, easily startled or extremely gullible critics!
Promoting: The Snakes On A Plane DVD
Relevance to product promoted: Sorta iffy. It's all snake-themed, or at least Snakes On A Plane-themed, but that's about it. Though it does beat the pheromone-frenzied actual poisonous snakes that the promoters probably would have preferred to send all the critics that trashed the film.
Item quality: 4. For a promo package, it's impressively generous. Though it seems a little weird to send so much swag and not the DVD itself. Then again, the film itself was always the weakest part of the whole Snakes On A Plane phenomenon.
Item: Boxer shorts
Promoting: The Family Guy season-five DVD set
Relevance to product promoted: High. These boxer shorts for the um, generously proportioned gentleman contain the vaguely repellent image of Family Guy dad Peter Griffin along with his beloved "Freakin' Sweet" catchphrase. Now, Family Guy fans can use boxer shorts featuring a guy with a chin that looks like testicles to clothe their very own testicles. How freakin' sweet is that? (Answer: Pretty freakin' sweet.)
Item quality: 4. These roomy boxer shorts are surprisingly well-made and durable. Rumor has it that the American Dad promotional boxer shorts are just like the Family Guy promotional boxer shorts, only, you know, not as funny.
Item: Smoking-baby toy
Promoting: The Thank You For Smoking DVD
Relevance to product promoted: Exceedingly high. The smoking baby takes the libertarian pro-smoking ethos of tobacco lobbyist and Thank You For Smoking anti-hero Aaron Eckhart to its logical extreme. Just like Eckhart's character, the smoking baby is morally reprehensible yet strangely winning, and pretty damn funny to boot.
Item quality: 5. The little fucker really smokes, though the resulting fumes reek of incense rather than good old harmless tobacco. Extra props for the pack of tiny baby-sized cigarettes (Awwww! How adorable!) bearing the image of a monkey. Now, a smoking monkey, that'd be crazy.
Item: A five-ounce bottle of Liquid Summer Datil Sauce. The label pictures the face of a chef-hat-clad Florida bluesman, Sauce Boss.
Promoting: The 2006 release of Florida Blues by Sauce Boss And The Ingredients, featuring such bluesy howlers as "Let The Big Dog Eat" and "I'm Cookin'."
Relevance to product promoted: All too direct: In spite of the Boss' recognized guitar chops, most people would only pick up either item on a particularly frivolous trip to the Keys.
Item quality: 3. It tastes a tad watery at first, and follows up with a moderately spicy sting, so while it isn't terrible, it won't be boss of your spice cabinet anytime soon.
Item: Stickers bearing the logo of DJ CX Kidtronik—a girl's gigantic ass bursting out of her jeans, the cheeks forming the eyes of a grinning face
Promoting: CX Kidtronik's 2006 release Krak Attack, on which a slew of guest MCs rhyme incessantly about crack—be it in flesh or rock form—over Kidtronik's beats
Relevance to product promoted: Heavily dependent on loyalty. Sure, the theme is clear, but you'd have to love Kidtronik like a brother to get caught applying this sticker to anything that anyone could see anywhere.
Item quality: 1. Then again, at least the sticker doesn't treat you to the entirety of the album's art, which features not only this logo, but amateur photos of dozens of looming, anonymous, waistband-trouncing asses.
Item: A zombie survival kit. (For surviving zombie attacks, not helping zombies survive.)
Promoting: Max Brooks' book World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War.
Relevance to product promoted: Perfect in every way. The fact that everything in the kit is a real, useful item fits in precisely with Brooks' straight-faced, ongoing pretense that zombies are real, and that mankind is in serious trouble.
Item quality: 5. This is a ridiculously awesome package. It includes a set of foam earplugs and a warning whistle with a built-in working compass; a set of waterproof matches; an elaborate little first-aid kit complete with cold pack, scissors, tweezers, Band-aids, and antiseptic wipes, all in a convenient zippered canvas pouch; a pack of water-purification tablets; a copy of World War Z; and a bonus copy of Brooks' earlier book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From The Living Dead, all in a convenient little waterproof backpack. Score! Critic swag doesn't get any cushier than this.
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