Merch madness: 17 of the most bizarre movie tie-in products ever

The summer of 1989 is often credited for a huge uptick in movie merchandising, thanks in large part to Tim Burton’s Batman, which minted money by slapping a Bat symbol on everything that would fit on a store shelf. , released a week before Batman, wasn’t going to leave those summer dollars on the table, so Columbia Pictures launched an extensive-ish marketing tie-in campaign of their own. One of its most questionable products is this all-but-forgotten Ghost Blasters keychain from Hardees. Armed with a sound chip that plays distinct sounds from the movie, the Ghost Blasters keychain is seemingly aimed at helping friends and/or colleagues warn of “ghosts” with the press of a button. In reality, the keychain just annoyed the hell out of folks with its lame sound effects. But at least there’s Slimer art on the front that’s cool.

Before SqueezeIts disappeared from the market—mourned by no one— their death rattle ironically capitalized on a sequel to a movie about a resurrected extinct species. was one of the biggest hits of summer 1997, and this piece of merch—blood-colored juice labeled Chucklin’ Cherry—was one of that summer’s biggest misfires. The dino-shaped bottles were kid-friendly, but given the bloodletting in the movie, the product was especially tone deaf.

We understand the wisdom of this tie-in; the series is kid-friendly, pancakes are kid-friendly, so what could go wrong? The molds are made of silicone and, once filled with the Harry Potter pancake mix, they sit on a preheated griddle until your kids try and remove one of them too early and burn their fingers. Of course any pancake mix will do, so if you’re curious what the culinary advantage is of using Harry Potter pancake mix, there is none. , admittedly the seller of some awfully cool kitchen gadgets, also created pancake mold tie-ins for Star Wars, the Grinch and Snoopy. So if you love movies and pancake molds, Williams-Sonoma, for some reason, has you covered.

Kids sure do grow up fast nowadays so maybe we should reevaluate the product that implores boys who are at least three years old to, “Lather up and have fun with your Transformers shave set.” That’s actual wording on the back of the box of the Transformers Play Shave set containing an electric shaver (non-working, thank God), body soap, lather brush, lip-balm, after shave, and a comb. It’s hard to imagine a product containing so many items that a 5-year-old would have no interest in, other than to eat it, drink it, or break it. It’s also hard to imagine a product containing so many items that a Transformer would have no use for, unless Optimus Prime has been secretly manscaping for the benefit of his long-running Hollywood career.

The word “dumbbell” not only describes the worst piece of merch created to promote 2011’s , but also the person who came up with this cockamamie idea. Yes, it’s the Thor dumbbell with alarm clock function (two AAA batteries not included). The first question that comes to mind is why a dumbbell would need an alarm clock built into it: to do arm curls in your sleep until the alarm clock wakes you up? The product was pegged to an in-theater contest, where one lucky winner would add this piece of Marvel history to their workout and sleep routine. It’s possible one could use it as an actual piece of workout equipment, although if Thor really used this thing he wouldn’t be able to lift a can of Molson let alone the mighty Mjölnir.

Despite being Paramount’s crown jewel franchise, Star Trek’s marketing tie-in presence has been historically low key when compared to other blockbuster big-screen properties. Perhaps the Final Frontier’s merch imprint is less than stellar because the studio is still getting over the shame of rolling out this Silly Putty knockoff with the release of 1979’s . There’s nothing very Star Trek about this item, other than the packaging. It’s just blue putty that doesn’t appear in the movie or remotely in the vicinity of it. It does include a packet of “Magic Putty Transfer Fluid” which sounds dirty but probably isn’t. While it presumably performs exactly like the dimethyl siloxane, silica, Thixatrol ST, polydimethylsiloxane, decamethyl cyclopentasiloxane, glycerine, and titanium dioxide used to create the original Silly Putty, this product’s inclusion in TMP’s consumer products push is still worthy of a Spock-like arched eyebrow.

When we think of a delicious balanced breakfast for kids, who doesn’t think of cereal, orange juice and toast made using a toaster that recalls a child murderer burned alive by the parents of his young victims. Hence the toaster. The marketing copy for this item is so bad it’s good: “He terrorized your dreams while you slept … and now Freddy Krueger haunts your breakfast when you wake up.” That said, each slice of toast has burn marks in the shape of Freddy and his deadly claws which, okay we’ll admit it, is kinda cool.

Paramount and Nintendo should have taken a page from Regina George’s book and stopped trying to promote a movie about catty high school cliques in the least appropriate way possible: a video game. Turns out, though, the Nintendo DS game never really happened, a pretty fabulous story recounted in great detail . The broad strokes: it was scheduled to be released in Europe in 2009 and in the U.S. in 2010 until both releases were canceled. Its existence became the stuff of legend, mostly for people whose definition of “legend” is quite loose. Eventually, a ROM of the game surfaced to the satisfaction of cultural archeologists and Lindsay Lohan fans everywhere. The good news is that the initial cancellation of the game proved that in this era of shameless marketing, someone was brave enough to say, “you know what, this tie-in is too awful, even for us.” And we can all raise a glass of Jurassic Park SqueezeIt Juice to that.