Saturday, May 12, 2007

Slighly Over Marketed

While browsing Amazon.com, I came across what must be one of the furthest reaches for marketing of Harry Potter products. It is an actually liscenced Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets fossil kit. It comes with 5 actual fossils as well as an activity to "excavate" a fossil and to imbed something in resin like a piece of amber.
Perhaps my memory is a bit faulty (and I'm sure that a few people would easily be able to corroborate or falsify this) but I'm pretty sure that there are absolutely no mentions of paleontology or fossils in any of the books, much less in the second one. For that matter, sinse when did anybody need to do anything more than mention dinosaurs to make kids interested in a cheap fossil collection? Is there anybody who bought this thing who might not have if it didn't have Harry Potter on it? There are other Harry Potter themed science kits, but they at least have a more plausible tie-in to what the Hogwarts students would be taught.
Oh well, I guess that there really is no stopping marketing execs from taking over every facet of the world around them.

1 comment:

Prehistoric Insanity said...

I'd say it be an alternative method of marketing to Creationist, but they don't like witches much more then Evolution...

Hmmmmm no magic and no science. What the hell makes a Creationist world work exactly?

Off topic yes, but still an important question.

Quite the find you've made here man. I had a good laugh when I first read it on your blog (having no new posts to read I figured I'd comment on this one... oh and ask for more posts :P )

How's life going for you?

Me busy, and insane. However there are hints of hope appearing. I'll fire you off an email when I get the chance