Burger King is handling the Mando merchandising? Uh oh. The alliance between Burger King and Lucasfilm hasn’t been a thing since “Return of the Jedi” (says the kid who spent the summer of 1980 collecting the very well-done “Empire Strikes Back” glasses), and for the last 35 years, Burger King tie-ins were and are warnings that a film is in trouble. I truly legitimately hope I’m wrong, but I had souvenir Burger King “Last Action Hero” cups for years that said otherwise. (Oh, and I have stories about the massive Pepsico tie-in blitz from 1999: I was a technical writer at Frito-Lay in 2000 up in the VP suite, and I heard STORIES.)
Oh, and on both the watching party and on J.W. Rinzler, I'm starting a watching party series myself over at Twitch with the same idea (whether you're watching it on a streaming service or on DVD, you're on your own because copyright holders go after stuff shared on Twitch all the time) and Rinzler will feature prominently when I run "Alien." I sincerely regret that I only found out about him about a week before he died, because man oh man could he research the hell out of a production book. (He did the definitive shooting guides for "Alien" and "Aliens" before he died, and he did such a good job of noting the day-by-day filming issues and conflicts that I'm honestly surprised either film got finished. As for his "Sounds of Star Wars," I still recommend it very highly for anybody interested in sound effects work, even if the little sound box on the side doesn't work. If it does, then they're really in trouble.)
Wasn't there Burger King tie-ins for the prequels? I distinctly remember an inflatable Darth Vader on the roof of my local Burger King when Revenge of the Sith was in theaters back in 2005.
I honestly don't remember: all I remember was the fussing about how there was nearly nothing as far as Episode 3 tie-ins compared to the first two. (I'm also old enough to remember when the only tie-ins for the first movie came from Burger King...back when the nearest Burger King to me was almost 50 miles away.) All I know for sure was that Pepsico lost in excess of $1 billion compared to what Lucasfilm promised on Episode One, and with Lucasfilm increasing the royalty rate to where there was no way to make a profit on most products, that's when the suits decided that they were going to pass on the full blitz, including Yum Foods (at that time, still called "TriCon"), for Episode Two. (The only tie-ins other than action figures I remember for Episode Three was that Frito gave things one last shot with big standups in the fronts of grocery stores the week the movie came out, complete with sound chips that played sound effects and music when people passed by. I learned at my local Tom Thumb that the staff got so burned out on hearing it over and over that they "accidentally" disabled the motion sensor and nobody ever turned it back on.)
Burger King is handling the Mando merchandising? Uh oh. The alliance between Burger King and Lucasfilm hasn’t been a thing since “Return of the Jedi” (says the kid who spent the summer of 1980 collecting the very well-done “Empire Strikes Back” glasses), and for the last 35 years, Burger King tie-ins were and are warnings that a film is in trouble. I truly legitimately hope I’m wrong, but I had souvenir Burger King “Last Action Hero” cups for years that said otherwise. (Oh, and I have stories about the massive Pepsico tie-in blitz from 1999: I was a technical writer at Frito-Lay in 2000 up in the VP suite, and I heard STORIES.)
Oh, and on both the watching party and on J.W. Rinzler, I'm starting a watching party series myself over at Twitch with the same idea (whether you're watching it on a streaming service or on DVD, you're on your own because copyright holders go after stuff shared on Twitch all the time) and Rinzler will feature prominently when I run "Alien." I sincerely regret that I only found out about him about a week before he died, because man oh man could he research the hell out of a production book. (He did the definitive shooting guides for "Alien" and "Aliens" before he died, and he did such a good job of noting the day-by-day filming issues and conflicts that I'm honestly surprised either film got finished. As for his "Sounds of Star Wars," I still recommend it very highly for anybody interested in sound effects work, even if the little sound box on the side doesn't work. If it does, then they're really in trouble.)
Wasn't there Burger King tie-ins for the prequels? I distinctly remember an inflatable Darth Vader on the roof of my local Burger King when Revenge of the Sith was in theaters back in 2005.
I honestly don't remember: all I remember was the fussing about how there was nearly nothing as far as Episode 3 tie-ins compared to the first two. (I'm also old enough to remember when the only tie-ins for the first movie came from Burger King...back when the nearest Burger King to me was almost 50 miles away.) All I know for sure was that Pepsico lost in excess of $1 billion compared to what Lucasfilm promised on Episode One, and with Lucasfilm increasing the royalty rate to where there was no way to make a profit on most products, that's when the suits decided that they were going to pass on the full blitz, including Yum Foods (at that time, still called "TriCon"), for Episode Two. (The only tie-ins other than action figures I remember for Episode Three was that Frito gave things one last shot with big standups in the fronts of grocery stores the week the movie came out, complete with sound chips that played sound effects and music when people passed by. I learned at my local Tom Thumb that the staff got so burned out on hearing it over and over that they "accidentally" disabled the motion sensor and nobody ever turned it back on.)