Fandoms Gone Wild

Fans of movies, television shows, and video games often express their love by buying merchandise affiliated with the show. There’s nothing wrong with showing your love of pop culture through buying products, but there might be something wrong with some of the products. These offerings are fun for adults, but they’re not quite kid-friendly or safe for work. Plus, something just seems a little bit odd that I can’t put my finger on…

Minecraft has quite a following and has spawned many pixilated, cube-like products. One such item is the plush Creeper, a stuffed version of the sneaky, exploding green monster. The little fuzzy creature might be almost cute, except that Kotaku writer Mike Fahey noted that it looks like “the Incredible Hulk’s junk” when in its packaging. Once out of the box, you can see that it has four legs, but inside the box, it has a head, a shaft for a body, and two stubby front legs.

To be fair, even the pixilated Creeper in the game looks kind of like male genitalia from the front – it’s not the toymaker’s fault. Anyone who is not familiar with Minecraft may think it’s something dirty, and the noises it makes don’t help. When you squeeze the plush Creeper, it hisses, then makes an exploding sound. Again, this is straight out of the game. Creepers sneak up on users silently, then hiss immediately before they explode, destroying avatars and buildings. If a non-gamer were to think this was a green sexual organ, the noise could sound like it was trying to imitate a different kind of “explosion.”

One Etsy seller has put a sweet twist on Breaking Bad’s favorite chemistry project. Los Pulgas Hermanos (a play on the show’s Los Pollos Hermanos), sells Heisenberg Blue Glass rock candy, a non-narcotic version of the crystal meth that Walter White so expertly makes on the show. It’s cotton candy-flavored and comes in small baggies, looking like authentic product. If you want to supply all of your friends with the sweet treat, you can purchase the Dealer Pack. It comes with a kilo of the candy, enough to fill twelve little baggies. Good luck explaining your baggies of meth-like rock candy sitting on the passenger seat if you get pulled over while eating this sweet snack.

One promotion for 2009 movie version of the Watchmen graphic novel was a line of blue condoms. The packaging said “We’re Society’s Only Protection.” Well, the condom is protecting you, though in a much different way than the Watchmen ever would…although if no one is watching the Watchmen, they could be watching your bedroom, no? Since the condoms were translucent blue, they could make a particular body part on the user look like Dr. Manhattan, the blue being who walked around naked for most of the movie.

Sure, the condoms are actually not safe for work, and the rock candy isn’t marketed toward children, but there’s just something odd about each of these products. Some are original ideas, one is just bad packaging, but these are some very different choices in video game, television, and movie tie-ins.