Merchandise and film

[Simon]

Hello,

For the past week I have had some relatives visiting and, as seems to be
the way of things nowadays, the conversation got around to Harry Potter. We
were talking about the film and the merchandise. The group talking about
these things included my eleven-year-old cousin, a fairly typical young boy
and some of his comments were what got me thinking the most.


To begin with we had the Argos, UK catalogue store, open looking for some
stuff and came across the Harry Potter section. In this section is a
reasonable collection of collectibles and games. Talking with the eleven
year old (EYO) his comments were most telling. He looked at it and said
that none of it appealed to him. That all the toys were ok looking, but
were the sort of things he would have played with 5 years ago.

Action figures and cuddly toys are things more often linked with the 5-8
age range, or possibly even younger, but for what reason would people of
this age be reading the books? The books are definitely not aimed at this
age and my view is, agreed with by some parents of children of that age
group that I know, that the books are not suitable for children of that
age. The books are for the 10+ range (I refuse to put an upper age range on
this, so that it helpfully includes myself and the odd member of this group
who may be a couple of years, or more, older than me).

This continued into a discussion of the clothing, which seems to be
available to fit anyone (from young to old). At the time the EYO was
wearing a Nike t-shirt and his older brother (13) a QuickSilver t-shirt. At
that age the kids seem more interested in having the brand names displayed
prominently and having Harry Potter instead does not even enter their
thought process. It would just 'not be cool to be wearing such stuff'.

The discussion then went from there to talk about who the film will be
aimed at. If the book is aimed at the same age group as the book then we
will be looking at those of the 10-12 age range going to see it. This is
one of the most fickle age groups to appeal to. The books originally sold
in the UK on the back of recommendations by people of this age group to
their friends. If the first person out of a group who sees the film says it
is crap then the rest will not bother to see it. Quite likely it will not
even 'be cool' to see it.

Also tellingly was the reaction to who has been cast in the film. While
many of the adults around here may be familiar with the work of the adult
cast of the film it seems that the children do not. The children chosen
have little acting ability and so are unknown but the adults involved in
the film have, in general, been involved with films and television
programmes that younger children are unlikely to have seen. Many pick films
to watch by the cast list, but in this case there is no one to use to sell
the film to the youngsters.


So where does this leave the film and merchandise? Well there have been
reports that the merchandise is not selling well. Wherever I have been
recently there seems to have been large stacks of it and very few, if any,
people even looking at it. Possibly there could be the same lake of
interest in the film as well. What would happen if the film was a flop?


Finally I leave you with another comment on a similar theme. In the UK
bookshops there are tons of copies of GoF in paperback. They seem not to be
selling. If it is two years between GoF and the next book will that mean
that the 'Harry Potter fad' will have passed? Will many have lost interest
and moved onto the next big thing?



Simon
--
"Some people seem to need reminding that wearing a swimsuit in the vicinity
of a man in shorts does not constitute a marriage ceremony, not even in
Mauritius" - J. Rowling
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