Fictional Manifesting

[tfabris]

There should be a name for this practice: the act of creating an entire retail company with the same name as a fictional company portrayed in a movie. This is something distictly different from simple Merchandising, where you create obvious tie-in products.

The prime example of this practice is Viacom's calculated and deliberate creation of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, which didn't exist until after the movie. I can think of one other off the top of my head: Willy Wonka chocolates. But I'm having trouble coming up with others, even though I know they exist. Anyone have examples?

As much as Lucas is a genius at merchandising, we still haven't seen the Incom space fighter company appear yet, although I wouldn't put it past him to have something like that on a back burner somewhere. Perhaps he's just waiting for Branson to get the tech perfected.

Discussing this here in the car, omnisti and I have decided this practice should be called Fictional Manifesting. If no one knows of a better term, or a term that's already in use, I propose this be adopted as the standard term.

Then we can use the term for cross-lnking in Wikipedia.

Comments

[arjache.livejournal.com]

Maybe Yoyodyne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne)? Wikipedia lists one real-life company named after it, and there also appears to be this racing gear company (http://www.yoyodyneti.com/), which seems fitting. Although, that's different because it's not a marketing tie-in.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking of something where they actually make/sell the thing they did in the film. So Yoyodyne doesn't count, at least for the moment.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

TV Tropes has Defictionalization (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Defictionalization), which is more general but includes the Wonka and Bubba-Gump examples.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Yup, definitely more general than what I was thinking. That TVTRopes did mention the other example I missed which was Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, although that's on such a small scale that it's more of just a standard merch tie-in.

The defictionalization entry puts things in the list that are outside of my scope, such as a guy building a Gundam in his garage.

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

There's the search engine (www.search-wise.net) Rose Tyler uses to find information about the Doctor, which I gather the BBC built for such purposes.

And there's cross-pollination, where Weyland-Yutani (the corporation from Alien) made some of the Independent Army equipment in Firefly.

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Cat Valente has written a novel that she mentioned in her book Palimpsest. So she's manifested one of her own ideas.


(I don't think any of these quite qualify. But I'm bored.)

[nimuejohn.livejournal.com]

In a similar vein, following the "Friendface" episode of The IT Crowd, someone put up a website for http://friendface.co.uk/ (http://friendface.co.uk/). However, it appears the Reynholm Industries blocks use of social networking sites. ;>

[trektone.livejournal.com]

This barely counts, if at all: the Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton had a Quark's Bar named after the DS9 series place.

[trektone.livejournal.com]

It's in the tie-in category, more like it.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Right. Unless Quark's was actually on a space station, it's not the kind of thing I'm thinking of. I've been to the Quark's in Vegas, and space isn't supposed to be that hot. Or smell like cigarettes.

Torrey's web site example counts, if it's a search engine that actually searches things. That sort of thing is done all the time, but it only counts if the end-result web site really does the thing it did in the movie. Usually when they register a domain like that, it's an alternate reality game promotion or just an ad for the movie. Still, it's only a few bucks to register a domain name, so if that's all they did, it doesn't really fall under the scope of creating a whole new company just to market a product that was fictional until the company was created.

That TVTropes article has some fascinating ones. I did not know about Holiday Inn, which might be the largest scale example. It also reminds me of the Mighty Ducks, another very high profile example.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

And TVTropes also reminds me that wetriffs.com is a small-scale but perfectly valid example that we all watched materialize. (albeit for a webcomic rather than a movie).

It's too bad that the TVTropes list contains so many things that are simply cheap merch tie-ins or fan-made items. Otherwise the term "defictionalization" would be perfect.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Someone is making the Tru Blood soft drink after its appearance in "True Blood" - IIRC it's a company that specialises in that kind of thing.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the TVTropes page is full of food examples. omnisti even mentioned seeing cans of Duff Beer marketed here in the States.

But in both cases, those aren't the same products they were in the films, they're just soft drinks with marketing tie-in labeling, not actually synthetic blood and bad beer. So it doesn't count, at least not in my strict definition. Those definitely fall into the plain-old "Merch" category.

There's an English company that actually makes a Duff Beer, but it's not the one that K saw. Still doesn't count since it's not actually the Duff Brewery.

For that matter, Bertie Bott's doesn't really count since that's just a sub-line of the longstanding Jelly Belly brand, even bearing the Jelly Belly logo if I recall, and the Wonka candies are even a stretch because that brand is simply owned by larger multinational candy companies (a few different ones over the years).

[madfilkentist]

Does Bertie Bott's include completely off-the-wall flavors that wouldn't normally be associated with jelly beans? If so, then I'd say it counts.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Jelly bellies already have off the wall flavors that can't be found in other jelly bean brands. That's their gimmick. They essentially fiddle around with artificial flavors until something good comes up, then name it. So leveraging that into the Bertie Botts tie-in wasn't a stretch and didn't require creating a new company. I have to admit, when I saw the first film, I was expecting to see Jelly Bellies marketed that way, and was even suspicious that the fictional brand was JK's nod to the real company anyway.

I guess there aren't as many actual "companies" doing this as I supected, it's almost all merch tie ins making it LOOK like a new company.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

In the 1980s there was a small electronics company in the UK called Sirius Cybernetics. I'm not sure they ever achieved the Genuine People Personality feature, though. Let alone putting it into their *products*... (*BADOOM*, *TISH*! =:o} )

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Heh, there's one we don't want to see.

[saladofdoom.livejournal.com]

There was a fictional sausage fast food company that was used in the demos and tutorials of either Powerpoint or Publisher, don't remember which. It was Schultzy's Sausage.