Defictionalization

Tuesday, August 25th, 2015

Pete Hottelet’s Omni Consumer Products — named after the mega-corporation in Robocopdefictionalizes products from movies and TV into real products.

He started with Brawndo, the “thirst mutilator” from Idiocracy, and moved on to Sex Panther cologne and Fight Club bar soap.

His biggest hit was True Blood, which he licensed before the show premiered:

It would have been easy and cost-efficient to consider the tie-in a novelty and use plastic bottles. Instead, Hottelet used heavy-duty glass to match what viewers see on-screen. Each pack weighed eight pounds, adding to shipping costs. But Hottelet figured consumers didn’t want a tacky approximation. “The value,” he says, “is in a perfect 1:1 replica bottle.”

True Blood wound up being a hit for HBO, lasting seven seasons—which amounted to 80 hour-long commercials for Hottelet’s bottles. Priced at $4 each, the four-packs sold in the hundreds of thousands and became the biggest hit of his six-product inventory. Though Hottelet usually targets online venues, the cultural impact of the series allowed him to jump the beverage queue at major retailers, including 7-11. “The big drink companies basically own shelf space,” he says. “Creating a brand from scratch, the chances of getting into stores were almost nothing. It took Red Bull years to do it.”

His bet on Stay-Puft marshmallows has not paid off though, as the Ghostbusters sequel been delayed a few years.

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