A woman came in today and said "minerals are the very heart of the scifi and fantasy genres, even if we don't know it. For instance, minerals lay at the heart of every lightsaber. So, why don't you market some of your minerals as such; lightsaber crystals, elfstones, Skyrim soul gems, etc?"
I don't because I can't, correct? I can't just slap a picture of Darth Vader on a tub of Turtle Wax and sell it as Sith Armor Polish. I can't carve a staff, put runes on it, and call it Allanon's Staff. I don't even think I can even make a sign in my store saying "Amethysts, like what Mace Windu had in his lightsaber". I could carve a generic wizard wand, put runes on it, and have a mineral at the top. I could potentially contact Terry Brooks, show him some of my tumbled minerals, and ask him if he'd sell a pouch of them alongside his books, but that's not going to happen.
I wonder why that's never happened, though? I have read countless works of fiction that feature minerals as the main plot point, but not one (to my knowledge) have offered a mineral with their books, not even a low grade couple buck single terminated citrine, which around here, a low grade one the size of your pinkie costs about $3. I never realized how important merchandise is. Star Wars merchandise has brought in double the revenue of the movies, because merchandise takes an intangible thing, like a movie world, and puts it in the palm of your hand. Hmm, now I have ideas, if I ever get off my butt and publish the fantasy book that I've been writing for over a decade.
Anyway, you can't do what my customer was suggesting, correct? I'm not a lawyer, but common sense dictates that I can't just take a black Bic, put some type of decal on it, and market it as Darth Vader's cigarette lighter. Hmm Darth Vader might not have been a good fit, maybe a better one would have been that robot guy with the smoker's cough. Anyway, you can't just take someone's intellectual property like that, correct? If you could, you'd see Jabba the Hutt hookahs at every head shop across the country. Then George Lucas would be suing the bejesus out of everyone.
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