Children's column: Love it or hate it - books and merchandising

Written by Nicolette Jones

Friday, 18 September 2009 06:00

As Horrid Henry and Perfect Peter are about to argue the merits of Marmite, and the jars will offer free copies of the books, the promotion invites us to reflect on the use of commercial deals to encourage children’s reading. We have already had books by authors including Jeremy Strong and Anne Fine given away in cereal packets. We have had deals with Walker’s Crisps offering free books in exchange for tokens (and clearing a lot of crisp packet litter off the streets), and the Times exchanged tokens for Books for Schools. And the Horrid Henry promotion follows a (controversial) enlisting of Paddington, famously fond of marmalade, in a conversion to Marmite, as if the furry Peruvian immigrant would ever be so fickle.

Using other products to promote books, or books to promote other products, is not quite the same thing as merchandising: all those Charlie and Lola/Snowman/Maisie/Winnie-the-Pooh mugs and lunchboxes are a separate issue. As was Harry Potter on everything from board games to fancy dress. Though the HP chocolate frogs were an interesting development – an ingenious case of commerce producing something that had existed only in fiction, since the moving image cards they came with tried to recreate a product of Rowling’s imagination. Bertie Bott’s Any Flavour Beans were similar, though strictly speaking they were still just jelly beans; there was no evidence that any of them actually tasted of earwax.

There is perhaps a moral issue here – should the unqualified benefits of reading be tainted by business interests (other than publishers’ and booksellers’)? Perhaps the answer is that if the product also promotes the book (as Marmite is doing), it is all to the good.

I wonder if publishers of the future will have whole departments trying to marry fictional characters with products for mutual promotion? Not just at the level of Peter Rabbit enthusing about carrots or Alex Rider endorsing torches (or ironing boards to ski down mountains on) but at a more subtle level, like the Marmite campaign, of matching ideas: "You either love it or you hate it" being mirrored by the contrast between Henry and Peter. What would those matches be? Let me know your brilliant ideas.

Has anyone noticed, though, that if you like Marmite, it puts you on Perfect Peter’s team? And what child would ever want to be? I suppose the pitch is aimed at parents after all.

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