Ask Erik: Episode Fifty-Eight

I thought I'd dig around in my question bin.  There's a question I've been meaning to answer, I just had to do some research before I wanted to state anything as fact.

Because here at Ask Erik, if we don't have our integrity, we have nothing.

To Erik:  What are the worst superhero tie-ins you've ever seen?


As what is probably no surprise to anybody, I have very strong feelings about how products and ads are used to promote things I like.  For instance, back in the 90s, when Pizza Hut had an entire comic book series they sold with pizzas featuring the X-Men, you better believe I was all over that.  Comic books and pizza in a place that, for a long time, still had several arcade machines including Rampage and Street Fighter II?

Oh, and root beer served by the pitcher.

Those were the days.

I consider that one of the better marketing ideas of all time.  On the other end of the spectrum, we have this:

Guest starring Chris Hansen as "what the hell are you doing" man.

So let's break down some tie-ins, commercials, and other uses of superheroes and see if they're good or not.  I'll try to make the split 50-50, but I make no promises.

Let's start with a new one, Evian Water starring Spider-Man and WHAT THE HECK IS THAT THING?

I don't even know where to begin.  First off, if you look in a mirror or window and see a weird Sackboy-esque baby version of yourself, the appropriate response is not "dance contest."  You start looking around for a villain, and if you're lucky it's just Mysterio or Arcade and not that Mephisto is taunting you with the soul of the baby Norman Osborn stole years ago and forgot about.

I mean, to be fair, Spidey does shoot a strand of webbing at the mirror as if to see if it will pass through, but come on, man, there could be anything on the other side waiting to yank you through to some weird mirror dimension.  Maybe you just webbed Dormammu or Annihilus in the face, did you ever stop to consider that?

What the whole thing has to do with water, I have no idea.

I love this one for all the wrong reasons.  See, while I agree that if you can donate blood you should, since it's something hospitals always need, I just love the idea that someone was so desperate for it that they figured out that Spider-Man was a good character to transfuse blood from.  You know with his radioactive spider blood!

Sadly, I can 't change the font to have it all be written in hard rock lightning bolts.

Then again, considering what happened the last time I remember a comic book hero donating blood...

You all thought I was going to say "She-Hulk" right.  Well, I was, but I just wanted a reason to also post this:

"EVERY DOCTOR'S DEGREE WE HAVE!"

Superman, OB/GYN.

Where was I?

Oh right, on the other side of "superheroes teach us about scary medical stuff" we have this:

Holy &$!%.

"Mommy, why are Superman and Wonder Woman sick?"

Moving on.

This one bothered me, if just because you have the chance of a kid misunderstanding this to mean "if I love chocolate, I'm a Nazi."  On the other hand, the Super-Soldier sundae looks like it's too sweet, so I guess I'm siding with the Red Skull, and that's a sentence I never thought I'd have to write.

Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?  Thanks so much, Watchmen.

I'm not even posting a picture of the officially licensed 300 Spartan leather underwear.  Go look it up, ya freaks.

...words fail me.

"Mommy, what happened to Spider-Man?"

"Oh, uh, that isn't Spider-Man, sweetie."

"Yes it is, nobody else has webs on their costume."

Here, kid, look at this advertisement for soundproof windows showing Peter Parker on the toilet instead.  Or, if you're a DC fan...

Considering they're not just blocking sounds from being heard by normal hearing, but even superhearing is powerless against them.  They must have been invented by Lex Luthor.