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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Best Buy Ad - 2007

sgI was sent this by newest F.O.A.M. member Britt Schramm(wow, three new members in one week? that's a record!)by him sending me this ad.

Apparently, the Best Buy chain is having a special deal where you get a separate disc featuring the Aquaman pilot along with any Smallville season purchase. Luckily, BB has slashed the price of the box sets to a measly fifteen bucks, so it's actually a pretty good deal(Holy Loss Leader!).

According to Britt, the DVD has "
Nothing flashy about it. Actually, there's nothing on it at all--no menus, no chapters, nothing except for the pilot show. But beggars can't really be choosers and (don't tell Best Buy or WB this but) I would've paid $15 for the pilot if they actually put some effort into it."

Is this not the weirdest fate for any unsold pilot in history? Sure, the Smallville or Wonder Woman DVDs have come before packaged with "bonus" episodes of Isis or Shazam!, but those are samples of full series. To my memory, no other time has a cancelled pilot been this heavily marketed--don't get me wrong; I'm glad it's available but between this and the iTunes thing it feels like the WB is going "Nyah, nyah--this is what could've been. Instead, enjoy Gossip Girl!"

...so, before I head off to Best Buy, let's take a moment to reflect on the DVD art for the pilot:
sg
It's probably a good thing they bothered to paste "Aquaman" on the top, otherwise this looks like another type of DVD altogether.

5 comments:

Rick L. Phillips said...

It would have made more sense to give it away with the aquaman cartoon series on DVD. I guess beggers can't be choosers.

Luke said...

Rick has point, although at least in this case I believe one of the sets does feature the episode with "AC," Arhtur Curry, in it. So that's something, at least.

rob! said...

well, other than us here at the Shrine, this is two different audiences--the one for the cartoons(kids, mostly) and the Smallville audience(teenagers, young adults).

Aquaman/Mercy Reef/Beefcake Island or whatever was aimed at the latter audience, hence the promo. so it makes sense to me, it just seems weird that the WB is promoting a "failed" pilot so heavily--pretty unusual!

Diabolu Frank said...

Though I'm a glass-half-empty sort, the simple truth of the matter is this pilot was in demand. It was being stolen by YouTubers and the torrent crowd, money was made at iTunes, and there was clearly a greater audience here than for your average failed pilot. This isn't so much a push by the WB as the acknowledgement of an asset.

Anonymous said...

Watched it, hated It...To me THAT is NOT Aquaman...More like "Aqua-Dude"