The year in swag 2013: The war on worthlessness

The AV Club, December 23, 2013
by Kevin McFarland

Each year, The A.V. Club is inundated with mountains of promotional items. Some things—CDs, movie screeners, books—are sent so that they might be reviewed. Other items, like stuffed ostriches branded with the Arrested Development logo and bottles of champagne packaged with a tiny model of Liberace’s piano, are just sent to butter (and liquor) us up. Every December, The A.V. Club takes stock of this heap, from the junk to the stuff we’ve spent months fighting over. This year, in the spirit of capitalism, we even tried to put a monetary value on these gifts, because what’s a holiday season without mental calculations of what Mom, Dad, and your favorite publicist spent on the presents under the tree? Each item’s “worthlessness factor” is also determined, on a scale from 1 (actually pretty nice) to 5 (total garbage).

Item: Playing cards
Promoting: They Might Be Giants

Relevance: It’s a weird deck of cards with odd illustrations from a band that prides itself on residing left-of-center.
Worthlessness factor: 2. TMBG—the band responsible for one of the greatest moments in Undercover history—got New York Times illustrator and graphic designer Paul Sahre to make them a set of playing cards. And instead of simply redesigning the old standards, the deck replaces the regular suits with Myths, Hoaxes, Paranormal, and Cryptids, complete with King/Queen/Jack illustrations unique to each category, like the jackalope, minotaur, alien, and Loch Ness Monster.
eBay market value: There’s one up now at a buy-it-now price of $12.95. [KM]

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