With every movie release comes the inevitable merchandising: the toys, the t-shirts, the huge cardboard standup posters you see in movie theater lobbies. Promotional swag for movies has been a tradition for decades, and now, A24 is immortalizing the phenomenon in their new coffee table book,For Promotional Use Only: A Catalog of Hollywood Movie Swag and Promo Merch from 1975-2005, showcasing a hundred and sixty-five artifacts from Hollywood marketing history.
The two hundred and thirty-six page book highlights the creative (and occasionally strange) ways that studios and marketing executives promote their films, featuring photographs of all kinds of oddities, from newer films to forgotten classics. Items featured in the book include nylon stockings produced forJaws, sunglasses branded forBill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and even false eyelashes sold to promoteMiss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous.
For Promotional Use Onlyalso features a handful of commentary from Hollywood icons, including a foreword fromRoger Corman; “On Movie Swag”, an essay byLindsay Zoladz; and interviews with various studio executives about the creation of promotional items and the heyday of creating strange and unusual products to market films.
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And, to make things even better, A24 will be auctioning off a majority of the objects featured in the book through their charity platform A24 Auctions. Launching November 4, proceeds from the eclectic ephemera will benefit the Vidiots Foundations, to support the renovation and reopening of their new space at the Eagle Theatre in Los Angeles, as well as contribute to the funding of their educational programming. The auction will be curated and presented in partnership with@NightPromoting, another foundation dedicated to the preservation of Hollywood promotional items.
For Promotional Use Only retails for $52USD, with designs by Order, and is available for purchase on A24’swebsite. For more information about its related auction, fans can visit A24 Auctions’ ownwebsite. Check out images from the book below:
