Noted with tongue-in-cheek: “Why the Silver Surfer Isn’t the Coin of the Realm”

Excerpted from article by Matthew Healey on 4 June 2007 in The New York Times.

Concluding questions by NWI. Comments and insight, preferably with humor, are sought.

“The studio behind a coming summer movie, “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” has roused the ire of the United States Mint with its promotional gimmick for the film, in which Marvel Comics superheroes battle a metallic alien. . . . The studio, 20th Century Fox, hired the Franklin Mint, a private company that manufactures scale models, statuettes, pocket knives, medallions and collectibles, to place a full-color image of the Silver Surfer, complete with Web address, on the backs of 40,000 California statehood quarters.

“But the United States Mint, which is the exclusive maker of American coinage, took exception to the stunt. Although it is not illegal to deface American coins as long as there is no intention to defraud, it is illegal to advertise on coins, the mint pointed out last week. . . . M. Moshe Malamud, chairman of the Franklin Mint, denied that what the company put on the coins was an advertisement. He said it “enhanced” the coins to make them “commemorative,” as it did a few years ago when it added images of Elvis Presley to millions of Tennessee state quarters.

“The United States Postal Service, meanwhile, plans to issue a sheet of 41 cent stamps in July featuring 10 Marvel Comics characters. Among them are the Silver Surfer and Spider-Man, the subject of another summer movie. A similar sheet showing DC Comics characters was issued last summer. Congress made it legal last year to use commercial images on postage. . . . Some of the Silver Surfer quarters have shown up on eBay, where collectors have paid as much as $149 each — a high price for a quarter, but modest in comparison to the $250-plus that was bid recently for an original copy of the first issue of the Silver Surfer comic book. The Silver Surfer first appeared in a Fantastic Four comic book in 1966; he was given his own title in 1968.”

Questions and comments:

1. Memo to 20th Century Fox on its Silver Surfer-esque ability to convert U.S. currency into marketing energy: Clever, but what’s the connection with California?
2. Could putting the Silver Surfer on a coin which isn’t silver infer that the movie should more appropriately be named Not Really the Silver Surfer?
3. Or is the Silver Surfer not actually in the movie?
4. Memo to Mr. M. Moshe Malamudon on his perspective that the Silver Surfer quarter is not an advertisement: It doesn’t take “the power cosmic” to differentiate between an enhancement and advertisement.
5. What might be next – LeBron James on Ohio quarters? Different presidential candidates’ smiling likenesses on their respective home states’ quarters (we’ll skip the easy gag about putting a face on both sides)?
6. How about soccer balls commemorating the next World Cup champions?
7. Maybe an automobile tire on the Indiana quarters?
8. Maybe the image of George Washington to celebrate America’s first president?

NotedWithInterest@gmail.com

- NWI staff

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