There are a slew of new images online from foreign products set for release along with the sixth film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” this fall. As readers will remember, these product tie-ins feature new looks at a number of characters from the upcoming sixth film. We first have a new image online of Ron and Ginny care of a French calendar publishers, Mango jeunesse. This image, seen here, shows the brother and sister along with Harry Potter on the cover of a soon to be published 2009 calendar.
A second image from a “Half-Blood Prince calendar, featuring Harry and Dumbledore, is also set to be published from Panini Comics. This image can be viewed via this link.
Next, Play.com has two images of playing cards online, showing Harry, Ron, and Dumbledore. Finally, German retailers Elbenwald have online a most interesting new Harry Potter product in the form of new bed linens. This product features what looks to be a duvet cover and two pillow cases and can be viewed in greater detail right here. At this time, we are unsure if these products will be available for purchase in the US; however, they will be available via their foreign retailers over the next few months. Thanks to UHP for mailing.
The calender cover looks hideous! I mean Harry/Dan looks fine (because he’s dressed like his character) but Ginny looks weird, it’s like they just got a random picture of Bonnie and stuck it on there, and well Ron, he looks weird, just bobbing his head out in the corner….But w/e, GO HBP TEASER TRAILER! How about that?!
Something I’ve noticed from a few of these images from merch (both these and prior ones I’ve seen) is that theres a lot of Ron. Thats interesting seeing how they would usually push him off to the corner while Hermoine was more towards the front. I wonder why they’ve changed plans? Not that I mind, I’m glad Ron’s getting some respect as a good sidekick.
This is weird. First the teaser trailer and now this – where is Hermione?? The bizarre thing is that if anyone I thought they’d leave out Ron, he’s always pushed to the background – it’s like they finally realised that Hermione isn’t part of the main romance (that’s debatable, but main in terms of, with Harry), and they just don’t know how to accomodate two girls?
I love that they’re pushing a lot more product featuring Harry and Ron. It isn’t as if Hermione isn’t important, she is…but Ron is Harry’s best mate. I think over time that their friendship has gotten lost in the movies—so if they’re making a point to emphasize that again I think it’s great!
They look fake, the calendars. Cheaply done. Dissapointed in WB. And where’s Hermione, I miss the girl. Her absence is making me miss her more. She’s part of the trio!
What is up with the merch this time? All of the photos we have seen of merch so far look dreadful. The characters all seem to look as if they have been photoshopped and very poorly so I might add. I mean I’ve seen fan-made stuff that looks more realistic than most of what we’ve been seeing. Why is Dan’s chin like that and why is his hand and wand so large and out proportion with the rest of his body? He has no neck! There is no organization/design to the way the characters are placed, its as if someone was just copying and pasting random images with no rhyme or reason to where they place them or how it looks. I don’t really mind if they put everyone on this stuff as long as they maintain the quality of past merch, but it doesn’t seem like they’re doing that. My OOTP calendar looks so much more professional compared this one. Are they not going to do any Lego sets for HBP?
This will be an unpopular opinion but…I think the quality of merch is related to the quality of the product. HBP is easily, IMHO, the worst of the books. You ask where Hermione is…that’s what a LOT of people asked when reading this book, because whoever that was, it wasn’t Hermione. Maybe it could’ve been Hermione if there was no OOTP, but there was, so.
I think the real reason, though, is because they have to push the Harry/Ginny romance, and to do that, they have to push Ginny as a character. She’s been virtually invisible for five movies, only getting real screen time during COS (and even then, only at the end) and OOTP. Beyond that, she got a scene here and there…SS is understandable, of course, but why she wasn’t more visible otherwise, I don’t know. So we have no idea what kind of chemistry Dan and Bonnie have onscreen, or much of who Ginny is in this movieverse.
Hermione’s gotten pushed hard because, besides being part of the trio and the female lead for the first five books, Dan and Emma have good onscreen chemistry. If they had slipped Ginny into more spots – show her more in COS, have her pop up in POA more than once, give her more in GOF and OOTP to interact with Harry – we’d see things better. Good example, Hermione’s “I’m not an owl” line in GOF, give that to Ginny, see how she reacts between her brother and her crush. Also, they should’ve put in the part in OOTP where Harry and Hermione actually discuss Ginny’s crush. Little things. Now they have to make up for lost time, and Emma’s going to pay the price most likely. I guess her upside is that in the two DH movies, Ginny’s in the start and finish, but the big part in the middle is the trio (or duo when Ron runs off again).
Emma probably shot the least for this movie. Ron features more because of Quidditch and being poisoned, also Lavender, but Hermione is involved with that though. Interesting that Hermione isn’t in the teaser trailer AT ALL and then not in these images. Perhaps there’s some kind of deal where Emma doesn’t want to be promoted as much. Maybe she asked them not to include her?
The calender cover looks hideous! I mean Harry/Dan looks fine (because he’s dressed like his character) but Ginny looks weird, it’s like they just got a random picture of Bonnie and stuck it on there, and well Ron, he looks weird, just bobbing his head out in the corner….But w/e, GO HBP TEASER TRAILER! How about that?!