You can run a marathon in it, fly it on a blustery day or throw it around your neck when the winds buck up. Or you can tote your lunch in it, sleep under the stars in it or write a letter to the editor on it.
Black Hole sneakers, kites and scarves and Black Hole lunch boxes, sleeping bags and stationery. That's only part of the choice of a multitude of merchandise that will follow the release of Walt Disney Productions' $20-million SF extravaganza.
Mego Corp., the film's prime licensee, is manufacturing a host of Black Hole items, including radio-controlled V.I.N.CENT and the Mini-Vid computerized brain. The company will reportedly spend $1 million to advertise live-action figures, walkie-talkies and assorted games to the public.
Other companies will spend a combined $3 million advertising 3-D viewers (GAF), stationery (Mead Corp.), sheets and pillow cases (Wamsutta-Pacific) and posters (American Publishing).
Publishing houses will contribute more than 10 million publications based on the film. Del Rey books has the novelization of the movie written by Alan Dean Foster ($1.95). Harmony Books has already published the Black Hole Pop-Up Book ($4.95) and the Poster Book ($6.95). Included in the 23 posters is a blueprint of the explorer craft Palomino, showing a side view of the craft and a view of the cabin.
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