Just For Fun: Life-sized Licensing
Every day, I take the train home from work, out of NYC and into my small Jersey town, then I walk home from there.
When I got off the train one day last week, I noticed a classic car show set up right down the middle of the main street in my town. Conveniently, I had to walk through it to get home.
I secretly love car shows. I love the awesome oldies music they play. I love the cars themselves. I love the old dudes who own the cars who are so proud of them, who are still young at heart. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know crap about cars and I just think they’re “pretty.” Classic car shows remind me of childhood outings with my mother and father, and are just generally a place where no one can feel anything but carefree and festive.
So while I was strolling along looking at all the awesome cars on my way home from work, debating whether or not to ruin my supper with a giant sugar-coated funnel cake, I came across some life-sized licensing.
One of the cars was “dressed” as a car from the Disney-Pixar film, Cars. I snapped a couple of pictures of it with my cell phone, because it was so cool to see an animated movie character, especially a non-human one, come to life right before me, in my town, right in front of the pharmacies and flower shops and the other boring things that make up my daily walk home. It was like walking into a cartoon, Roger Rabbit style.
There was a little sign in front of the car, which I unfortunately did not think to take a picture of, that said it was the actual car used as a model for creating the car in the film.
I sent the pictures via text message to my sister, knowing that her 5-year-old son would be thrilled to see them. He still has enough wonder and disbelief at his age to see the car live and think it’s the actual character from the movie, which I thought would totally make his day.
It did. My sister asked me if I could print the pictures out and frame them, so she could hang them up in her son’s room. I printed them out and put them in frames, and I’m even thinking of “autographing” them before I give them to him this weekend, just for fun.
Isn’t it great when licensing becomes more than just a part of our business and our jobs? It was very cool to see something I write about and talk about at work come to life, and to know that licensing really is a part of everyone’s life whether they know it or not, for everyone from my 5-year-old nephew to the experts in the industry.
–Jennifer Sinclair
