This bear knows the score.
It’s a truism now that you can find anything you want on the Internet, any time. This is certainly the case if you’re looking for any sort of person not wearing any sort of clothing, or if you’re looking for [insert thing] performing [strange action] on [insert other thing].
But, in addition to the plethora of Pron that exists at our fingertips, the next highest-grossing (and less gross) use of the Internet is for purchasing actual stuff.
Most of this stuff falls firmly into the category of “crap”, or perhaps “uber-crap”, but a great many brand-name stores are now flocking to the Internet as a way to get their products to people who live in remote communities or just can’t be bothered to get into town.
This may be because they are fat and lazy, or may simply hate shopping. We certainly do. We wish it were legal to take a Siege Tank to the mall parking lot and simply Siege up on top of the douche-bag who parked across four spots, but municipal police forces tend to frown on that sort of thing.
Among the myriad and multitudinous items available for purchase online are any number of Starcraft-related items. We’ve mentioned some of them in the past, but we thought we’d take another look and see just how far this cultural obsession with Starcraft goes.
What, exactly, is out there for fans of the series?
The answer is one hell of a lot.
Let’s start with the more “ordinary” items, like coffee mugs that say “we require more minerals” and ties that proclaim “nuclear launch detected” for anyone within tie-reading distance. The problem with these two items are, of course, that they assume nerds 1) drink coffee – while this is possible, sugary soft-drinks in the form of 3.8 litre MONZTER CUPS is the more likely scenario, and 2) wear ties on a regular basis.
Not sure #2 really needs any explanation.
Moving on, there are also items of pet clothing available. Zazzle.com offers small dog pet t-shirts that, among other things, come in pink with the tried-and-true nuclear launch slogan on the back. Not sure why your dog would care about Starcraft, but there ya go.
As well, companies like Cafepress offer things like bumper stickers, so that you can tell the whole world that your “other ride is a battlecruiser” or that you’ve “upgraded Zergling speed”, and teddy bears wearing T-shirts that say “noob”. Nothing says “happy birthday, loser” like a cheaply made bear wearing a shirt that makes fun of you, and is probably cleaner than anything you own. Score!
We also came across a great many references to crazy Starcraft crap that can be found in Korea (big shocker), including a Starcraft cereal produced in 2001 and a line of gummi Starcraft candies that are apparently made to look like “misshapen Zerg”, according to one forum poster.
Sadly, no pictures could be found, but its further evidence that even a dozen years past its release, this game (in no small part thanks to its incoming sequel) is so popular that people really want to own and eat crap that was in some way connected to Starcraft.
That’s how you know you’ve made it to the big time, by the way – when people will buy any poorly-made piece of junk that has your product’s logo on it. There’s no question that Starcraft has reached that height, and we can only imagine what craaazy merchandise will be released in the post-launch hype of Starcraft II.
Starcrap toilet paper, perhaps? Starfrap coffee?
A Staraft Inflatable Dinghy can only be months away.
Lord help us all.
