{"id":37,"date":"2011-06-28T10:41:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T10:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog-new\/?p=37"},"modified":"2025-09-16T15:07:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T15:07:21","slug":"cars-2-inspired-by-success-of-promotional-products-not-critical-acclaim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/cars-2-inspired-by-success-of-promotional-products-not-critical-acclaim\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Cars 2&#8221; Inspired by Success of Promotional Products, Not Critical Acclaim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Welcome to this week\u2019s edition of \u201cTrending Topic Tuesday,\u201d where we share our take on what\u2019s going on in the world and what promotional products would appropriately (or inappropriately) market the subject matter.<\/em><br>\n<br>\nAccording to movie critics, the 2006 animated film <em>Cars<\/em> was not much of a success \u2013 at least not for Disney-Pixar, which put out 6 movies before the release of <em>Cars<\/em> and never received anything lower than a 91% freshness rating on <a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>. According to that site, <em>Cars<\/em> only managed to please 74% of critics and 80% of audience members. It wasn&#8217;t a failing grade, but it also certainly wasn&#8217;t the sort of feedback Disney-Pixar was used to getting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, while <em>Cars<\/em>-inspired <strong>promotional products<\/strong> earned Walt Disney Co. more than $8 billion in retail sales of everything from toys to toothpaste and bed frames to bubble gum, a sequel was produced (along with 300+ new <em>Cars 2<\/em> branded toys and other items). Despite the fact that the movie has received positive reviews from a mere 33% of critics and 66% of audiences, making it the first Disney-Pixar film to be deemed a &#8220;rotten tomato,&#8221; Disney expects its <em>Cars 2<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">promotional products<\/a> to surpass the $2.8 billion in sales that <em>Toy Story 3<\/em> earned last year. <em>Counselor<\/em> magazine notes that this would make <em>Cars 2<\/em> &#8220;the largest branded merchandise program ever related to a single movie release.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard personal testaments to how successful <em>Cars<\/em> promotional items have been from coworkers and friends whose kids have insisted on filling their homes with everything from vitamins to lamps and drapes inspired by <em>Cars<\/em> characters. If you&#8217;ve ever bought a <em>Cars<\/em> or <em>Cars 2<\/em> promotional product, you too have helped contribute to what has been an enormous licensing success for Disney &amp; Pixar, in spite of the not-so-successful films that have inspired these items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kelsey<br>\nSocial Media Manager<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to this week\u2019s edition of \u201cTrending Topic Tuesday,\u201d where we share our take on what\u2019s going on in the world and what promotional products would appropriately (or inappropriately) market the subject matter. According to movie critics, the 2006 animated film Cars was not much of a success \u2013 at least not for Disney-Pixar, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_twd_sm_profile":"","_twd_sm_is_pillar":"","_twd_sm_cta_url":"","_twd_sm_area_served":[],"_twd_sm_faq":[],"_twd_sm_year_founded":0,"_twd_sm_founders":[],"_twd_sm_founder_ids":[],"_twd_sm_exec_team":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24,25,26,27,28,8],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cool-promotional-products","tag-cars","tag-cars-2","tag-disney-pixar","tag-movies","tag-promotional-items","tag-promotional-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinnaclepromotions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}