Juno’s Burger Phone Sparks Online Sales
Hundreds of hamburger phones are flying off eBay’s virtual shelves after they appeared in the hit comedy Juno.
Paul de Carvalho, manager of Fox Searchlight in Australia, said the studio brought 100 Juno-branded phones to Australia for use in promotional giveaways but the product - also sold online without any branding - had since turned into a pop culture icon.
He compared the success to the “Vote for Pedro” T-shirts used to promote the low-budget indie hit Napoleon Dynamite, which debuted in 2005.
“With each film we like to have a number of signature promo items and for Juno the hamburger phone is one of those,” he said.
“For debut screenwriter Diablo Cody, the film is heavily autobiographical … she used to talk for hours to her high school boyfriend on a hamburger phone.”
Hailed by critics as a hilarious yet moving take on teen pregnancy, the film tells the story of 16-year-old Juno MacGuff and her battle with adoption after falling pregnant to her friend Paulie Bleeker.
It was recently nominated for four Oscar awards including best picture and best actress.
“eBay gives great insight into popular culture,” eBay spokesman Daniel Feiler said. “When something is popular because of a movie or a TV show or some other pop culture phenomenon, then we do see a reflection on eBay and that’s clearly demonstrated by an increase in interest and sales of hamburger phones in the last few weeks of January.”
Photo by Twentieth Century Fox.
Meg H. on February 11th, 2008 2:03 pm
Ok. That’s hilarious.
Confession… I actually kind of want one.
axel on February 11th, 2008 5:35 pm
i didn’t get…
what is the formula to calculate price of a blog?
is it depends on count of “subscribers” from technorati?
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