X-Men Dine at Taco Bell; 2001: No Big Odyssey - Brief Article

Brandweek, Jan 1, 2001 by David Finnigan

Moving on from the bruising it took over its disappointing link to Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace, Taco Bell is continuing the Tricon family's slow return to entertainment fare with this month's kids' meal tie-in with

Marvel Studios two-month-old cartoon series, X-Men:Evolution, which airs on KidsWB.

The five-week effort gets underway Jan. 21 with character-based backpack clips in the guises of X-Men's Mystique and Cyclops & Co. as premiums. Marvel comics hitting newsstands this month will carry full page ads touting the Taco Bell clips, which should attract classic X-Men junior high demos even though the cartoon skews younger than the franchises' core teen/adult collector target. "It kind of straddles both worlds," said Russ Brown, Marvel svp-consumer products.

The cartoon tie-in deal was brokered by Strottman International and was signed before the success of 20th Century Fox's X-Men hit movie last summer. "Taco Bell had the foresight to figure that if the movie was at all successful, they would have tremendous brand recognition for the promotion," Brown said.

Taco Bell will next link with Paramount's summer actioner Tomb Raider (Brandweek, Nov. 27).

Despite its timely name, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not being widely re-released or promoted this year. Warner Bros. execs had no explanation last week as to why Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi classic will not be leveraged in the very year it once imagined. However, Turner Classic Movies ran 2001 on New Year's Eve, and the film will close the Berlin international Film Festival in February, followed by a limited theatrical re-release this spring in Japan, Australia and Great Britain.

No tie-in releases of 2001 are planned around the June 29 release of the Warner/Dream Works scifi film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, though the film is a Steven Spielberg adaptation of a Kubrick script treatment. Inexplicably, Warner Home Video has received no marching orders for a DVD/video 2001 re-release, but in fairness, 2001 is very cerebral and hardly mass-market fodder. Ironically, another Time-Warner unit, CNN'S Headline News, last week ran a five-part series, 2001.: A Space Prophecy, comparing the film's predictions to today's reality.

Turner Classic Movies' January promo focus is the Jan. 8 birthday of the allegedly deceased Elvis Presley, with TCM's 19-title Elvis film festival having started New Year's Day. TV Guide is running four collectible Elvis covers with a fifth design available only at the magazine's online store. The covers hit newsstands next week, though no money changed hands on this cable-print synergy. Cable, radio promos and screenings of a remastered Elvis documentary are set for 10 second-tier cities. A TCM sweeps, which has drawn 10,000 entrants to date, has a grand prize trip-for-two to--where else?--Graceland.