Captain Canuck Week: The Merchandising

I'd like to think that Captain Canuck was a labor of love. I'd like to believe that it was an idea born out of two young Mormon guys who wanted to present a vision of the American superhero, but representing their principles, and maybe even espousing general Canadian ideals, and if they can make a living doing it, so much the better. Like I said, I'd like to believe that the process is "creativity first, riches later." Of course, the cynical side of me knows that it just can't be so.

Captain Canuck looks like it was made primarily to form spin-off industries: the sheer diluge of offers for t-shirts, posters, and other assorted crap is staggering. There's the usual fare, stuff I can understand, like t-shirts and fanclubs:



and posters, you gotta have posters, posters are easy:



For a new character, yo'd think that they would stop there, maybe slow down and wait for the dude to take off before they try to license him out further. But they went onward with pens and other miscellany:




Then, we start entering WTF-territory:





Plaques? Wooden plaques? For an independent, not-really bi-monthly, Canadian comic book? Well, it could be worse, I guess. They could start hawking stock in the company to a bunch of ten-year olds and change their name to the "Captain Canuck Corporation:"