“Guys, guys, guys. GUYS. You gotta cool it. Just, chill.”
~AMC’s Marketing Department
If you’re an American with access to cable television (cough-or-know-a-good-streaming-site-cough) you’ve probably seen The Walking Dead, with your opinions ranging from “This is the best show to happen to American television” to “this show is a utter garbage” with your true feelings likely settling somewhere along the lines of, “I mean, it’s fine, everyone except for Daryl, Glenn, and Maggie kind of suck, but it’s cool to see zombies get smushed.”
But no matter your views on the show, it’s impact on American culture is hard to ignore. This is a show that, when it airs, outperforms Sunday Night Football among 18- to 49-year-olds. No matter how you slice it (puns!), when your show is more popular than primetime football (and that’s even before the whole, you know, “2014 was a bad year to be related to or romantically involved with a football player” messiness) that’s pretty impressive.
Which is why on one hand, we can understand why many people, companies, and businesses are falling over themselves to get a slice of that sweet, sweet Walking Dead publicity by creating tie-in promotions, or “Walking Dead influenced” products. And, also not surprisingly, trying to find a way to go viral by emulating a show that follows of a bunch of chronically depressed southerners as they run away from murderous shambles of rotting flesh can lead to some pretty bad ideas. And since the world is filled with the assholes who say, “Well, any press is good press” whenever they’re talking about a story of a Wal-Mart shoving their undocumented workers into a furnace to avoid a tax write-up (citation needed) no one has the sense to say, “No, guys. Stop it. This is a bad idea. A bad idea.”
Here are some bad ideas inspired by The Walking Dead
The Worst Products Inspired By The Walking Dead
America Fun Fact of the Day 