HangTag Review #39 - Star Wars Union Suit

Disney's acquisition of the Star Wars franchise has turned up the licensing machine full force, and in addition to a steady stream of new movies we are being treated to a near constant barrage of merchandise. This hang tag comes from one such item - a Chewbacca Union Suit.

First and foremost, it should be explained that a Union Suit is merely a descriptive term for a single undergarment that combines a shirt and a pair of pants. Think long johns or those pajamas that are in old cartoons with a snap up button panel. Do not think to search them on Google images without safe search on.

This one is designed to look like the character Chewbacca from Star Wars. Presumably one part Halloween costume, one party novelty item, this is a lowest common denominator item.

The front of the hang tag is straightforward - the top portion is a picture of Chewbacca pointing his signature crossbow at the camera. The bottom has the Star Wars wordmark in negative with the words UNION SUIT below and a red circle with an S and the label SMALL. This is really terrible in terms of hangtags. It does not seem terribly well through out and it fails to convey any real sense of design or effort.

The reverse is a tiny bit better. Instead of the photograph of the actual Chewbacca, there is an incredibly goofy illustration of a very doofy guy wearing the suit. Otherwise it is the same as the front.

I have a lot of problems with this tag. It is really low effort, all they did was put a picture on it with a brand wordmark and a descriptor. I like simplicity and clean designs, and this is simple but is not particularly clean. Simply throwing all your logos onto a card isn't design, its hitting a checklist.

I also think you need to either lean heavy into the illustration, or heavy into the actual movie license, but you can't put both on the same tag.

It is almost as though they know that these will not be purchased by true fans (who will go upmarket) but instead by someone's distant relative who is a bit out of touch but will say "Oh, didn't he used to love those space movies?" If anything, I imagine most of these end up as gag gifts, purchased for drinking-holiday parties or as a good natured goof for a spouse.

I had some excitement about a Disney branded tag, but so far this and the children's one I reviewed here have both fallen incredibly flat.

Hang Tag Review #29 - Disney Baby Hang Tag

This hang tag is for Disney Baby, and it certainly has some interesting features. The front is pure Disney, in a series of pastel greens. There is Disney written in the Disney font with the magic castle logo above, rendered in building block treatment. The magic sparkles connect the two.

The reverse starts with a message encouraging purchasers to "Discover the magic on Disneybaby.com." Not quite a name.com example, as it appears in a sentence, although I am always critical of sub domains such as this.

Perhaps more fascinating is that we then see the licensee information below. This product (for infant shoes) was made by ABG BABY, distributed by Rising Star. While this is fairly typical for big brands, I'm surprised that so much is surfaced so readily here.

This tag falls a little flat for me. I'm really not enjoying the somewhat lazy color scheme. For some reason the world of infants is very sensitive to gender coloring, and this tag is safely gender neutral (soft greens, slate, and sometimes yellow being the widely accepted top picks in this area). Still, nothing about this screams Disney, which is generally the most overdone and on message brand in the existence. It feels uninspired, like someone figured if they just typed "MAGIC" a bunch of times it would fully qualify, but the Disney Magic isn't just about saying the words, its about fully committing to them.

I actually like the licensee's banding a little bit more, the ABG BABY in baby blocks is a nice treatment, if somewhat expected.

As I touched on above, I'm ok with a name.com if used in a sentence, and additionally, I think Disney is a brand where the sub domain makes sense. Disney has famous theme parks, famous movies, famous characters, and famous toys. I wouldn't go to the Disney homepage and expect to find baby clothing without a few additional clicks. The distributor also has a web address, and since it is slightly different from the name, I think listing it in full makes sense. Good web use here.