BERLIN, May 26 -- A voodoo doll with five pins and the national emblems of
all your enemy teams. Toilet paper with World Cup trivia. Pork slices emblazoned
with a soccer player dribbling down the pitch.
An unidentified shop
assistant displays a voodoo doll printed with the colours of Brazil's
national soccer team in a store in Berlin May 26, 2006. Only 15 companies
were awarded the right to market goods with the official World Cup logo
and FIFA, the world soccer organisation, is on the lookout for any piracy.
The marketers of unofficial World Cup goods are careful to avoid anything
that would open themselves up to a FIFA legal challenge.
[Reuters] |
These are just a few of the unofficial World Cup-related items available in
German stores and on German Web sites as merchants try to cash in on World Cup
mania before the month-long tournament kicks off in Germany on June 9.
"Put a charm on your favourite team with this special set. It includes one
voodoo doll, 34 national emblems and five needles. Weaken any opponents: Simply
attach the emblem, stick in the needles and off you go," the description says.
But the maker warns there is "No guarantee!" it will work.
One can also catch up on World Cup trivia while perched on the throne thanks
to toilet paper with printed questions and answers about World Cup history.
One question on the toilet paper asks who won the first World Cup in 1930.
The paper provides the correct answer -- Uruguay.
But the encyclopaedic wiping paper provides the incorrect answer to least one
of its own questions. It says there have been a total of seven World Cups since
1930, but the answer is 17.
The theme cannot be missed at one of Germany's leading
electronics and home appliance chains. Among the World Cup-inspired items
available are a soccer-ball radio and CD player and a vacuum cleaner decorated
with the familiar black and white pentagons and hexagons.
In Berlin, it's hard to find a pizza delivery service without a soccer deal.
One pizza place has a "World Cup" offer good until the tournament ends -- three
pizzas (a "Salami", an "Atlantic" and a "Hawaii") and five litres of beer.
Only 15 companies were awarded the right to market goods with the official
World Cup logo and FIFA, the world soccer organisation, is on the lookout for
any piracy.
But these marketers of unofficial World Cup goods are careful to avoid
anything that would open themselves up to a FIFA legal challenge.
They simply include soccer balls, pitches, goalposts and soccer phrases --
all of it in the public domain and not subject to any trademark laws -- in the
hope that the World Cup euphoria taking hold of Germany will make their products
irresistible.
SOCCER BALLS, SOUP AND SEX
With two weeks left until the World Cup starts, it is almost impossible to
escape the soccer theme.
One German supermarket chain superimposes pictures of soccer balls over
run-of-the-mill advertisements of pork steaks, beer kegs, Swiss cheese, frozen
spinach, barbecue sets, plastic food containers, biscuits, canned sausages and
canned corn.
Makers of sausage, virtually a staple food in Germany, have also got in on
the act. In some supermarkets you can find soccer ball sausages and slices of
pork luncheon meat that show a soccer player dribbling a ball down the pitch.
Other soccer items at supermarkets include: "soup strikers" -- instant soup
with soccer ball noodles; "half-time" pizza with Berlin curry sausage; crunchy
snacks shaped like soccer balls and players. One can even buy a "World Cup" of
potato salad.
Germany's thriving sex shop industry has also tried to capitalise on World
Cup fever. One of the leading German erotic paraphernalia peddlers is marketing
vibrators with names like "home team", "captain" and "hard shot on goal".
A poster seen at some German sex shops has a picture of two women in thongs,
one squatting over a soccer ball in front of a goalpost. She wears socks with
black, red and gold stripes -- the colours of Germany's flag.
Another woman sporting red and white -- the national colours of neighbours
Austria and Switzerland -- lies on her back, clutching a vibrator.
"Our boys only rejoice after they've scored," the poster declares.
