“The 10 Most Baffling “Twilight” Product Tie-Ins”

This Salon.com article came out while I was on the road a week ago: The 10 Most Baffling “Twilight” Product Tie-Ins”:

This Wednesday, “Twilight: Eclipse” will be unleashed into theaters to the delirious excitement of fans. At this point, the phenomenon has become so enormous it’s difficult to remember a time when we didn’t know what Twihards were, or when we could walk past any newsstand without seeing Robert Pattinson’s stone-faced pout. The real testament to “Twilight’s” cultural reach, however, is the number of truly baffling products it’s managed to inspire — from “Twilight” condoms to vampire-pillow hybrids.

Here are a few:

“Twilight” Barbies

This trio of dollies will allow you to funnel your excess angst into intense “Twilight” role-playing in which both the Jacob and the Edward dolls will probably end up naked at some point. Two more stiff-armed and fancy-haired creations are on the way — villainous Victoria, looking like Bryce Dallas Howard (no plastic immortality for you, Rachelle Lefevre!), and Alice Cullen, with that silly flippy haircut they gave adorable Ashley Greene in the movies.

“Twilight” condoms

Granted, the link between condoms and the vanilla chasteness of the “Twilight” series isn’t readily obvious. Spoiler Alert: The only real bump-and-grind takes place after Edward and Bella get married (snooze), and it ends in rib-breaking, blood-drinking, death-dealing childbirth. All the more reason to wear a rubber! See? If lovers had made use of a prophylactic, readers would have been spared the Jar Jar Binksian torture that is Renesmee.

Edward Cullen “Manllow”

The most disturbing tie-in in the history of marketing (which, of course, means it sold out long ago) is probably the half-man, half-pillow that is the Edward Manllow. It seems to exist only in the rarefied air of Etsy.com, where it was sold as a salve to “Twilight”-crazed lonely women. Sporting a badly silk-screened image of Robert Pattinson (maybe) and lumpy poly-filled arms, the manllow promises to hold you when you’re blue and never try to get past third base. It can’t. It doesn’t have fingers, or a groin. With some jury-rigging and a “Twilight” vibrator, though …