A Gamer's Business Proposal

Nowadays, every time you go to Divisoria or any other tiange or nearby market you probably seen the overflowing number of Angry birds merchandise which are sold in stalls, kiosks, and boutiques. These birds are in a bunch of different stuff - shirts, toys, pens, tumblers and other items that have weird cartoon of an angry bird on it. But aren’t you just getting tired of these items?

Angry birds is a game developed by Rovio which was originally an application for the iPhone and iPad and lately became a computer game too due to insistent public demand and probably because not a lot of  people can afford an overpriced smart phone. The objective of the game is to kill all the sneaky green pigs who stole the birds’ eggs by throwing a bunch of these colorful birds by a interactive slingshot. If you haven’t played this game yet, I am congratulating you.

The game gained so much fame that entrepreneurs, shirt makers and other businessmen thought that if they have items that have these birds on them it might sell and people would love it. And as we can see now, markets and stalls, even some church and of course - the one, the only Divisoria has all these items all over the place.

Amazingly, these businessmen were right. The items sold quite well. We see a bunch of people wearing colorful angry birds shirt which have very cliché taglines like, “take them down”, “up, up and away” and “drop it like its hot”. We can also see students writing with their smartly designed angry birds pen that has a sling shot and a bird at the top of it - It’s a toy, it’s a colorful stick..  No, it’s just a pen.

At first, these merchandise looks fun. Witty shirts, colorful stuff, cute birds - who wouldn’t like that, right? But time quickly killed the angry birds fever. Its becoming old and overused. Even people who haven’t even played the game yet have these items because they think its cute. In a Filipino slang, it looks so “jeje” na..

When I asked a vendor in Divisoria about the sales of the angry birds items she claimed that when these things first got out a lot of people really craved and bought it. They think its cute and colorful that’s why they keep buying these things. But lately, angry birds merchandise buyers are not showing up in their shops anymore. The items remained to be in their shops wanting to be bought.

This kind of phenomena also happened years before. Do you guys remember Plants vs. Zombies? Yeah. You  used to play that game right? Like last year yeah you remember.

There are also a bunch of people who made Plants vs. Zombies merchandise because of the game’s popularity a couple of years back. Same thing happened – it was sold, people bought it, time made it old, became over used and later on sales just went down.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with buying Angry Birds stuff but people will get tired of it easily, it will be out of fashion and later on it will be just another statement killed by the fast pace of time.

Why didn’t they make merchandise from Snake, Space Impact or Tetris? Retro games had more impact to us until now. These are the prototypes of almost all modern games.

So I’m going to make a business proposal that will blow entrepreneurs’ minds! Make merchandise with retro games theme.

Make a Sonic the Hedgehog pen, Mario tumblers, Pacman shirts or Pokemon stuff toys. That would be really cool. It will not go old easily and its more creative.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with buying Angry Birds stuff but it will become dead and old just like other time-kill, easily-finished, modern games. So let’s revive the video games that made our childhood fun and frustrating- the ones that really capture our minds and help made us solve the most ridiculous puzzles.

Kids of all ages will surely love it. It will make them curious and play these retro games that their kuyas and ates or even their parents loved as a child.

Let’s remember the time when Mario search and destroyed different castles to save his beloved Princess Peach, that annoying sound Pac-man make when he swallows pills on a maze while being chased by a bunch of weird looking multi-colored ghosts, and Link saving Hyrule and rescuing his beloved Princess Zelda which, unfortunately, friendzoned him after all his struggles. Bring back the awesome 8-bit animation and soundtracks.

So here’s for the businessmen, entrepreneurs, t-shirt makers, graphic designers and people who sell and make merchandise for a living, don’t just make stuff that will get old in just a couple of months, instead of thinking of another cliché and overused taglines for a bunch of silly birds for your shirt, try reviving the video games that really captured the heart and soul of the people who buy your stuff. Not only it will look cool, it will also give them that nostalgic flashbacks of their childhood and remember the first games that really made them angrier than those silly birds.