Greetings, Quickbeam here.
After two years of speculation (and idle water-cooler debates among Ringer fans) we have answered the mystery at last! The “official” color of The Return of the King is going to be BLUE.
Well, to be more accurate: the “official” color of New Line Cinema licensed merchandise, found on packaging and other marketing materials, is going to follow a similar scheme as the first two films in Jackson’s trilogy — but with a primary BLUE background color.
You will remember that all the Toy Biz action figures, the Applause novelty items, the Games Workshop miniatures, the Extended Edition DVD’s, etc. etc. were all colored GREEN for The Fellowship of the Ring. It was a nice, Shire-type of green which suited the packaging for almost everything. Then all the goodies for The Two Towers started showing up a year later in RED. Same exact layout, same package design, even the same movie logo — just with RED.
If you don’t believe me go check out the Amazon.com page where you pre-order the Extended Edition of TTT. It’s a muted, brick red color.
Now it comes to it! My pal Flinch (divine editor and master guru of our Gaming Havens section) and I have been going around in circles trying to figure out what would change this year for ROTK. I took up the argument that all the merchandise would be SABLE with SILVER letters, just to match up with the standard of Minas Tirith. Turns out I was wrong in a big way.
Take a look-see at the recently published photo we have of the new Eowyn figure from Toy Biz and you’ll see the proof is in the Eowyn pudding. This color choice has nothing to do with the emblems or standards that Tolkien created in his story, evidently.
Let me take a guess at what the future might bring: At the very end of 2004 you should all have a little blue 4-disc DVD box to set next to your existing green and red ones.
*Whew!* Now that THAT is all settled, you can all get back to the real challenges facing any stout-hearted Ringer — like, for example… the ongoing Google search for that stunning ROTK ‘trailer’ that we had to take off our site! [Author’s Note: Of course I’m not looking for it, personally, but I know the majority of you are!]
Much too hasty,
Quickbeam
