Even Younglings should know these facts

'Do or do not, there is no try' (Yoda, in this case in terms of a half-hearted fan calendar)

This is right up there with 'Anikin built C3P0, who eventually went on to work with Luke'

     I’ve been laughing my way through the first month of a 365 day desk calendar that I received for Christmas, or as marketers are not branding them: a ‘day at a time’ calendar. While it is an excellent product in the fact that it is a great calendar, it has the date clearly displayed, with a smaller embedded month in it so not only is it known what month it is but also where the day fits into the greater theme of the month, so you always know where you are at. It is a great calendar because it is Star Wars themed and I really enjoy the Star Wars franchise (I am part of the group who are intrigued and maybe a little bit excited by the prospect of new movies). It is even a good purveyor of Star Warsian goodness since it has full colour pictures of scenes from Star Wars to grace my desk in a daily rotation of the episodic space opera. What makes it laughable is that it promised to provide ‘star wars facts’ in addition to the cosmetic beauty and chronological functionality of this desk calendar, and these facts are terribly deficient. If Mom happens to be reading this, I really like the calendar! It just makes good fodder for pointing out how marketers get us.

     What gets me is that I assumed that someone receiving a Star Wars Calendar would already be affiliated with fandom and therefore be initiated into some basic level of trivial knowledge.  I would hope anyone who had seen the movies and liked them enough to not go on a tirade on how terrible they were (and you’ll find even some fans who do just this) would know at least the few main characters and what the death star is. The Day at a time calendar hasn’t hit that low yet, but I’ve found so far they’ve been mining moderately obscure but very common sense points that even if you’ve seen the movie but don’t consider yourself a fan have probably puzzled out. For example, the one that set it all off was Friday’s:

     ‘Once Anikin got so mad at Padme that he force choked her until she fell to the ground’

     This wasn’t so many trivium as describing a scene of the movie, so it’s more testing your memory. Today’s entry was

     ‘The Battle of Geonosis begin in the arena with the Jedi versus the droid army, 

     This is a slight improvement since many people may not know that the planet was called Geonosis but fails to provide any context. Why couldn’t the designers have said ‘The Battle of Geonosis precipitated the conflict widely known as the Clone War? Failure at providing proper facts may be part of the design however, as a friend of mine pointed out.

     It could be that these calendars are not marketed to the fans of the universe they are extolling, but people attached to them. It would make sense that the significant other or a friend of someone who can’t stop going on about Star Wars might be inclined to get this calendar. It gives them the functionality of a calendar while giving them the tiniest bit of immersion into a vast and expanding franchise. Why someone would give themselves one out of context fact coupled with pretty scene shots a day rather than sitting down and watching the movies (or just googling the basic premise if beyond me). It could also be the ultimate in the selfish gift where the uninitiated give it to the fan but then reap the benefits of being able to mooch the facts daily and being that much better able to converse about Star Wars or whatever the theme of the year is.

     My only alternative hypothesis is that I read a bit too far into the whole trivia thing. The box only promises ‘one Star Wars fact a day’ and certainly fulfills the obligation. Rather than try to dredge up obscure factoids that would tickle the fancy of calendaree they simply post a scene from one of the six movies and provide an associated fact. From this perspective they do quite well. However, I am still perplexed by the fact that of who would buy this calendar? Does the Day at a Time Calendar market subsist solely as Christmas, Birthday and theme gifts? Rather than cater to the dedicated fanbase, they producers seem content to move through non-fans in the form of thoughtful gifts that fulfill their base purpose as a way to track time, but not much else.