For the better part of 25 years, through 2013, I published and was executive editor of The Licensing Letter, an ad-free paid subscription newsletter about licensing — applying corporate brands, entertainment franchises and other intellectual property to generate brand extensions into apparel, toys, food and additional product categories for marketing purposes and profit.

What would we have done if Alligator Alcatraz had come in over the transom as a “brand,” with its alligator and python logo that already adorns t-shirts, beer koozies, and caps, with a request for coverage that it is available for licensing? (NOTE: I don’t know if it is, don’t know if the images have been protected, etc.) I like to think we would have taken a stand and said this was a step too far. Many steps too far. I fervently hope that the current editor and publisher of The Licensing Letter don’t have to confront this issue.

I remember the angst in the office when a press release came in about the availability for licensing of the Uzi brand of submachine guns and pistols. Do we run it in our lists of available properties, as we routinely did for even the most absurd potential brand extensions?

After speculating about the types of merchandise that might be produced, and some uncomfortable jokes, I believe (if memory serves), we decided it was a legitimate, legal property and that yes, it should be listed. Ironically, the backlash to the Uzi company — and to the publication — was sufficient that Uzi pulled it back from licensing very shortly thereafter.

There is a thoughtful, rightfully angry opinion piece about the merchandising of Alligator Alcatraz in The Forward, the award-winning news organization that covers “the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews” and, I daresay, should often matter to all, as in this case.

Link in the comments; brief excerpts follow:

By Nora Berman
Deputy Opinion Editor, The Forward

“When you make merch out of suffering, it makes that suffering seem less real. Even funny. In the U.S., this wave of branding misery is making it easier for the government to get away with transparently inhumane policies. . . .

“The idea behind the tactic is simple: Making fun of something damages the integrity of the butt of the joke. Earnest pleas for civility can be met with a cool, assured, ‘I was just joking.’ . . .

“But for their intended audience, the memes — and the merch — are meant to easily deflect all those concerns. They invite their supporters to ask: Can Alligator Alcatraz really be a concentration camp if it has an official beer koozie? . . .

“Memes, silly names, jokes and cartoonish merch — all of this commodification does the same thing: It turns the Trump administration’s devastating crackdown on immigrants into a joke for his supporters to laugh at, rather than a set of real-world policies affecting very real people for whom they could conceivably have compassion. The merchandizing of the ICE detention center in Florida takes this noxious trend to the penultimate step: capitalizing off of human suffering.

“’The goal is to raise awareness to what the policy is.’ Evan Power, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, told Fox 13 about the line of merchandise. ‘But second of all, when you sell merch, you get names, you get emails, and then you make some money off of all of it.’”

Thank you Nora Berman and The Forward.