Oh Press Kits, How I Love Thee...

I remember the days of being a wee little intern in NYC for a long running off broadway show. When needed, I'd sit on the floor of our small office at 1501 Broadway and assemble our press kits. I'd sit, with my spray mount and our folders. I'd have piles of reviews and eventually I'd compile everything together. I'd add a few custom magnets and a custom pin as the final touch before stuffing the folder, nay, press kit into a manilla envelope waiting to be sent out to critics. In the beginning, it was thrilling. I mean, I was putting together a press kit! This was what I went to school for! Eventually, the thrill wore off some, but it came back when I was elected to choose the reviews for the newest kits. And eventually, that thrill wore off too. But hey, as my college professor used to say, most people work to live, they don't live to work. And making $100 a week stipend in a cramped NYC office doing scuttwork...that statement never rang truer.

However, I still get excited when I see press kits for movies or TV shows. Sure there's my love of custom promotional products, but there's also that flashback to being a chipper young intern making mere pennies assembling these wonderful gems. And now thanks to the magic of twitter, twitpic and blogs, I can see them all for myself. Let's check out some awesome ones from this season shall we?

Here's an awesome House press kit. In addition to the season premiere, network execs realized they couldn't give critics and bloggers House's favorite thing (vicodin) so instead they choose custom pencils. Pencils...vicodin...po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe right?

Here's the Fringe launch kit...looks to be some crazy holographic paperweight thing.

Sigh, I couldn't neglect my love of Bones. The press kit included Booth's customary striped socks, the DVD of the season premiere and Kathy Reich's new book, 206 Bones.

Dollhouse (created by Joss Whedon of Buffy/Angel/DrHorrible fame) chose to promote simply with custom t-shirts. Maybe they shoulda done a bit more...show seems to be tanking!

The Office created custom name plates for bloggers and critics. Here's Entertainment Weekly's Michael Auseillo's.

The ripoff spinoff of Family Guy, The Cleveland Show promoted with a bath themed press kit that included a custom towel, a custom body brush and some custom bubble bath. Why? I don't know.

Ok, and so it's not from this season but I still love Bones and this was just AWESOME. Bones created a desktop investigation kit. It came with a Bones microfiber cloth, a promotional keyboard brush and computer surface cleaner.

And I'm just putting this out as a sidenote, I did have every intention of adding Lost to this blog, but I couldn't find any info or images or Lost giveaways. I googled a bunch, but I figure I will hand things over to the expert on the subject. I bow down to his googling power when it comes to Lost. Anthony, it's all you!

And for more awesome press kits, check out The TV Squad blog.