The studio behind a coming summer movie, “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” has roused the ire of the United States Mint with its promotional gimmick for the film, in which Marvel Comics superheroes battle a metallic alien.The studio, 20th Century Fox, hired the Franklin Mint, a private company that manufactures scale models, statuettes, pocket knives, medallions and collectibles, to place a full-color image of the Silver Surfer, complete with Web address, on the backs of 40,000 California statehood quarters.
The altered coins (which are not in fact silver) were distributed nationwide in the period leading up to Memorial Day. Visitors to the Web site can compete to win a prize in connection with the movie’s June 15 release (finding one of the coins is not required).
But the United States Mint, which is the exclusive maker of American coinage, took exception to the stunt. Although it is not illegal to deface American coins as long as there is no intention to defraud, it is illegal to advertise on coins, the mint pointed out last week.
M. Moshe Malamud, chairman of the Franklin Mint, denied that what the company put on the coins was an advertisement. He said it “enhanced” the coins to make them “commemorative,” as it did a few years ago when it added images of Elvis Presley to millions of Tennessee state quarters.
A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles, where Fox is based, declined to comment on the matter yesterday.
The United States Postal Service, meanwhile, plans to issue a sheet of 41 cent stamps in July featuring 10 Marvel Comics characters. Among them are the Silver Surfer and Spider-Man, the subject of another summer movie. A similar sheet showing DC Comics characters was issued last summer. Congress made it legal last year to use commercial images on postage.
Some of the Silver Surfer quarters have shown up on eBay, where collectors have paid as much as $149 each — a high price for a quarter, but modest in comparison to the $250-plus that was bid recently for an original copy of the first issue of the Silver Surfer comic book. The Silver Surfer first appeared in a Fantastic Four comic book in 1966; he was given his own title in 1968.
Source: nytimes.com
