Movie poster baby-announcements

5-Star Baby makes great birth announcements in the form of dense film-posters starring your newborn. Peter, who runs the service, made us a set when our kid was born and they've gone over brilliantly with friends and family. Link

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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absimiliard

I’m going to prove I’m not a parent now.

I’ve had many baby pictures inflicted on me over the years. In every single instance the tiny, wrinkled, often still red-skinned, little blobs of protoplasm are remarkably ugly. I’ve seen 89 year old women who are more attractive, while she was still alive my mother would be a good example.

Sticking them on fake movie posters doesn’t make babies any less repulsive.

-abs
hugslife

@Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

i’ll link you to my google spreadsheet of devil’s rats, piggies and running dogs. it’s a big download, tho.
Takuan

That I’d like to see
tomaq

Luke was on the list of names for our kid, but we didn’t really want to do that to the child of a rabid “Star Wars” fan. Who wants to spend their formative years listening to some doughy heavy-breathing guy going “Luke! I am your FATHER!”?
travelina

Alternatively, you could put a photo of your newborn’s face on a bag of rice that you could give to your friends to announce the birth, like they do in Japan:
http://seabrat76.multiply.com/journal/item/12/Japans_Baby_Rice_Bags
zuzu

Zuzu, I take it that neither you nor your friends have children?

Teresa, I don’t myself, but I have friends that do… and I’ll just say that I’m politely skeptical of the resources and attention they can afford to bear on such a monumental investment.
ZioStefano

< hrf="http://www.smng.cm/md/1880/Kk_Kng_-_Plyng_Wth_Pnk_Ns_/">Kk s vry ct.
csbmonkey

You can make your own from Flickr uploads over at Big Huge Labs: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/poster.php
Takuan

SPAM @ #1
Moon

I worry that once the “newness” wears off, the kids will then be on their own. The parents will only be around to buy stuff for the kids and the kids will turn into “Daddy, I wanted the BLUE Mercedes, not the black one!” self-absorbed pouters.
zuzu

Moon, is that a non-sequitur? What are you talking about?

Though, I have observed that parents often want babies because* they’re “cute”… until they’re about 5 years old. Then it’s time to shove them off into the state run daycare system laughably called “public school”, until they graduate, and then it’s time to kick them out the door to college or wherever.

(*or because of normative social pressure to follow the implicit “life script”)
Kid

Should keep doing this every year, so when the dude becomes 23, he would be like, “Should I make a Star Babies Episode XXIII for myself again this year? Who would be on the poster? My ex-girlfriend?” Something like that.
Bek

Wow. Just to prove how bereft I am of any maternal instincts: Before I looked at all those posters side by side, I thought all babies looked the same.
zuzu

Wow. Just to prove how bereft I am of any maternal instincts: Before I looked at all those posters side by side, I thought all babies looked the same.

“Everybody’s children are so special. It makes you wonder where all the ordinary grown-ups come from.”
hugslife

(Wonders if Peter did the work gratis in exchange for a blog.)
cha0tic

Personally I think they’re tacky and tasteless, that’s just an opinion though.

The following from the website has got me thinking though:

“…Please feel free to suggest any design ideas ie. colors, type faces, backgrounds. We can create parody of popular movies…”

I can’t help coming up with really inappropriate films to base the posters on e.g. ‘Species’, ‘The Godfather’ ‘Alien’ or ‘Rosemarie’s Baby’

I think there’s a lot of Worth1000 competition potential here.
csbmonkey

#10 – You can do that at Big Huge Labs too: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/magazine.php

They also have modules for motivational posters and Magic style trading cards.

I would say the reason I don’t like the particular movie posters show is that they are too standard baby blue.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Beats the heck out of the usual baby announcements.

I think they should offer a Weekly World News version, with a headline about scientists discovering a mysterious miniaturized Winston Churchill.

Takuan: Nah, he’s got a posting history.

Zuzu, I take it that neither you nor your friends have children?

Hugslife, I sincerely doubt it. But as long as we’re on the subject, is there anyone else you want to accuse of dishonesty?
jrtom

Teresa@10:

It’s probably just as well that I didn’t know about this when any of my kids were born. (What would I have done with 40+ of these posters?)

I agree that all babies look like Winston Churchill, at least briefly.

The quotes around Zuzu@8 led me to suspect that Zuzu was quoting. Sure enough, a brief $SEARCH_ENGINE search suggests that it’s from a movie called Code 46. Maybe your comment was meant for Bek@7?
Nores

While meaning no disrespect to the creators at all, I have to note after a look through the sample gallery that, yeah, pretty much only white people would go for something like this… :-)