Unboxing the astoundingly cool, dirt-filled ParaNorman press-box

I've just come back from a four-week working vacation with my family in LA, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Mountain View. As is customary on the morning after a long-distance family trip, I dragged my jet-lagged butt into my PO Box, where there was the usual mountain of stuff waiting for me -- bills, books for review, and a heap of junk mail as tall as me. But today, there was also a bubble-wrapped crate, quite heavy. Groaning a little at the thought of dragging this to the office, I peeled back the bubble-wrap...and then hastily jammed it back again, as the crate disintegrated and began to dump green potting soil on the carpet of my mailbox company.

We taped the whole thing back up again and I got it to the office in the back of a taxi. Once here, I grabbed a knife and set the crate down on a revolting, sodden sofa some miscreant dumped in the parking lot, thinking that whatever the box spilled out onto that wreck could only improve it. As I sliced away the bubble-wrap again, the crate completely fell to pieces, revealing an upside-down wooden coffin. I'd opened it from the bottom! Digging through the greenish soil (which was odorless, though it did leave powdery smears on my clothes), I discovered that the top of the box sported some live sod, and under that, a piece of semi-rotted burlap that semi-protected the coffin's lid, which was intricately laser-cut with an 18th-century date and a monstrous icon. Dusting off the coffin, I brought it back into the office, scraping as much of the crate's remnants as I could into the dumpster.

Prising the lid off the coffin, I discovered an absolutely gorgeous soft poseable maquette of a zombie from ParaNorman, the forthcoming Laika film. ParaNorman was clutching a rolled up scroll with a hand-written note telling me about the movie and making some shrewd guesses about how I'd relate to it.

I generally find elaborate PR stuff to be kind of tedious -- like getting torrents of the cheeziest SkyMall tchotchkes in the mail. But the ParaNorman folks really know what they're about. It was pretty gutsy to send me a giant box of dirt with a doll in it, and the doll needed to be extremely cool to overcome the automatic inward groan at the thought of having to deal with a massive MOOP spill when I opened the crate. There are a million ways that this could have misfired, but it didn't. Bravo, seriously.

As for the movie? Hell, I don't know. I was a big fan of Laika's treatment of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, so I would have gone to see this even without the weird-ass, amazing press kit. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have hyped the movie beforehand, so they're doing something right. I don't know what I would do if every PR pitch came with a package this elaborate -- I'd end up drowning in potting soil, for one thing. But this is the most creative and awesome thing I've ever gotten in the mail, newsworthy in its own right, and they've earned this post. Here's the trailer:

• [catastrophegirl]

   i’ve read another ParaNorman press kit unboxing review and they apparently found some small twists of burlap buried randomly in the green potting soil part with tiny one of a kind props from the movie, in addition to the coffin. did you have anything like that in yours?

  • [Monica N]

     That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw the picture!  Oh noes!

    • [Tuuli Mustasydän]

      The little scroll mentions tiny props too!

• [Pierre-Andre Labeau]

  I’m jealous now!

  I would have kept the crate, with the green soil, to show off the coffin (with the zombie in it) though

• [John Liebler]

  Jonathan Coulton’s had a tiny gravestone and a shovel inside as well.

  http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/07/17/flattery-will-get-you-everywhere/

  • [Tribune]

    his says 4 of 49, Neil Gaiman had 2 of 49  http://www.whosay.com/neilgaiman/photos/202990
    I wonder who the other 46 are.

    • [Stefan Jones]

      Short answer: Lucky socially connected cool-finders.

    • [catastrophegirl]

      the other unboxing i read was on the mary sue
      http://www.themarysue.com/the-mary-sue-paranorman-zombie-box/

• [DanHowe]

  Is that a Dan Hillier print on your wall?

  • [Cory Doctorow]

     Yup!

• [aGuyThatRentedOnce]

  I have some friends who worked on this and had a chance to do a tour of the studio and (amazing!) sets.  Norman’s street and main street were incredible, but I think the room with rows and rows, ceiling-high, of faces and arms in various degrees of articulation were just about as impressive.  The level of craftsmanship (not to mention the innovations they came up with for things like the ghosts, and the effects for a zombie rising out of dirt, in stop motion puppetry)  is just staggering, at every level. I can’t wait to see it on the big screen in 3D (advance screening, this weekend, wooo!).

• [Anne-Maree Gray]

  Kevin Smith got one too. There are definitely things buried in the dirt, too… They are all different and yours looks a little bigger and left handed… lol What is his name? It should be written somewhere too.

• [Chrissy Davey]

  This is the coolest bit of marketing I’ve seen in a long time. It certainly was successful, because after this posting, I’ve searched around to see who else got the packages (2 hours later, I’m still absolutely in awe!). Their attention to detail was incredible. Sad that it sounds like your experience of it was a little bit less because you opened it from the bottom… hope you were able to rescue all the other cool bits & pieces! 

• [Tim Chipping]

  And it’s for one of the best films of the year too. So smart, funny and original. And a proper horror/zombie movie – for kids. I loved it.