Finding Nemo Glass

A Finding Nemo glass printed with then Kodak's newly launched advertising campaign slogan "Share Moments, Share Life". Here are some excerpts I found on the Kodak campaign:

Consistently focusing on the many ways consumers can share pictures, the new advertising demonstrates that great pictures are just the beginning. The "Share Moments, Share Life" campaign creates a strong emotional link for consumers between pictures and memories, while visually demonstrating the superior products that enable better pictures and better sharing.

All of the commercials in the campaign demonstrate Kodak's innovative technology through powerful visual images. In addition to national broadcast advertising, the campaign will also include an extensive print advertising component. The "Share Moments, Share Life" campaign offers consumers new ways to do more with their pictures, proving that pictures are a way of sharing life for generations to come.

That was back in year 2001 when digital devices had only just started being developed and Kodak maintained a strong market presence then. Fast forward nine years to 2009 and it is a very different world now. We have our iphones, blackberries and bluetooth technology. We can upload with ease our freshly taken holiday pictures to Flickr for the world to see if we so desire. Fading pictures and aged-yellowed albums are now a bad memory of the past. Against the backdrop of digital advances, Kodak announced in June 2009 the sad news for the retirement of their Kodachrome film, once the widely popular film of choice for both amateur and professional photographers.

Finding Nemo Mousepad

This is a lenticular mousepad from the 2003 Disney Pixar animation movie Finding Nemo. I remember this movie enjoyed good box office takings and it was screened during the June school holidays. Many parents accompanied their kids to watch this family-oriented movie. But while this movie showed children good core values through its themes of love and friendship as any good Disney movie should, it also created an unexpected and undesirable situation. Well let me explain, before this movie, many children had no idea what a clownfish was. They might innocently squeal: "Clownfish? A fish that looks like a clown?" But after the movie started screening, adolescents who might otherwise find delight in pointing at the Golden Arches and excitedly mouthing the word "MacDonalds!!!" ad infinitum, added one new word to their limited vocabulary. The word? N-e-m-o. The cute clownfish from the movie had kids enthralled. Pet shops started selling clownfishes like hotcakes to impressionable kids with parents in tow. They had all watched the movie and everyone wanted their own "Nemo". I know a lot of parents indulged their kids and bought clownfishes to please their little ones. The problem was that these people were clueless on how to properly care for marine life and our poor delicate clownfishes were treated as mere toys. I can only imagine the sad fate that awaited these pets when the fad eventually died down and the kids invest their interest on the next popular cartoon character. I just wish parents could be more responsible for their actions and teach their children proper values. Fishes are afterall not inanimate toys, they have a life.