TIME: "Top 10 Oddball Celebrity-Branded Products"

[JamesG]

Top 10 Oddball Celebrity-Branded Products
Friday - Sept. 17, 2010


Lady Gaga: pop star, fashion icon, meat-dress diva ... perfumer? Gaga will launch a new perfume line in spring 2012.

In honor of this surely fragrant concoction, TIME takes a look at unlikely celebrity product deals:





1. Lady Gaga's Perfume Line







The confused reaction to the news that Lady Gaga would be producing a line of perfumes mostly seems like ill timing.

Just as people were getting over the fact that she wore meat to MTV's Video Music Awards, word got out that she had signed a deal with mass-market fragrance purveyor Coty to produce a line of perfumes that are slated to go on sale in spring 2012.



It's hard not to consider this news without thinking about the smell of raw meat. But there's no need to be repulsed by the idea of the pop star translating her tastes into ham-scented perfume —

maybe Gaga is a gardenia or lavender kind of lady.











2. Hulk Hogan's Pastamania!







Everything's larger than life in the Mall of America, which is probably why it was chosen as the location for Hulk Hogan's restaurant Pastamania! in 1995. Customers could have their pick of Hulk-U's and Hulk-a-Roos, but not for very long.


Despite being promoted through World Championship Wrestling's Monday Nitro, the place closed after less than a year. Not even the Hulk's own zealous TV plugs were enough to save the eatery.

Never fear, though: there appears to be a completely unrelated chain of Italian-food restaurants in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and the Middle East called PastaMania (with a capital M).











3. Jessica Simpson's Hair Extensions







Having a bad hair day? Then buy new locks — from Jessica Simpson.

For all her faults (mom jeans, that whole chicken-or-fish debacle), the girl has good hair, thanks in large part to her stylist BFF Ken Paves.



So with Simpson's music career waning, the duo decided to open up shop hawking one of her assets that was still selling. Hairdo (get it?)

Clip-In hair extensions are sold online and at beauty retailers like Sephora nationwide. They reportedly look fairly real and seem so simple that Simpson herself might be able to figure out how to use them.











4. Michael Jordan's Cologne







The 1990s commercial hawking M.J.'s cologne shows Jordan after a shower shaving his head with the words "Go inside."

Apparently for most people, go inside meant entering the Chicago Bulls' locker room after a triple-overtime game.



The cologne, which featured sneaker-like tread on the bottom of the bottle, was widely lambasted even though it sold well in department stores.

But ask any man in the Chicago area whether he considered buying it or even still owns a bottle, and he'll deny it up and down. He would be lying.











5. Shaquille O'Neal's Shaq-Fu







Virtual Shaquille O'Neal goes sightseeing before a big game, wanders into a dojo and enters a portal to save a little boy. What follows are subpar graphics, ridiculous characters and some of the worst gameplay of any video game in history.

It doesn't help that Shaq is dressed in mesh shorts the entire time he's fighting ninjas and princes.




A perennial contender for the top 10 worst video games, the Shaq-Fu led to the creation of shaqfu.com, which is still online with the sole mission of preventing "other generations from feeling the corruption of this game and its evil."











6. Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt







It doesn't promise to help ponytail growth, but Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt does purport to be "a drink that holds untold natural power."

The badass movie star claims that the energy drink is the first to contain Tibetan goji berries and Asian cordyceps.



The last thing we'd want to do is pick a fight, but we can't help but wonder why such a specialized concoction is even necessary.

All Popeye needed was a can of spinach.











7. David Lynch's Coffee







Cult filmmaker David Lynch loves coffee so much (in interviews he has claimed he drinks "about 20 cups a day") that in 2008 he decided to make his own.

David Lynch Signature Cup, a line of organic-coffee blends, used to be for sale on Amazon.com and through Lynch's own website.











8. Danny DeVito's Limoncello







Back in 2006, a noticeably intoxicated Danny DeVito appeared on "The View". He chocked up his inappropriate jokes, slurred speech and unsteady walking to too many shots of the traditional Italian lemon-flavored liqueur known as limoncello.

"I knew it was the last seven limoncellos that was going to get me," he said.



Not long after, capitalizing on his drunken display and Italian roots, he launched Danny DeVito's Limoncello.

While the drink, made from the zest of lemons in Sorrento, Italy, may be good, the real treats are the scratch-'n'-sniff bottle label and the theme song sung by DeVito himself.

The song goes, "Danny DeVito's Limoncello, it's a taste delight from this famous fellow/ It's so very nice, perfect served cold on ice/ The finest summer drink from Italy." And so on.











9. 50 Cent's Vitaminwater







Just because 50 Cent survived nine bullet wounds doesn't mean he's the healthiest man.

So why did the former drug dealer turned gangsta rapper suddenly start hocking Vitaminwater? Maybe because 50 Cent isn't a rap star so much as a rap mogul.




Through his G-Unit record label and entertainment venture, 50 has dabbled in everything from books to clothes to ringtones. And when he agreed to add his name to Vitaminwater's grape-flavored Formula 50 drink, he received a 10% stake in its parent company, Glacéau.

When Coca-Cola bought the company in 2007, Forbes magazine estimated his after-tax cut as $100 million.











10. Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka







Perhaps it's only natural that Ghostbusters star Dan Aykroyd would be selling vodka packaged in glass bottles shaped like skulls.

In a long video for Crystal Head Vodka, he explains that his inspiration came from the legend of the 13 crystal heads, the message of which is enlightenment.

Aykroyd says it's appropriate to put "joy" in such a "mystic symbol." Voilà! Vodka in a skull!




Of course, it's not just any vodka: this is "quadruple distilled" and supposedly filtered through Herkimer diamonds.


But not everyone is feeling the "pure spirit." In May, The Globe and Mail reported that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario would not sell the vodka, because of the bottle.

The enlightenment message seemed lost on the human powers that be, who said that the skull is "an image that's commonly associated with death."

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...019687,00.html