Psych Merchandise
Back in the heyday of the fansites, websites usually broke down into the following categories:
-News
-Cast
-Pictures
-Quotes
-Synopsis
-Merchandise
-Links
And if you found a superfan, there might be a fan fiction page as well. My favorite page to check out was the merchandise page. I loved seeing all the various tie-ins and oddities that the licensing departments contracted out. Even to this day, if I run across an old site, I always click on the merchandise page first. It think its because that is the page that I’m most likely to learn something new.
Recently, I thought about doing a few random posts that’ll highlight merchandise for old TV shows and movies that I like. Nothing as in-depth as an old fan site, but just a fun look at some of the ways the lore was expanded through different story telling avenues or the way cheap money was made by slapping a logo on something not worth buying in the first place. I’ve decided to start with the TV show Psych.
Psych isn’t the type of show to get a mega merchandising push. It debuted in 2007 and aired on the USA Network. Still, the show had several tie-in books written.
There were four novels written by William Rabkin, who also wrote one episode of the TV show Forget Me Not. He was an experienced writer in the mystery world, having written for shows like Monk, Diagnosis Murder, The Cosby Mysteries, and Spencer for Hire. Having read three of the four books, I’ll say he did a decent job. The books aren’t great, but they are adequate enough. If you want a bit more Shawn and Gus, the books do a decent job at providing that. Although the first book, is arguably the worse of the bunch.
Psych also received a book written by “Shawn and Gus” titled, Psych’s Guide to Crime Fighting for the Totally Unqualified. Actually, it was written by some writers of the show, but is presented like Shawn and Gus created it. They even give a quick sales pitch on an episode of Psych for the book.
This book receives more acclaim than the tie-in novels, and while it’s been on my wishlist for two years now, I’ve yet to pick it up. It’s coming though. I’m going to pull the trigger one of these days.
Psych also received a set of trading cards by Cryptozoic. They were broken up into two sets, Seasons 1-4 and Season 5-8. The sets contained autographs and wardrobe cards as well as regular cards. Like most novelty sets, you can find base sets on eBay for pretty cheap ($10 or so), and I found a few unopened packs for around the same price. But any autographed or wardrobe cards have an eBay premium attached to them and well… that sucks for the fans.
USA had a Psych store sometime around 2013 that featured a variety of products including a toaster, sunglasses, pajamas, slippers, and more.
The Psych website also once hosted games you could play to build up points, that you could turn into for real prizes like DVDs and bobble heads. One redditor managed to snag a longboard. He mentioned they only had five available.
The talking bobbleheads were supposedly quite popular and sold for just $30. The easily go for $200 now.
NBC runs a Psych store, which consists of generic, mass printed goods on cheap products, not too unlike what you’ll find bootlegs selling on Amazon or even Redbubble. Sadly, there hasn’t been anything else Psych related released that I can find, but I will update this post whenever I discover more.
