The entire magic of The Nightmare Before Christmas is in its surreal, impossible character designs – the way they stretch the limits of what should exist. Watching it on film is mesmerizing because these characters shouldn’t work. They look like they stepped out of a warped Dr. Seuss fever dream, yet here they are, real, physical things moving in beautiful stop-motion animation. It’s an optical paradox: grotesque yet elegant, distorted yet fluid. That’s what makes it a feast for the eyes.
But of course, crapitalism had to come along and slap Jack and Sally onto every uninspired, mass-produced piece of garbage imaginable. Every big-box store churns out lazy merch – mugs, lunchboxes, water bottles, car floor mats, ugly Funko Pops (which at least has the excuse of always having that uniform design as its whole reason for being so that might be the one semi-understandable one), and whatever other landfill fodder they can print Jack’s skull onto. But the worst offender is any merch that completely flattens and normalizes the designs.
I can tolerate one or two ironic pieces – something that deliberately makes Jack fat or plushie as a design quirk that makes it odd in a different way than Nightmare-odd but odd nonetheless, or some weird, self-aware take on the designs – those are okay though rare. But when it just becomes the standard to smooth out all the strange, all the gothic elegance, all the deliciously creepy weirdness just so it can be more palatable for the masses? I hate it. I hate it with the fiery rage of a thousand Oogie Boogie dice rolls.
Merch done right for this film is rare because it actually has to respect the German Expressionist roots that made the movie look so damn good in the first place and that’s a tall order for merch designers who are used to mainstream consumer cutsie stuff for kids that are still children and for middle-aged children that have a lip ring and a shock of purple hair so you know they’re a tortured soul or something.
It needs to be weird. A little ugly. A little off. It needs asymmetry, jagged edges, unsettling proportions, long limbs, oversized heads, and a design language that makes you feel like you’re looking at something that came from a twisted fairytale. That’s what Nightmare Before Christmas is.
So when I see Jack Skellington looking like a generic goofy mascot and Sally transformed into a bland, normal-looking human woman with all her patchwork charm sanitized, I feel a sadness inside. That’s not Jack. That’s not Sally. That’s some corporate-committee abomination made to look safe enough for a middle-aged mom to buy at Target without thinking twice.
If you’re gonna make Nightmare Before Christmas merch, make it nightmarish. Or don’t make it at all.
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