Merchandise Research: Space Food

Being an at least semi educational series about space, it only makes sense that some of the merchandise be space food. Though the food that they eat aboard the ship would largely be replicated in my film and therefore very much like regular food, I think people would be interested enough to want to try space food as it currently is.

It was only just over 50 years ago that we were able to get the first object into space (1957 - Sputnik) and the first person went into orbit in 1961 (Gagarin); only 50 years ago. Already space food has developed a lot.

In 1961 Gagarin became the first man in space. For food he ate 3 160g toothpaste tubes of pureed food; 2 pureed meats and one chocolate sauce for dessert. 

In 1962 when America began manned space flight they experimented with various foods to establish what kinds of food would be edible in space. They found that surprisingly, low gravity does not affect digestion or the ability to swallow solid foods as previously thought.

In 1973 with Skylab, refrigerators and freezers were included in order to better preserve more traditional foods. They had foods such as canned meat, bread, biscuits etc. 

In modern day space flight, the primary concern is practicality. Taking into account eating and preparing in low gravity, as well as being well preservable. Otherwise, 'regular' Earth food could be and sometimes is used in space, which is a treat for the astronauts. 

Interestingly, carbonated drinks such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi are used in space. The national space station refrigerators have stocked cans of both for several years. Though consumption of them is not recommended, due to the effect that low gravity has on belching; namely 'wet burps'. 

Space food has been commercialized primarily in China, where it is a popular novelty product. It has also been commercialized in other countries of course. Often in the form of high nutrition bars and pre-prepared food such as meat in sachets.

For my merchandise, I'd like to do a range of both savoury and sweet food in bar and packet form. I'll get the drawings up later!

Merchandise Research

A good starting point for merchandise seems to me to be having a look at Star Trek merchandise, as it's a space sci-fi series aimed at a relatively close target audience to mine.

http://store.startrek.com/

There's even an official store!

Now the merchandise for Star Trek is probably one of the most extensive of any series, so there are quite a lot of items that would be ridiculous for me to use for my merchandise. Things like kitchen wares, glassware, fragrances wouldn't make any sense for me to use, and don't really for Star Trek... But they get away with it because of the popularity of the series. People like to fill their homes with all sorts of star trek stuff!

So some things that I think would be applicable for my series are more related things, aswell as some items aimed at the younger end of my particular target audience.

Clothing

Uniforms, quotations, costumes

Accessories

School satchel

Collectables

Sticker book, fact cards, figurines

Posters

Mouse mat

Beginner telescope

Stargazer kit

satchel, notepad, pen, light, starguide

Books

Starguide, fact book, fiction

Space food

That seems to be a fairly comprehensive list of the merchandise I'd like for the series. Amazingly I don't actually think that mugs would fit in with the series... So I'll be skipping the 'go to' merchandise completely!