BATMAN: The Embarassing Merchandise Returns

[Azrael]

To those of you that always felt a little uncomfortable for being fans of movies that had embarassing tie-ins like ugly McDonald's toy cars or colouring books, the ones released for The Dark Knight Rises top them all. Not one, but eight books aimed squarely at children. I post this because I think it's a bit funny that the target audience of these products wouldn't be allowed to watch TDK or TDKR.

http://legionsofgotham.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-dark-knight-rises-books.html

[The Dark Knight]

Yes, it's quite funny. BR got blasted for such a thing but will TDKR be?

[Grissom]

It's amazing how times have changed.

[Azrael]

The only difference is that the Batman Returns artworks by José Luis García-López were amazing, even if they were used on stuff like McDonald's cups and sticker albums.

[The Dark Knight]

Regarding the posters:

The teaser poster I liked.
The shattered cowl was strong enough on its own. And even then it's probably a re-used shot from BB when Alfred hits the mask with the baseball bat.

This third poster is a complete insult.  A total disgrace and worse than fan art. Re-using the first teaser image and slapping an old TDK still in front of it. Recoloring the bat in the sky orange is just dumb. It abandons the black and white colour scheme the other 2 posters followed. It also trashes the first poster by association. It confuses the marketing and sticks out like a sore thumb. Which is the real version now?

The character posters are just terrible as well. They go back to the black and white scheme, so what's up with that orange fan art poster? Catwoman's belt is black, not gold as it is in the poster. What's the deal there? Bane's poster is black in that section, all the way down, so why was it ok for him and not for Catwoman? I get that it's supposed to be shadow around her eyes but it's just comes off as a black bar that looks silly. The others are boring and safe.

These are the worst posters for a Batman movie by a wide margin.