Let me preface this by saying I love Lin-Manuel Miranda and everything he’s done from In The Heights and Hamilton to Mary Poppins Returns and Moana. But as much as I love Lin-Manuel Miranda and his work, it’s hard to look at the expensive stuff he’s flogging on his online merch store and not think that perhaps there’s a slight whiff of ego stroking going on.
Speaking of egos, the GOAT team talk about Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir and the furor it caused on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
With Hamilton performances halted and the In The Heights movie delayed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lin-Manuel Miranda fans will have to make do with merch from his online store, Tee Rico.
While it’s natural for big-name artists and celebrities to sell merch of themselves, one can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous – and expensive – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s line of merch is. There’s a wide selection of products ranging from apparel, tumblers, sheet music from his musicals, and other bits of stationary.
But the most eye-opening thing on sale is the sheer amount of photo prints of the man himself. There are selfies Lin-Manuel took of himself over the years (some of which are based on stuff he’s tweeted out), photos of himself as a kid, random photos taken by other people, and numerous photos of himself in various performances of Hamilton and In The Heights.
Photo prints of the Broadway star start at $19 USD but can go all the way up to a whopping $79 USD. If that is too much, then you’ll have to settle for the large collection of $3 USD “thank you” cards featuring context-less images of Lin-Manuel’s face.
To be fair though, if you were Lin-Manuel Miranda and you were the creator of In The Heights and Hamilton, you’ve earned yourself some leeway in fluffing up your own ego with expensive merch. And these sorts of things only exist if there’s demand, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of demand if Lin-Manuel can charge $79 USD for a framed photo print of himself.
As ridiculous and expensive as some of Lin-Manuel’s merch is, it seems like he’s clearly aware of it. The “About Us” section states that a “portion of all sales goes back to worthy causes such as our artists, charity events, and other programs,” which is a pretty cool thing to do and shows that it’s not just about ego stroking.
And besides, Lin-Manuel’s merch is no more ridiculous and expensive than some of the stuff that’s on sale in the K-pop world and those fly off the shelves. Still, that hasn’t stopped the internet from giving the Broadway star a good roasting for his merch line:
Again, I love Lin-Manuel Miranda and everything he’s done. I just don’t love expensive merch as much as some of his many, many musical theater fans do and it irrationally grinds my gears. But as a wise man once rapped, he is not throwin’ away his shot and he’s clearly not throwin’ away his shop either.
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