ABSTRACT
If the variety of Peter Rabbit texts seems numerous and expensive, it fades to insignificance compared to the lucrative market in Potterrelated objects which would appear to be largely aimed at adults. The scale of the money-making operation at work on the world created by Beatrix Potter almost defies belief. It certainly defies comprehensive description. I have been hanging around bookstores, department stores, china stores, gift shops and toy stores, simply listing the Potter variants which I found; my list now reaches many typed pages. And that is not counting the china specimens; two gift shops were kind enough to let me photocopy their catalogue entries for different kinds of china. The 1995 Wedgwood catalogue for tableware and giftware lists 27 separate Potter-related items; the total cost in Canadian dollars if I had bought a single copy of each item (mainly children’s dishes and money boxes) would be $1,762.00. Even allowing for export markup and a bad exchange rate, that total is daunting. The Schmid catalogue of china figurines, waterballs, musical teapots and so forth is even more stunning, although my copy does not include prices. I counted a total of 151 separate items. An entire semiotic study could be devoted to the relationship between the china object depicted and the music-box tune chosen to accompany it. Some extracts from the catalogue will have to convey the spirit of the enterprise. Of the musical figurines I inspected in a jeweller’s shop, my favorite was a china version of Mrs. Rabbit giving Peter the camomile tea; in complete contradiction to the implications of the story, the tune is “Just a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down” which, apart from its thematic incongruity, introduces a jangling tone of Disney. All this could have been mine for the expenditure of $42. 95 Canadian; the larger items were retailing for $60.00.
