February 23, 2006--Goody Bags

The first time I heard of Goody Bags was at a cousin’s Bar Mitzvah. The affair had a theme—sharks, as in sharks the fish. There were rubber sharks accompanying the floral centerpieces on each table; there was a shark slide show flashed throughout the afternoon on the wall behind the band; and when the newly anointed little “man,” cousin Louie, made his first appearance in his blue serge Bar Mitzvah suit, the band struck up the theme from, you guessed it, the movie Jaws.

And when we left, six interminable hours later (the band was that loud), we were each given a gift bag within which there was a goldfish in a little bowl. A Goody Bag.

Cut to the recent Grammy Awards—they too distributed such bags, though they call them Gift Baskets. And as you might suspect, they did not contain goldfish. According to a report in the NY Times (see below) they contained little throwaway things such as a cruise to Antarctica and Tasmania, a three-night stay at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, high-thread-count bed lines, and even a coupon for Lasik eye surgery.

What’s going on here?? In a word, commerce.

There is an appropriately named fellow in Hollywood, Lash Fary, who the Times calls the “sultan of swag.” For a fee, he gets travel companies, jewelers, hotels, and eye surgeons to give him these freebies which he in turn arranges to give to celebrities at the Grammys, Golden Globes, Oscars, etc. He then tries to get the recipients, even the award losers, to allow him to photograph them with the products, which the companies in turn use in their more traditional marketing campaigns.

Lash also gets the organizers of the Grammys and such to permit him to set up “interactive gifting suites.” Here celebrities such as Queen Latifah have face-to-face opportunities to pick up the loot on display there. And, if the give-away providers are fortunate, they get to meet the stars and, most important, be photographed with both the stuff and them.

As with many things too good to be true, there is the other side of the story—taxation. Are these truly gifts and thus not taxable or are they, in the opinion of some tax experts, a version of income? The companies take deductions for the value of the gifts because they see them as a business expense. But what about Gwyneth Paltrow? Her Goody cruise was worth $22,000. Was it a gift because the Tasmanians love her or was it a fee for service? I suppose they’ll have to fight it out in Tax Court.

But when all is said and done, it is reported that only 5 to 10 percent of the celebrities ever take the cruise or stay at the Mirage. Who wants to have to hang out with all those Prols on a Carnival Cruise where all everyone does is eat?

I want my goldfish.