But he wouldn't. He was too cunning. One model a day was all. Leave
them wanting more. Never breathe a hint of what the next day's model
would be -- oh, how he loved to watch the blogs and the chatter as the
models self-assembled, the heated, time-bound fights over what the
day's model was going to be.
"Good morning, Ron," he said. Wiener had been lobbying to get a Main
Street build into the models for weeks now, and Sammy was taking great
pleasure in denying it to him without shutting down all hope. Getting
Ron Wiener to grovel before him every morning was better than a cup of
coffee.
"I've been thinking about what you said, and you're right," Wiener
said. He always started the meeting by telling Sammy how right he was
to reject his last idea. "The flag-pole and marching-band scene would
have too many pieces. House cats would knock it over. We need
something more unitary, more visually striking. So here's what I've
been thinking: what about the fire-engine?"
Sammy raised an indulgent eyebrow.
"Kids *love* fire trucks. All the colors are in the printer's gamut --
I checked. We could create a Mickey-and-Friends fire-crew to position
around it, a little barn for it."
"The only thing I liked about firetrucks when I was a kid was that the
word started with 'f' and ended with 'uck' --" Sammy smiled when he
said it, and waited for Wiener to fake hilarity, too. The others in
the room -- other park execs, some of their licensing partners, a few
advertisers -- laughed too. Officially, this was a "brainstorming
session," but everyone knew that it was all about getting the nod from
Sammy.
Wiener laughed dutifully and slunk away. More supplicants came
forward.
"How about this?" She was very cute -- dressed in smart, dark clothes
that were more Lower East Side than Orlando. She smelled good, too --
one of the new colognes that hinted at free monomers, like hot plastic
or a new-bought tire. Cat-slanted green eyes completed the package.
"What you got there?" She was from an ad agency, someone Disney Parks
had done business with at some point. Agencies had been sending their
people to these meetings too, trying to get a co-branding coup for one
of their clients.
"It's a series of three, telling a little story. Beginning, middle and
end. The first one is a family sitting down to breakfast, and you can
see, it's the same old crap, boring microwave omelets and breakfast
puddings. Mom's bored, dad's more bored, and sis and brother here are
secretly dumping theirs onto mom's and dad's plates. All this stuff is
run using the same printers, so it looks very realistic."
It did indeed. Sammy hadn't thought about it, but he supposed it was
only natural that the omelets were printed -- how else could General
Mills get that uniformity? He should talk to some of the people in
food services about getting some of that tech to work at the parks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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