Sorry for not posting last weekend, I spent what free time I had struggling to load the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update on my old laptop. I did have plenty of time to think while the percent complete slowly crept upward, and I came up with a solution to a problem that has bothered me since before the Harvey Mercheum website went live in 2014.
One decision I had to make when designing the Harvey Mercheum was what to include and what to exclude. Original artwork? Bootleg items? Advertisements and store displays? Corporate stationery? The variety of possible items was staggering. Then I had a problem trying to refer to it all. For the tagline, I settled on “Toys, games and more featuring characters from Harvey comics”. This is a bit wordy, and so in most places, such as the Mission Statement, I use “Harvey comics merchandise”. Neither solution is ideal.
Thinking back to the Pop Culture Trading Pins and their similarity to Disney pins, I realized that my problem had already been solved. Disney collectors refer to the entirety of what they can collect as Disneyana. I like this Wikipedia definition because it mentions stock certificates and company checks, examples of ephemera not merchandise.
Based on this, and similar words such as railroadiana, I would like to propose that the entirety of items related to Harvey Comics, merchandise and ephemera, be referred to as Harveyana. What do you think? Leave a comment below, and start using the word today!
