PARIS—Would you buy a Paris 2024 keychain for 9.90 euros? For those who don’t speak the euro lingo, that’s around 15 Canadian bucks. And just about the cheapest tchotchke that can be purchased at one of the official merchandise emporiums.
Or perhaps a stuffed mascot. The — triangular-shaped blobs based on the traditional Phryges cap worn by Marianne, France’s bare-breasted version of Uncle Sam, but this one sports tiny French flags for eyelashes — comes in various sizes and has been a grab-‘em-off-the-shelves hit for both kids and adults. The marketing tall foreheads expect to sell two million of them during this Games fortnight.
Factoid: Mascots were introduced to the Olympics at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games. T-shirt: 20 euros. Hat: 22 euros.
Hoodie: 90 euros. Official posters, luggage tags, mugs, baby onesies, tote bags, towels, spoons, snow globes, scarves, pennants, kitchen magnets, badges, pins — the array is vast if not particularly varied. But tramp into the bystreets around the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Élysées — most especially the entrepreneur markets in hardscrabble Seine-Saint-Denis — and the search for merch at reasonable prices is more rewarding.
Except cops have been ramping up the war on fakes, to prevent anyone from taking a bite out of the International Olympic Committee profit. Or luxury brand knockoffs of upmarket design houses — because even the likes of Lacoste, Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga (a thong, , is included in their c.