Updated: March 08, 2025

The producers of Planet of the Apes were slow to realize just how much potential there was for spin-off marketing of the franchise. The Topps Chewing Gum Company had been the first to issue official merchandise, in the form of a 66-card set of Planet of the Apes bubblegum trading-cards sold at five cents a package in 1968. A record album featured the original soundtrack of the film with photographs of cast members inside. Hardcover and paperback issues of the source novel were already available during the 1960s, but sales of Signet-issued paperback reprints were probably boosted by the release of the movie adaptation. The second movie - Beneath the Planet of the Apes - prompted a novelization, a comic book adaptation and a soundtrack album, but none of the subsequent movies received this honor during their theatrical run. There were posters and an assortment of lobby cards and movie stills, but little else on the scale of the kind of campaign that is standard in today's Hollywood movie industry. Up to this point, mass-market merchandising of a movie title was unheard of, so it's not surprising that it wasn't explored further.