Sterling's Gold: When Fictional Things Become Real Products

Grove/Atlantic

Roger Sterling's memoir was a running joke this season on Mad Men. Next month, you'll be able to buy a copy.

New York Magazine has the backstory; Grove/Atlantic, the publisher, offers this dry bio of an author who doesn't exist:

Roger Sterling, Jr. is a founding partner of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. He has a daughter, Margaret, and lives in New York City with his wife Jane. He is already hard at work on his next volume of advertising wisdom.

The fictional-to-real product development cycle is familiar, if still somewhat rare.

There's Brawndo, the thirst mutilator that showed up in the movie Idiocracy before it showed up in the real world. And Forrest Gump's Bubba Gump empire now includes dozens of restaurants around the world (including two in Kuala Lumpur).

Of course, the big money these days comes from going the other direction -- turning real things into fictional goods. Americans will spend an estimated $1.7 billion this year to buy virtual stuff in online games like Farmville.

Planet Money Question Of The Day: What fictional product do you wish you could buy in the real world?