One of the very first merchandise items for Terminator 2: Judgment Day ever were two pinback buttons. One just had the logo, the other one had the logo and the icon for the film (at the time). They measured 2x3 inches, and They were in the first line of merch, which was advertised in multiple magazines beginning on July of 1991
What I love about this particular item is its imagery - it encapsulates the quintessential imagery of the film from that time, an imagery that had faded away and eventually completely disappeared from sight. This button contains my favorite image, and at the same all the visuals who are now of a bygone era (unless they make a comeback to Terminator related products in the future)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made, and its promotion has been carefully timed and crafted. I think we're all aware of the hype and bang around the film even before it came out, and the marketing did a good job at pushing the anticipation to the Nth degree. Even before the film started shooting, a teaser trailer had been shot by Stan Winston, with the use of a Winston-built flesh machine and Arnold Schwarzenegger for a sum that could be enough to finance a very small budget film. The trailer, for a very long time, was the only source of any visuals and imagery for the film. Its last shot of the Terminator's face, half dipped in deep shadows have been reworked by the marketing campaign - they superimposed Terminator's endoskeleton into the shadowed area, and that image of half-man, half-machine has been an omnipresent, icon image for the film before and during its original theatrical run. It was included on the first wave of merchandise, and then on nearly every product around the world, from t-shirts to action figures and sets, to calendars, games, folders, stickers - you name it, it had that image. Once the film passed through theaters though, this image faded away, as it was now naturally replaced by various images from promotional shoots or images from the film, since they were available now. It had made an appearance on few PC related items in the late 90's and on UK version of the Ultimate DVD, and disappeared since, revived only once for Neca's tribute figure packaging.
The other icon for the film was its logo. The film actually got a symbol, from which the "T2" abbreviation exists to this day.
James Cameron: The marketing campaign - we took a strong position on that film from the beginning. We came up with some of the iconography, the T2 idea, just putting kid of a symbol out there on a landscape and creating kind of a sense of a myth even before the movie (source: Terminator 2: Judgment Day Extreme DVD Interactive Content)
The T2 logo, which had an imagery of being engraved on a shiny, steel plate, had a much longer life than the half terminator, half human icon. It appeared on a lot of the merchandise, but some companies, like Kenner or Remco, didn't use it. It was also nowhere to be seen on the VHS releases of the film, but was highly prominent in the box set laserdisc editions, and used pretty heavily throughout the rest of the 90's into the early 2000s, until it also became much less frequent, eventually disappearing completely, either not used or replaced by a visual abbreviation of the title font. What I mean by that is that beginning in mid 2000's, the T2 abbreviation still existed on Terminator 2 related products, but instead of the actual symbol, it was made up from the Terminator font. See, the actual, original symbol did NOT have letters and numbering in Terminator font. The T was proportioned differently, and the number 2 was completely different, angular shape. But companies like Sideshow, Hot Toys and eventually some bluray/DVD releases were just using a Terminator font. Take a look
Going back to the original 1991 pinback, for me, this is the coolest film related image ever. That shining logo engraved in steel, with the Terminator in the center is a fantastic and striking imagery even today, and along with the blue light that’s castes on it, it makes for an absolutely quintessential Terminator 2 imagery. Pity its getting buried by time
Back to Terminator Trilogy
