What makes this Doors t-shirt such a great item is the classic doors logo and of course Jim Morrison in the background. The cycadelic image really makes this promotional t-shirt.

The Lied Center of Kansas is the performing arts center for the University of Kansas. In order to promote the performances for the seasons concerts they handed out promotional music download cards. Given out at the ticket center for the Lied Center, which would hopefully increase sales and patronage.

Now this promotional aluminum water bottle is one of the neatest pieces of band merch I have seen in awhile. It’s not just because this water bottle is from RadioHead, but the fact that this is from an eco-friendly promotion. RadioHead’s lead singer Thom Yorke handed these out during his 2008 tour, the bottles are imprinted with the band name and tour dates. Who would have thought? Eco-friendly band merch!

While promotional t-shirts and custom buttons make cool band merch, this promotional lapel pin is even cooler. As you are digging out your denim jacket looking for all your old 80′s band buttons and lapels add this lapel to your 80′s memorabilia collection.

Continuing with the band promotions found on or in cereal boxes, this Frosted Flakes cereal offers 2 Stereo Records of The Banana Splits. Now I remember The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, but I never knew they made a record. Cereal box prizes were so cool back in those days, today free music is most likely to be handed out on a promotional MP3 player.

Besides custom boxes of cereal, many of the most popular cereals always had cool band merchandise, like these coins. Of course receiving promotional chocolate coins would have been an even tastier treat, who wouldn’t want a picture of the Monkees. Yea, I said it the Monkees. You know, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith,  Peter Tork, and Davy Jones. Yup, those guys, and yes they are still around. Of course, if you held on to your piece of promotional Monkees schwag it would be a great collectors item by now.

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees
And people say we monkey around.
But we're too busy singing
To put anybody down.

So far I have discussed everything from promotional t-shirts to promotional stickers, and though this box of promotional cereal wasn’t given out at a concert (how weird would that be?) since it is a custom designed box with the KISS logo and giving away a free record, it counts as band merch.

The true attraction to this promotion is not necessarily the box, but the free music giveaway that’s included. Though promotional records might be a thing of the past you could always get away with promotional music cards or promotional cds.

We’ve mentioned a lot of promotional t-shirts being given out as concert giveaways. I didn’t know about this one though, The Killers must have given these out at one of their concerts. I think I want one for myself.