Paramount sent me a coconut!

Most people love free stuff. Understanding this, movie studios’ publicity wings have set up entire departments devoted to the proliferation of promotional goodies, which in entertainmentindustry parlance is advertising disguised as must-have booty. While some makes its way to the general public, a lot of it is a futile tool of seduction sent to the people who cover the movie business. If you ask me, there aren’t enough gold-sequined pasties in the world to make Showgirls” anything other than a four-star disaster.

After years of ridiculing, dissecting, and then forgetting all the promotional junk that fl ows through our post offi ce, however, we had an idea: once the swag had reached its expiration date, expose it in all its silliness. Over the past year or so we’ve built quite a menagerie of freebies sent our way both for theatrical releases and DVDs.

Some, like the pineapples from Sony’s “50 First Dates,” were perishable. Others were inscrutable: How much was spent in postage to send out that jar of rocks for “Something’s Gotta Give”? (Sony again. Apparently, money there is for burning.) Several attempts to get someone at the studio to comment on the rocks were unsuccessful. We’ll take that as an admission of profligacy.

On the other hand, swag can have its charms. Last year’s remake of “Walking Tall” was, indeed, pointless, but the embossed 2-by-4 that came to promote it? Priceless. Here are some of the year’s standouts.