There’s an unusually broad selection of Formula 1 books around this year. But those are just playing to the crowd. That crowd is ageing, and the sport needs to attract more pesky youngsters. With the season over, and Christmas approaching, that should mean merchandising-a-go-go.

McLaren’s Tooned animated series and Codemasters’ F1 Race Stars game are both around to cash in at this most lucrative time of year, but they should just be the tip of the stocking-friendly, officially-licensed iceberg.

Fortunately, I have an impressively sharp blogging ice pick, which I’ve used to chip off a few ideas:

• Sticker Album – “Swap you a Martin Whitmarsh for a shiny Nico Hulkenberg’s race engineer.” Not been one of these for a long while. New version includes a double page spread with a dozen stickers just for Adrian Newey’s massive brain.
• Talking Stuffed Toys – Featuring real team radio samples! Rob Smedley (enthusiastic, encouraging, northern) rather more popular with parents than Kimi Raikkonen (dismissive, sweary, monotone).
• Top Trumps – Another to be revived. New categories include Twitter followers and personal sponsorship budget. Romain Grosjean was unsuccessful in lobbying for number of first lap incidents.
• Skylanders – A mash-up of action figures and video game. No idea how it could be applied to Formula 1, but it’s clever and popular, so let’s copy it.

Photo Credit
smithsoccasional / Laura Smith – Flickr – Some rights reserved