I think I've managed to avoid a lot of merchandise hype. There's been no getting away from hype in general--I think on my way to work for a while I've passed at least 12 OotP pictures--but I've never been to a release party of anything and I think I've tuned out a lot of merchandise. It always seemed kind of pointless to me, I mean that there was no reason to have stuff that said HP on it. (Though I do have a wand, it's just pretty.;-)