E.T.: candy on the ground and a bicycle across the moon
Elliott uses Reese's Pieces to attract the stranded alien in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The 1982 film places a small, familiar candy at the beginning of an unusual friendship. The product had been developed during the 1970s as a peanut-butter-centered confection with a candy shell. It reached stores before the film partnership, but its sales had begun to weaken. The connection with E.T. joined an existing consumer product to a fictional encounter in a suburban neighborhood, where toys, bicycles, a bedroom, and a trail of candy supplied the everyday setting for an extraterrestrial visitor.
Hershey developed a peanut butter filling that could withstand panning, the process used to build its outer shell. The company had previously used panning for other products, including earlier chocolate-centered sweets. A Universal representative approached Hershey about the new film, and executive Jack Dowd became involved in the arrangement. Promotion was complicated by the secrecy surrounding the creature: the company could not initially show E.T.'s appearance in its advertising. A special screening at the Hershey Lodge theater brought together employees and their families, who applauded at the end. The candy's use on screen and its promotion were coordinated parts of that agreement.
Steven Spielberg directed the film from Melissa Mathison's screenplay. Henry Thomas plays Elliott, with Drew Barrymore as his younger sister Gertie and Robert MacNaughton as his older brother Michael. Dee Wallace plays their mother. The household is coping with an absent father when Elliott becomes responsible for another being separated from home. Spielberg's own childhood and his parents' divorce helped inspire that emotional setting. The alien's need to return to its people intersects with Elliott's wish for companionship, putting family life at the center of a film that could otherwise have concentrated on spacecraft and distant planets.
Much of the action stays close to Elliott's house, particularly his crowded bedroom and the surrounding neighborhood. Camera positions often take the children's point of view. Objects inside that space establish a recognizable early-1980s world: Star Wars figures, Gertie's Speak & Spell, and the bicycles used by the children all belong to it. Michael briefly sings an Elvis Costello song. These objects exist alongside the unfamiliar creature rather than being swept away by a wholly futuristic setting. The Reese's Pieces trail works within that collection of ordinary possessions, using something Elliott already understands to begin contact with a visitor he does not yet understand.
E.T. is a peaceful visitor, and Elliott's attachment to him drives the action. Government agents approach the creature as something to investigate, while the children develop an emotional connection with him. The contrast gives the neighborhood encounters their tension without making the alien an invading enemy. The film shares its interest in a peaceful extraterrestrial encounter with Spielberg's earlier Close Encounters of the Third Kind, although that film operates on a much wider geographical scale. Here, the small cast and domestic surroundings keep the relationship between a boy and a visitor close to the foreground.
The bicycle flight required another kind of construction beyond the household sets and creature performances. Industrial Light & Magic combined miniature and puppet elements photographed against a blue screen with live-action background images. Go-motion technology contributed to the sequence. The familiar image of Elliott and E.T. crossing the face of the moon consequently joins separately made components into one view. A photographed background and an animated foreground could occupy the same frame even though they had not been recorded together. The children appear to leave the ground while the effects work connects their flight to the visual space of the rest of the film.
ILM's model shop also built a miniature forest, a neighborhood using forced perspective, and the mothership. These constructions supplied environments and vehicles at a scale different from the actors' surroundings. Dennis Muren supervised ILM's visual effects, with Sam Comstock supervising animation. Carlo Rambaldi's creature design supplied another essential part of the production, giving the extraterrestrial a physical form capable of carrying a relationship with a human child. Model environments, photographed performances, creature construction, and composited flight sequences all contributed different components to the world through which Elliott and E.T. moved.
The candy partnership brought its own production demands after the film opened. Hershey was completing a plant in Stuart's Draft, Virginia, where Reese's Pieces could be made in addition to the existing Hershey operation. Its opening helped supply the increased demand. The agreement gave Hershey an exclusive position for confectionery promotion connected with E.T., covering consumer offers, trade promotions, and displays. T-shirts used an image of the alien with the boy. A product first developed under the temporary name PBs thus acquired a much more public identity through the film, with manufacturing and advertising following the candy from its earlier launch into a new wave of orders.
- Hershey Community Archives, Reese's Pieces: E.T.'s Favorite Candy — hersheyarchives.org
- Amblin, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) — amblin.com
- David Gibson, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Library of Congress National Film Registry essay — www.loc.gov
- Industrial Light & Magic, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial — www.ilm.com