The National Lampoon ‘Poison Pill’ Is Another Cynical NFT Ploy

The new Lampoon’s “Poison Pill” mints today, an NFT that promises an “exclusive membership to all things comedy.” For aspiring comedy creators, that means a chance to “contribute to media production.” For fans, that’s access to Lampoon media content, past, present and future. And your very own Poison Pill can be purchased for the low, low price of 0.20 ETH. (That comes to a cool $323.66 in real-people money, depending on which way the market is trending when you read this.)

Well, that sounds like a lousy deal all the way around. If we’re parsing its white paper correctly, a Poison Pill would allow aspiring Web3 comics to pitch jokes and content ideas, perhaps even to take part in National Lampoon productions. It’s a unique proposition, for sure — content creators pay hundreds for the chance to audition their material for future use. 

As for Lampoon fans? The initial offering includes goodies like “select content from the National Lampoon vault” such as National Lampoon Radio Hour episodes and John Hughes short stories. Those are indeed comedy classics, but they’ve been freely available online for years. Heck, you can grab the entire box set of Radio Hour episodes on eBay for about $40.

To be fair, the real promise — in theory — is the future content. But as any fan who has followed the National Lampoon through its various reboots and rebirths knows, the name brand alone doesn’t guarantee quality.