Denver Sunday Lifestyles Feature

Dec. 19 From the edible little "2s'' packaged in Millennium Spaghetti Os and Cheerios to the pricey night vision spotting scopes peddled on Internet survivalist sites, the clock is ticking toward Y2overKill.

"If you think of Y2K as a brand, it sort of peaked the better part of a year ago, and it's been in decline ever since,'' said Mark Dolliver, who reviews new commercials for the trade magazine Adweek.

"For that reason, the ads that have made the best use of the millennium are the ones that treat it as kind of a joke, like the DeBeers (diamond) ad I saw on the way nike air max to work today "Every 1,000 years or so, you should give her something special.' ''

"Or,'' Dolliver says, "the Nike commercial.''

The Nike spot opens on the first chaotic morning of the new year, with a single jogger running down the street. Dodging riots and traffic jams, he ignores dark buildings, ATM machines spewing cash and an ominous missile streaking overhead, but nods in recognition when another jogger crosses his path. Then, three words: "Just Do It.''

While this commercial won't sit well with those who anticipate an apocalyptic New Year's Day especially since the Broncos won't be in the Super Bowl this year it demonstrates the humor that some advertisers are using to spoof them.

Not everyone is in on the joke. FleishmanHillard, a New York publicity firm, cited the fact in an effort to interest media in a story about diaper rash that 10,000 babies are expected to be born on Jan. 1, 2000. There are many, many Y2K watches, including several that run backward or lack hands, and many that feature interpretations of the Y2K bug (usually flealike but cuddly), including the three handed Y2K Watch ($29.95) that runs counterclockwise and shows a bug hugging a computer monitor. (What time is it? Time to get a different watch.)

Designer Christian Lacroix put his name on a pink Follement trinket tray, $165 a pop, in a limited edition of 2,000. Act free run canada now! (Or wait for them to turn up, considerably marked down, at garage sales in high end neighborhoods.)

The enterprising Starlite company is hawking "a greeting card for the new millennium'' a message transferred from database to laser and beamed into deep space, for $19.95 a pop. (So far, Starlite has not announced how it will handle replies.)

Pottery Barn is selling 12 Decade Plates ($49), with matching napkins ($39), champagne flutes ($49) and Christmas ornaments ($79), with one for each decade of this century, plus a 2000 plate and a "future'' plate whose icon is one of the world's oldest emblems a crystal ball. You are not meant to throw them against the fireplace at midnight on New Year's Eve, though it would be no huge aesthetic loss if you succumbed to that temptation.

Korbel, the sparkling winemaker, and Kenny G, the sparklingmusicmaker, have teamed up for a CD champagne package deal. On the CD, Kenny G presents three different mixes of "Auld Lang Syne: The Millennium Mix,'' nearly 18 minutes of questionable sax appeal infiltrated by sound bites from politicians and others. Unless you're a serious Kenny G fan, you'll need the hooch to tolerate the recording.

There's Parker Brothers' Clue 50th Anniversary Edition ($35), its Monopoly Millennium Edition ($40), and its Trivial Pursuit Millennium Edition ($40). Cardinal Industries has Game of the Millennium ($20), really a Game of the Century since the questions all concern events between 1900 and the 1990s, and similarly, TDC Games' Reminiscing Millennium Edition ($25), aiming for boomers by posing only questions from the '40s to the '90s.

In the same vein, but for a lot less money ($1.50 to $5 a set), are plastic 2000 cutlery, glasses, paper plates and napkins, and other knickknacks.

For a few months between Labor Day and early December, many grocery stores also sold Millennium Spaghetti Os and Cheerios edible 2s were added to the O's, for a joke that toddlers aren't likely to get but those are getting hard to find.

"With January coming up, those had a pretty short shelf life,'' said a clerk at a local Albertsons store.

And this doesn't include all the survivalist products littering cyberspace, marketing things like Y2K compliant plastic storage bags, containers and buckets; oxygen absorbers (like the little cylinders you find in packages of pepperoni); even special millennium blankets.

To the untrained eye, they may look like regular plastic storage bags, containers, oxygen absorbers and blankets. But the ad copy ( "Prepare for disasters of any kind!'') and the inflated prices prove otherwise. It costs $31.91 for a 60 by 90 inch blanket that the distributor insists will be useful for anyone "experiencing winter when the year 2000 comes.'' And who knows? Maybe those $31.91 Y2K compliant blankets will be covering the beds in Boston's Ritz Carlton for its "Ultimate Millennium Experience.'' For $100,000, the customers "experiencing winter'' at the Ritz Carlton are expecting, at the very least, to be warm. Let's hope they're not disappointed when there are no Millennium Cheerios at the break fast buffet.

With cynicism increasingly replacing more than a year of Y2K hysteria forecasts of power failures, food and water shortages and malfunctioning credit cards more consumers are seeing millennium memorabilia as curiosities than as collectibles.

"In general, the millennium branding has been a very forgettable genre, except for the recent irreverent ads like the Nike thing,'' Dolliver said. He compares Y2K hysteria to the hype and fizzle of Comet Kahoutek (whose image should be, but is not, on the Pottery Barn's '70s Decade Plate.)

"For all the hype, people take it less and less seriously as something that can affect their lives. It's entertainment.''

And in that spirit, you may want to invest in novelty company Archie McPhee's nod to the millennium: a Y2K Voodoo toy computer ($6.95), printed with a Y2K compliant box and various warnings "Missiles Mistakenly Launched on Ecuador,'' "VCR Won't Tape First Episode Simpsons of the New Century,'' "Beef Jerky Prices Double'' ready to be stuck with pins or other canada Nike Shox Turbo sharp objects (sold separately).

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