Moulinsart: The Tintin Club

I am not sure if anyone else has noticed: Moulinsart has introduced a fee-based 'Tintin Club' on several of its regional sites (France, Belgium, Holland, Taiwan). Membership costs three Euros a month (or 30 Euros a year). What do people think about this? Would you pay?

Probably - what do you get with your membership? And do they have one in English?

Knowing how Moulinsart tend to over charge for Tintin merchandise, do not expect anything more than a free biro. :-p

They may establish an English Tintin Club later, I am not sure. Flash sites give me all kinds of trouble, so perhaps some other Francophone among us (Richard? Ed? Chris?) would like to take a look at the French Tintin.com and find out more for us.

It seems that Tintin.com offers a few games to play, a 10% discount for members at store.tintin.com, some screensavers and backgrounds for your computer and mobile, some kids' games for 3-7 year olds, and a kind of forum for more advanced Tintinophiles discussing the books (this looks particularly interesting from the sample page).
Actually Tintin.com was down for a little while earlier... come on, own up, who was it? ;-)

I would not pay a dime to enter the French Tintin Club. Not because I don't know a word of French, it is because of moulinsart's selfishness and stingyness. Who supports me?!

Vish;))

I understand your sentiments, Vish, but Moulinsart do good stuff as well. They do their best to protect the Tintin character from a lot of misuse (not always successfully, granted) and although no one could guess at what Hergé would truly want were he still around today, they do make an attempt to keep the Tintin world true to his concept. Again, it is open to debate whether they are successful in this or not.

I would criticise them for being too harsh on fan websites, as I think they tar site creators with the same brush as pirate book publishers, when the two are very different.

I don't think they are the big evil organisation, and I don't think they are perfect either. I'm glad Hergé still has an estate as it does provide some quality control, in the same way that Association Chaplin makes sure Charlie Chaplin's film output is as high quality as he would have expected when he was alive. But again, who knows what either of them would say about the directions and decisions that have been taken in their name...
People change, and something you create is always very close to your heart.

Interesting poll... I was just going to qualify my vote of 'no, I wouldn't join the club' by saying 30 Euros a month (£20!) is the thing that would put me off, I thought that price was outrageous. But now I look, I think it is actually only 3 Euros a month, more reasonable.

Still not sure I would join, but only because I don't think I would personally get much out of it, nothing to do with Moulinsart, or even the price...
Oh, plus my French is awful! I'd need my wife to join it as well so she can translate! :-)