‘Tommy’ Hits the Merchandising Jackpot : Marketing: With theater concessions for the play bringing in $40,000 a week, items ranging from an album to a pinball machine are making their way into stores.

Tommy, can you sell me?

Buoyed by a clutch of Tonys and an ocean of hype, “The Who’s Tommy” has been raking in an estimated $600,000 a week at Broadway’s St. James Theater. And while the musical has yet to recoup its $6-million capitalization, a growing school of pilot fish is already thrashing expectantly in the show’s wake.

So far, the “Tommy”-related enterprises include an original cast album; a making-of-”Tommy” television documentary and coffee-table book; a commemorative pinball machine, and a slew of official T-shirts, coffee mugs, baseball caps, pins and other promotional effluvia.

Meanwhile, the original “Tommy” album--re-released as a specially remastered CD to coincide with the Broadway premiere--is already approaching 50% of the sales generated by the previous “Tommy” CD, a double-disc package released in the ‘80s.

Various golden moments from throughout the Who’s career--some with decidedly tenuous connections to “Tommy”--are also being dusted off to cash in. VH-1 recently aired the movie version of “Quadrophenia,” the band’s 1973 concept album; a special home-video version of the Who documentary “The Kids Are Alright” will be issued in July; and next year MCA Records may finally release a long-delayed boxed set of Who classics.

While hit Broadway musicals have always generated ancillary sales, none have had the commercial potential of “Tommy’s” rock ‘n’ roll lineage. Many who flock to the St. James Theater treat the musical as a surrogate Who concert, a fact not lost on the rock entrepreneurs who have been associated with the show from the beginning. “Tommy” co-producer Pace Theatrical Group is a branch of the successful Texas-based rock-concert promotion company, and the musical’s merchandising concession is handled by Winterland Productions, a leading rock merchandiser affiliated with MCA, the label for the Who’s back catalogue.

Concession sales at the St. James lobby alone are bringing in $40,000 a week, according to Pace Theatrical president Scott Zeiger, and Winterland will sell the merchandise nationally at record shops and in department stores like Macy’s. Zeiger says the show is generating about $4 per ticket holder in merchandise sales. “I’ve never been affiliated with a Broadway show that’s done more than a dollar a head,” Zeiger says. “By Broadway standards, we’re kicking tush.”

“We’re really going out with a rock ‘n’ roll approach on this one,” adds Bill Foley, marketing manager at RCA Victor, the label for Broadway cast albums since the 1940s. While Broadway albums seldom approach the sales of pop or movie soundtrack albums, RCA has higher hopes for the “Tommy” disc, which will be released July 13 and is being promoted to album-oriented and classic-rock radio stations. Cementing the rock ‘n’ roll connection, the album was recorded by legendary Beatles producer George Martin.

“We’re shipping more than we ever have on any Broadway cast album,” Foley says. A single Manhattan record outlet alone is said to have ordered 15,000 copies of the album. “It’s probably safe to say we’ll all have gold records on our walls,” adds Foley.

Given “Tommy’s” Broadway box-office muscle--and a North American bus-and-truck tour to commence this fall, as well as future productions planned for Toronto and London’s West End--Pete Townshend’s opera about the “deaf, dumb and blind” boy promises to keep a small army in the chips for years to come.

Or, as Pace’s Zeiger dryly notes, “It’s busy.”