RE: E.T. (film): This film came with so much merch
I remember seeing this in the theatre in my hometown. You are dead right that it was everywhere... Partially due to the staggering success of the merchandising for Star Wars, this was one of the first big "merchandising push" movies of it's time. I also remember buying the godsawful Atari game, and wondering why I was so bad at it. For a long time, there was an urban legend associated with the game, that it was so overproduced and so awful, that the manufacturers had to round up multiple warehouses of this turd and dumped all the spare copies in a landfill just to get rid of the damned things... Then a few years ago, they accidentally found it! It was not an urban legend, it was completely real.
On a side note, Henry Thomas played a young Norman Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning, which is actually quite a strong movie in it's own right. Aside from one corny line: "Am I embarrassing you?" The movie is pretty damned good. So there's that. =)