James Bond: An Everlasting Brand

"Might as well give Donald Trump a hair cut," Scott White wrote in his Boston, Mass.-based Brand Identity Guru blog. "Or heck, Nike doesn't need the swoosh. While you're at it change the Coke cans to blue."

White called the gadgets, which made their first real appearance in From Russia with Love in 1963, an integral part of Bond's brand image, and predicted the new film will be a bust.

Yet, Kyriazi points out most Bond aficionados now consistently rank Lazenby's 007 as one of the best, even though the one film he made flopped at the box office in 1969, prompting Connery's short-lived and costly return to the title role two years later in Diamonds Are Forever. Sounding much like early reviews of Craig's performance, Lazenby's Bond offered a rare look at the inner workings of the gentleman spy, and as such was at once more human and more menacing, Kyriazi says.

"Even Connery said you have to play Bond with a sense of danger. I've heard that Daniel Craig worked out for months before filming, not to look good with his shirt off, but to look like he could hurt someone," Kyriazi says. "As long as there's that global threat, and all the Bondisms. That's what we want."