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What is more, at a cost of about $1.5 million, he was cheap. As Spielberg points out, Marlon Brando gets about three times as much. And E.T. will earn his keep with the usual spinoffs: candy, dolls, T shirts, an alarm clock, a toy game to be made by Texas Instruments, whose Speak & Spell game is part of the device E.T. makes to re-establish contact with his spaceship. "Phone home," the little lost spaceman learns to say plaintively, and this dictates the single TV commercial that Spielberg will allow him to make. Naturally, it will be for the Bell System: Reach out and touch someone.