Nothing says “big trucks” like the elfin Rice Krispies mascots
When did Snap, Crackle and Pop get Class F licenses? Read more…
SWEET FANCY MOSES THEY’RE SELLING A REAL- oh, wait, it’s just a toy vampire bat. Carry on.
For a moment, you actually think that this ad is hawking live vampire bats for sale, which would be, like, the greatest goddamn thing ever. Read more…
Superman. Wonder Woman. Lex Luthor. Radio Shack. BE THERE. – Superman in “The Computer Masters of Metropolis”
There was a minor confluence back in the 1980s, as comics and technology came together in a kind of book that was really hitting its stride: the giveaway. The ’80s were the golden age of the free comic book, which often had some sort of goofy theme as its raison d’être — of course there were also more serious iterations. And the device that would change the world just as much as any other technological innovation, from the light bulb all the way back to the wheel, was just then making its presence felt: the personal computer. It’s no surprise that the two, genre and gizmo, would meet in comic book about, you guessed it, the power of the PC.
Enter Radio Shack. And enter Superman. And Wonder Woman. And Lex Luthor. And a couple of tech-savvy kids. Add them up, and you have computer-themed hijinks that are, if nothing else, at least worth the price of admission.
Read more…
Charles Atlas is back to browbeat more pathetic weaklings into a life of physical fitness
We’ve seen the Charles Atlas “Made a Man out of Mac” ads before, but never this variant, which arranges the famous strip vertically on the side. The “Don’t Be Half a Man!” verbiage is a new twist too. Read more…
Is Patch called Patch because he has a patch on his hat? Or does Patch have a patch on his hat because his name is Patch? Read more…
Captain Britain’s very first comic, with a very outdated giveaway mask – Captain Britain #1
It wasn’t long ago that we looked at some of the Marvel UK adventures of Captain Britain, perfidious Albion’s favorite costumed native son. All fine and dandy, as the adventures of Brian Braddock coming out of the House of Ideas branch in merry old(e) England wound up being quite significant to their greater fictional world. Alan Moore’s throwaway Multiverse, intended as a device to introduce the concept of multiple Captains in multiple Great Britains, became a way to expand on the regular doings in the 616 Earth, and a means to explain alternate timelines, like the Ultimates, as “real.” Again: fine and dandy. Captain Britain, Excalibur, Alan Davis, all great stuff.
But we forget that Captain Britain didn’t always have the Union Jack tights look, and that he used to beat up villains with a staff he toted about. Which makes it nice that the very first Captain Britain adventure recently was acquired by the Blog into Mystery archives, so that we can remind ourselves and paw through it to our hearts’ content. We can delve headlong into his very first appearance. And, yes, it comes with a Captain Britain mask. Read more…
Superman is no stranger to hawking assorted Hostess food-like products, but the tag in this one-pager (ah, the days when reporters had press passes tucked into their hatbands…) has a hint of rebellion — questioning whether or not a suit will fit you while advertising sugary confections makes you put two and two together, you know? Not after twenty Cherry Fruit Pies it won’t, Clark. (Incidentally, how about some more involved steps to hide your secret identity? They’re the costumes that mark you as the most famous man in the world, not your stash of porno mags, Kent.)
Question: Can Superman get fat? Not in an evil scheme/Red Kryptonite kind of way, but regular stuff-your-face-you-fat-pig style? Because if he can, one imagines that the Hostess food-ish lineup would be perfect fodder. (This would seem to suggest that he can’t, though.)
The right to wear novelty dog tags is just what GIs died in the Korean mud to protect. Or something.
Since dog tags were originally created to help identify charred, mangled and eviscerated battlefield corpses, that you could/can buy jokey versions is either A) incredibly disrespectful of fallen soldiers, or B) an ironic commentary on war, a whistling past the graveyard through the prism of tchotchkes — like M*A*S*H condensed into small metal plates. Maybe, as with so many things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
And really, who wouldn’t want to wear Rolling Stones lips and pilfered Godfather lines around their neck, preferably coupled with a shirt unbuttoned to show a lot of chest? And further: What lady could resist such a swarthy lothario?
Marvel always had the self-promotion one-up on DC. Thanks to Stan Lee’s P.T. Barnum-like huckster sensibilities, from the dawn of the Silver Age onward the House of Ideas became synonymous with fandom. The Bullpen Bulletins, the quirky letter pages and the in-house fan clubs didn’t just clue readers in on all the action, but actually put them in the midst of the glorious turmoil — as if Flo Steinberg herself stalked your very own halls at home, carrying assignments for “Jolly Jack” and “Genial Gene.” Yes, Amazing World of DC Comics was meatier and had its own merits, but does anyone think it trumps FOOM? FOOM was called FOOM, for crissakes.
The Marvel Fumetti Book was another part of that self-promotion continuum, which turned the Marvel creative staff into impaneled characters themselves. And it remains a wry, enjoyable and sometimes sad-in-retrospect window into the Bullpen of the early 1980s. Read more…
Today in shame-based advertising: humiliated housewives
Read this thing. I mean, just read it. And maybe give this poor woman a hug, because you get the feeling that she’s about to Sylvia Plath herself in the oven before the day is out. Forget the Wayne School, give this desperate housewife some immediate psychiatric counseling — before she catches and (mis)interprets any more sideways glances from her supposedly ashamed progeny (maybe they’re ashamed of their acne-scarred faces).
“Shamed by your English?” How about shamed by your life?
(Incidentally, this ad was pulled from a mid-1970s issue of Swamp Thing. So the Wayne School was really chasing that lucrative “women of little education who read the comic book adventures of sentient, ambulatory moss” demographic. As Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox said to the man threatening to blackmail Batman: Good luck.)
This nylon baseball bat and stupid looking t-shirt patch have to rank as one of the worst combos ever
We all remember when nylon bats took the sports world by storm and simultaneously consigned their wooden and aluminum kinsmen to — wait, we don’t remember that. Because it never happened. This ad is from the 1970s, and during my 80s-90s halcyon days, aluminum was still the durable bat-material of choice for youth baseball. Still is. A nylon bat sounds unbelievably cheap and crappy, and they were, hence their utter disappearance from the face of the Earth.
But hey, you could get a really dopey patch if you bought one, so you could forever mar a perfectly fine t-shirt. And who wouldn’t a want a smiling Voit face on their clothes, one that looks like Mr. Yuk’s moronic cousin or something — right? Wear it like a scarlet letter A. (One gets the feeling that the iron in the above ad isn’t there having just pressed the patch onto the fabric, but is poised to singe it into oblivion, like the wrath of God on the Nazi crate in Raiders of the Lost Ark.)
Over the past several months I’ve noticed a number of people have linked to my discussion of the Spider-Man/Power Pack child abuse comic, in which a young, impossibly adorable Peter Parker was molested (off-panel) by Skip Westcott, an older friend. I’m glad the comic is getting some exposure, because it’s a surprisingly potent little giveaway from the 1980s, an era when gratis heroes were usually hanging with the Dallas Cowboys and battling tooth decay. However, I’ve noticed a number of commenters putting up their hand and proclaiming “BUT THIS ISN’T CANON.” They’re probably right, in a technical sense — but this got me to thinking. Read more…
Trading Card Set of the Week – Cosmic Teams (1993, SkyBox)
One of the very first vintage products to make it into our intermittent Trading Card Set of the Week feature was DC’s Cosmic Cards, that company’s first big release during the early 1990s comic/card boom. It was a belated answer to Marvel’s and Impel’s wildly successful sets, which took kids — like me — by storm. Cards of your favorite heroes (and villains)? Holograms? Is this Heaven?
The Cosmic Cards set was meaty and nice, but its cards had drab gray borders like the walls of a prison infirmary and, more importantly, a gaping hole within because of rights issues: no Batman, and nothing from Batman’s immediate orbit either. No Robin. No Joker. No Harvey Bullock, even. You kind of see where they got the “Cosmic” from, right? Yet the cards, like everything else tossed out to the ravenous public back then, were a success. Which necessitated a follow-up. Enter Cosmic Teams, from Impel’s corporate successor, Skybox. They arrived with different borders but, sadly, still no Batman to be seen. Still Cosmic, after all. But hey, Lobo was front and center on the marketing! (Having apparently killed Hulk’s friend Sym somewhere in his travels and made a kneepad out of him.) How bad could they possibly be [he asked with dripping anti-Lobo sarcasm…]? Read more…
Batman, Robin, Joker, Penguin, and Riddler would very much like to decorate your walls
Even in 1960s kid terms, a dollar for six, count ’em SIX (6) 11″x14″ Batman and Batman-related posters is a bargain — and it’s a toss-up whether I’d personally go for these or four larger Marvel Kirby posters for $1.50. (I’d probably go with the Marvels, with apologies to the Caped Crusader. Galactus, folks. Galactus.) If you’re stupid, you might even believe that Batman himself autographed them for you. Yes, imbecilic credulity is one of the great benefits of being dumb. (While “Best Bat-Wishes” is nice, wouldn’t Bat-fully Yours” be better? Search your feelings, Luke, you know it to be true.)
A corollary: If a kid only wanted to get the villains — the Joker, the Penguin and the Riddler — would that be cause for concern? Isn’t that the sort of thing that crops up on the serial killer progression chart, either just before or just after the torture of small animals? BEWARE.
This simple PSA, from our old friends at the National Social Welfare Assembly, is about as Kumbaya as you can get. Not that there’s anything wrong with Peace on Earth, but it just has the feel of something you should look at while sitting on the floor in the lotus position with flowers in your hair strumming a guitar and letting your long hair wave in the gentle spring breeze. While smoking some hash. It’s like a classic Coca-Cola ad in Post-it note form.
My favorite: Fred på Jorden, which sounds like an affable Scandinavian immigrant who lives next door. (The Afghanistan version looks like something scribbled by a kid who dozed off while taking notes in chemistry class.)
Jared
blog into mystery 