Terrifying TV ads

Tune your TV dial for these spooky specials...that is if you're TV still has a dial.

Click on any of them to get a better view.

This as presents a tough choice: Bugs Bunny or Real People. I was a big fan of both but also worth noting, on the right page is a listing for a Halloween episode of Happy Days Again.

Here we have not the Garfield Halloween special followed by It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. One of the sponsors is Peter Paul Cadbury's candy bars. I definitely don't remember those. Most people only associate Cadbury with eggs.

AKA, The Night Dracula Saved Halloween. I bet this one had some good ads as it was sponsored by Kenner! I haven't seen this one but don't know if I can submit myself of Judd Hirsch as Dracula. If you want to give it a go, it's on YouTube. Fun fact: the special was shot at the Lyndhurst mansion in Tarrytown, NY (aka Sleepy Hollow).

Rich Little showing his four favorite Tales from the Darkside? Sign me up!

Growing up, channel 3 was not a broadcast channel for me, it was always the channel I put on so I could play Atari. So for me, this almost takes on a weird vibe where the channel that normally is all static will show this movie if you tune in at 11pm.

Be sure to visit the participating Countdown blogs by clicking below!

Monster Mail Order

Here's another round of ads to kick of the final full week before Halloween!

I don't remember where I found these but I'd guess Famous Monsters of Filmland. Each mail away kit send you the secrets of transforming a human into a creature of the night. Plus fangs and six wallet photos of film famous monsters. You cannot beat that for a buck!

Now this is a pretty cool ad! You can get a Spider-Man or Hulk costume with mask. If you're more about the monsters, they have you covered too. I am curious why the Wolfman mask is about x3 the cost of the other masks. Maybe it's got real hair.

This one's almost too weird for words! These Unknown Creatures are 5.5" plastic models with no real names and what even are they? And who can even imagine what The Thing in a Bag actually is? "It's whatever you may think it is"

We'll round out this batch with a pair of ad featuring Vincent Price. I always wanted to get this Shrunken Head kit just because he endorsed it.

Everyone knows Flintstones because they were so widely advertised but I don't think I remember Monster vitamins. Do you?

Be sure to Trick or Treat at the participating Countdown blogs by clicking below!

Creepy Comic Ads

It's kind of a lazy Sunday but the Countdown must go on!

Enjoy this random group of comic book ads.

95 cents for a horror album? Yes, please!
I really like the use of color in this one especially that dude on the right who's got some kind of psychedelic thing going on.

Pre-Snap into a Slim Jim era

I like this ad so much I printed it out so I could hang it on my wall.

Be sure to visit the participating Countdown blogs by clicking below!

Mail Order Monday - Zorcom (1983)

A very special Mail Order Monday today, 3 for the price of 1!

This trio of ads from 1983-1984 deal with the Zorcom universe. What is Zorcom you ask? I have no idea other than sci-fi mail order stuff in comics for kids to blow their paper route money on and probably be thrown out by their parents.

Blast off in the Zorcom Spaceship!

For just $12.95 (plus $3 S&H) you could get your very own spaceship made of cardboard! That doesn't seem very safe. I mean, it doesn't even have a hatch on it. That kid will never make it out of atmosphere.

Okay, so it's more of a play area. And the interior has all sorts of outer space-y images that you can color. You can see some pics of the actual ship, and the inside, over here. If you look in the bottom right of the order form, you'll see you also get a free poster!

Now that answers the question of who or what Zorcom is! He is The Defender! Honestly, if these are what the posters really looked like, they don't seem very exciting. On the other hand, you'd get one free with the spaceship, or BOTH if you order the Zorcom Adventure Cassette, which is what this ad is actually for.

Zorcom looks like some kind of, I don't know...space knight? You've got to admire anyone that carries a sword and shield in a sci-fi universe where beam weapons exist. His enemy, Tanjar the Dread, looks like a space orc or maybe some type of lizard person? Why do lizard people in sci-fi always have to be the bad guys?

Anyway, on to the Zorcom Space Cruise Sound Trek!

Here's the copy from the bottom of the ad to entice you...

Join ZORCOM on a journey thorugh time and space to the Forgotten Zone. Hear the attack of the dread Hakka beasts... listen to laser control beams as ZORCOM maneuvers inside the Cavers of Invisible Doom... brace for the surge of power that rockets YOUR SPACESHIP... feel the chill of the AUDIO ADVENTURE SERIES... One step beyond the thrills of the comic book/The next frontier in fantasy adventure... watch for Vol 2.

As far as I'm able to find out, there never was a Volume 2.

From this ad, you can order the Audio Cassette, a spaceship, a t-shirt of "The Beast", or the Adventure Package for all 3 items and a free poster of Zorcom's "Fight Against Evil".

Thanks to the awesomeness of the internet, you can journey back to the 80s and experience Zorcom's adventures!

Part 1

Part 2

Seriously, check this out. I would bet you've never heard anything like it...

or at least I hope you haven't!

Mail Order Monday - CB Times (1976)

Breaker, breaker good buddy. You got your ears on?

Anyone that grew up around the late 70s/early 80s will no doubt remember when CB radio was a big thing. I'm sure other kids out there that had walkie talkies spent way too much time trying to raise a passing trucker. Or, more likely, annoying them.

This mail order ad from 1976 lets you join the CB Times Good Buddy Association! 

CB Times was a magazine dedicated to the CB lifestyle.

Your $10 will get you: 

A periodic newsletter to keep you up to date on CB trends and an exclusive classified section
The official CB Times bumper sticker
"Official" CB Times Press Card to aid you in gathering news at conversations and shows.

"Official" CB Times t-shirt (worn by the couple in the ad)
Directory of over 200 CB expressions
"Official" CB Times embroidered emblem
Wallet sized membership card entitling you to special discounts
SUPER BONUS: $2 discount on a yearly subscription

It's a little odd they put official in quotes in a couple places considering the stuff is coming direct from the company.

Here's a close up for you of the information you need to supply to sign up.

I get why they ask for most of the stuff, but why would they need your radio's serial number?

If you've still got a hankerin to do some jaw flappin, head over to CB Slang, which claims to be the most complete CB slang dictionary online. 

Leave your CB handle below and we'll catch you on the flip-flop.

Mail Order Monday - Criminal Investigation (1951)

Hey, kids! Ever want to learn how to become a CSI?

You have everything to gain...nothing to lose! Here's your chance to learn at OUR expense whether you have "what it takes" to become a criminal investigator or finger print expert.

With NO OBLIGATION on your part - mail the coupon below requesting our qualification questionnaire. It will be sent by return mail. If, in our opinion, your answer to our simple questions indicate that you have the basic qualifications necessary to succeed in scientific crime detection, we will tell you promptly. The you will also receive absolutely free the fascinating "Blue Book of Crime" - a volume showing how modern detectives actually track down real criminals.

And you'll also get information on their home learning course because if there's one career you should be able to train for at home with no real life experience, it's crime scene detective.

 Here is my guess at the questionairre...

1: Are you over 18?

2: Do you have money?

I know comic books are for all ages but this seems like an odd thing to advertise. Maybe they're hoping an older sibling or parent sees the ad?

I did manage to find a few copies of the Blue Book of Crime by T.G. Cooke floating around on Amazon pretty cheap. It might be fun to pick up a copy and see what it was like to be a crime scene investigator back in the 50s.

Mail Order Monday - Live Toy Circus (1954)

With the news that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus would be coming to an end this year, I figured it was a good time for a circus related post...no matter how tangential.

You can click the pic for a better look but here's some of the ad copy.

Chameleons are real fun. They love to perform. You'll laugh with delight as they run with delicate balance along the tight rope or swing on the trapeze. They are harmless, clean and no trouble at all to keep as pets. Your friends will really gape with surprise when they see him riding on your shoulder. Your parents will be charmed with this small, clean pet. You'll love him. Sold normally for about 75c, you get this live chameleon FREE with the purchase of your Toy Circus. Here is our offer. Send us your order for the Live Toy Circus Today. We will send you one of these cute, harmless, performing pet chameleons free with each order. You pay only $1.00 and you must be 100% delighted or your money back.

Really makes it sound like the chameleon is pre-trained, doesn't it? I imagine many a frustrated kid trying to get their lizard to swing on the tiny trapeze. You know what's not listed as something you get in this set? A tiny safety net! But you do get a chameleon leash and halter. I'm presuming the halter is a harness and not a skimpy top to put on when it goes clubbing.

If you're not 100% delighted, you can return the toy for a full refund and you get to keep the chameleon! Sounds like a good way to get a free pet lizard to me.

Included are

15 animals from our wide assortment including Clowns (I know a lot of people don't like clowns but calling them animals?), Bears drinking a bottle of milk, Bunnies, Elephants, Horses, Lions, Tigers, Kangaroos, Monkeys, Deer (who wants bunnies and deer in their circus? The only thing less exciting than that would be fish!), Flying Fish (face palm), Giraffes, Pelicans and other birds. 10 are made from bright, colorful break-resistant plastic. (What are the other 5 made from??)

The band Darling Pet Munkee has a song about the "Live Toy Circus (With Performing Chameleon)" which you can hear below. Their songs are all based on classic comic book mail order stuff like this, you should check them out!

Mail Order Monday - Superman vs Muhammed Ali (1978)

It's been a long time since there was a Mail Order Monday and I was struggling to find something to write about this week. Ok, maybe struggling isn't the right word. 

More...how you say? Lazy.

Back in 1978, DC comics published an over-sized 72 page comic pitting The Man of Steel against The Greatest. And for the low price of $3, you could have sent away for it. Adjusted for inflation, that works out to about $11 today!

As a kid, I absolutely loved the Treasury size comics because they were huge (10" x 14") and they didn't usually do "regular" stories in these books. It was almost always something special that demanded a bigger size.

Here's a quick rundown of the plot:

It all starts when an alien race called the Scrubb demands Earth's greatest champion fight their greatest. Of course, Earth don't want no Scrubb but if Earth refuses, the Scrubb will just blow us up anyway. Initially Supes steps up, being the good guy that he is. But Ali argues that he's not from Earth and says he's the greatest. The aliens are intrigued and decide to let the two duke it out for the title of Earth's greatest fighter. To make it more interesting, the fight is to be on the Scrubb home world which orbits a red sun, effectively putting Supes on even ground with Ali.

Supes takes a beating and eventually hits the mat. Ali goes on to face the stronger alien champion. Seems fair, right? While Ali gets pummeled by the alien, Superman has made a recovery and tries to sabotage the Scrubb armada. Ali gets a second wind and knocks the Scrubb champion out of consciousness and the ring! Go Earth!

The Scrubb leader finds out about Superman's sabotage and decides to take out Earth anyway. But before he can, the Scrubb champion overthrows him and the Earth is saved. Later, Ali reveals he somehow figured out Superman's secret identity but assures him, he'll keep the secret, declaring them both the Greatest.

The full wraparound cover is pretty cool. It features a ton of notable (at the time) faces including celebrities Ron Howard, Donnie & Marie, and Dick Clark; sports stars like Joe Namath and Pele; and a host of DC comic staff and comic characters. You can see Batman in the bottom right next to Lex Luthor and Sonny Bono. How's that for a combo?

Kodak Instmatic 44 Ad (1972)

Found this in my digital stash of ads taken from comic books. I wanted to bring back Mail Order Monday today but I didn't find anything in the there that caught my eye.

The Instamatic 44 was sold between 1969 and 1973 (the ad is from 1972). It retailed for $9.95 which is around $55 today! There's a few retro features this model has that I really dig.

Most obvious is that it uses a flash cube.

For you really young readers, that means you could take four pictures with flash for every cube you had with you. Back in the day, flash cubes were just as essential as film.

Next is the manual knob to advance the film, not one of those fancy levers that you could easily operate with your thumb. Forget quick snapshots! It might have been easy to move with just the thumb but nowhere near as easy as a lever. Hopefully it could tell when to stop. I remember one of the cameras I had as a kid where I had to manually advance the film and stop it so the picture number lined up just right in the indicator window.

And of course, the viewfinder. I find it a little ironic that nowadays, only the more expensive/professional type cameras even have a traditional viewfinder anymore.

Older cameras also looked a lot more rugged despite the internals not being as sensitive as modern models. Just look at that textured, thick black plastic casing. I'd bet it would more likely survive an accidental drop than your phone.

The gentleman that took this image of the Instamatic 44 has a bunch of albums on Flickr showcasing various relics of photography that are very cool.

League Post - Back to School

The assignment from the League of Extraordinary Bloggers this week are the three words that strike mortal dread in the very souls of children everywhere:

Back to School

While I'm sure that was true for a lot of kids, to me the phrase meant two awesome things: school supply Shopping and new cartoons! When I say "school supplies" I'm not talking about the everyday boring stuff like your writing implements. I'm a hardcore mechanical pencil .5mm lead user. Screw that .7mm noise! But the cool stuff, the stuff you walked around the halls with that showed how high your geek flag was flying. 

I don't know about you, but shopping for a new lunchbox back in the day was like early Christmas, only you got to pick what you wanted! I know I must have had more than two lunchboxes through grade school, but these I remember best:

I mean what better way to transport your food than in a non-rust proof container that you could use to brutally beat someone over the head? And then there was that one day in the cafeteria/auditorium when that one kid dropped his Thermos and we learned there was glass inside that plastic shell. We wouldn't know about the vacuum sealing/danger of implosion until much later. Science! And how about those folding lunch tables that had the sliding lock of death where you could pinch the finger of the careless person sitting across from you? Good times!

When it came to more practical supplies, I never got very fancy. In middle school I had a green Trapper Keeper and a few folders of assorted colors. I think we all did the paper grocery bag book covers? The ultimate in customization! 

Now that I think about it, how weird is it that they made you cover the books?

I still have my high school notebook and in the interest of minor shame, here it is:

 

Bonus points if you know the other band name the GPK is spray painting!
I have no shame from the bands that I liked then (I still enjoy most of them now) but more the "artistry" used to etch their names. Ugh, moving on...

 If you're old enough, you may recall a time when Saturday morning was a blurry haze of sugar induced channel flipping, back when there were only three channels that had anything worth watching. I don't think I was really aware of the concept of regular shows (Ooooooo! Oops, wrong Regular Show) having seasons. But damn skippy I knew the coming of school meant new cartoons!

The Saturday morning preview specials were absolutely something I looked forward to every year. (There's a bunch on YouTube!) Even with a TV Guide it could be difficult to decide what to watch in any given time slot in the pre-VCR days. Heck, even after we got a VCR it could still only record the channel the TV was on! These preview specials were often the major factor in choosing one toon over another. In Fall of 1981, you had to choose between Thundarr and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, for the love of Glob!
Why would you force this kind of choice on a child?!

Honorable Mentions

Book Fairs & Scholastic catalogs (Book Nerd 4 Life yo!)

Vists from the Candy Man (sell candy bars, earn prizes!)

Skool Daze the video game

Here's what the other kids have on their papers:

Crooked Ninja Turtle's Top 10 Grade School Memories

Best school movies from Nerd Nook
Diary of a Dorkette presents She-Ra: Senior Year

Mail Order Monday - Jet "Rocket" Space Ship (1955)

Mail Order Monday blasts back into action with the 1955 Jet "Rocket" Space Ship!

My first question is why is rocket in quotations?
Does it mean the jet space ship part is more accurate?

If I'd been around as a young lad when this was available, I would have lost my mind and relentlessly begged to get it ordered. Over 7' long, and look at the list of the controls on that instrument panel! Of course the big concern if I had gotten it would have been where
the heck do you put it?

There were also similar offers for a nuclear submarine and a tank. Just like many other mail offer ads of its time, there's a lot more flash in the ad than what you actually get in the mail. Head on over to Secret Fun Spot to see photos of the item from a January Ebay auction
that was offered for $1500.

And while you're puttering around online, check out the song Jet "Rocket" Space Ship by Darling Pet Munkee. I've mentioned them on the blog a few times before. All their songs are inspired by classic comic book mail order ads like this one.

Mail Order Monday is Here to Pump *CLAP* You Up!

Let's face facts, kids. Your average comic book reader is not usually a paragon of physical fitness. Almost anyone that picked up a comic since the 60s will probably tell you they ran across a Charles Atlas bodybuilding ad at some point.

Today's ads are something a little different. Just wearing these manly leather and lead "wristlets" (wait, did I say manly?) every day will increase your arm strength! Well, duh. If you wear weights on your arm and go about your daily activity, it's going to build up your muscles because you're lifting extra weight, ie: weightlifting.

Weighted Wristlets (1971)

And if you're not happy with the results of these, you can return them within 10 days! I imagine some young men got to day 9 and thought they could feel it working and if they just kept wearing them past day 10, they'd be sure to bulk up.

But if that amazing 10 day trial offer and the image of someone breaking two boards barehanded isn't enough to entice you, how about this guy?

Joe Weider Strong Arm Bracelets (1971)

Now that dude is ripped! Certainly he must have gotten like that by using these leather wristlets! Who's Joe Weider, you're asking? He's considered to be the father of modern bodybuilding...at least according to this web page.

But forget about him, I have a feeling this guy's going to be back in bigger and better things!

Mail Order Monday - ICEE Club (1981)

This is about as close to a Christmas related Mail Order Monday as you'll get.

What a deal! You can join the ICEE Bear Club for life for only $10. FOR LIFE, yo!
And just look at all that swag: a t-shirt, a frisbee, magnets, a list of prizes you can also send away for with enough bear points. You even get 100 bear points to get you started on the path to ICEE mail order mastery!

Perhaps most impressive is the certificate suitable for framing. I'd love to see a vintage photo of some kid's bedroom with this and another "suitable for framing" certificates on their walls.

When I was growing up, ICEE was always associated with the K-Mart snack bar. As a kid, that was the only place I remember seeing it available. The oddly textured carbonated frozen treat was only available in flavors blue or red. I still don't know what actual flavors they were, berry and cherry maybe?

According to Wikipedia:

• ICEE machines can be found in all kinds of stores nowadays (I haven't see any)
• 7-11 licenses ICEE and uses it for their Slurpee product line
• The creator originally wanted to call it "scoldasice"

You might be asking, what makes this even close to Christmas related? Or maybe you forgot I even mentioned it by now because you're imagining the sweet, sweet brain freeze you'd have if you ran out to get a Slurpee right now. Either way, it's the polar bear.

His look has changed since wearing that overly long turtleneck that doesn't quite go below the waist line (what up with that?). I know they want to make him more "modern" but I can't see his recent incarnation without thinking of Poochie from The Simpsons.
At least he has pants now.