Heroes Return… To Your Mailbox!

January 1998

Thunderbolts #10

It’s another subscription page – this time from 1998. This one seemed to have far fewer titles than other subscription pages, but upon comparing it to one from 1997, I guess they’re actually pretty close.

X-Men aren’t quite as dominant in this one as they were in the previous year, and the number of Star Trek titles has been cut in half – and speaking of cutting Star Trek in half, here they have “Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy” listed as one of the titles – all good Trekkies should know that Starfleet is one word!

So at this point, we’ve got subscription prices ranging from $1.66 to $1.83 per issue (or $1.25 for Marvel Vision) at a time when cover price for comics was $1.99. While saving any money is always a good thing, that’s only a discount of 8% to 16%. Without doing any official research on this, I’d say that this is probably a low point (or close to it) for subscription savings.

 

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M&M’s Are So Sporty!

May 1986

Masters of the Universe #1

M&M’s are a classic candy that has been around for generations. The colors shown here are the ones I remember growing up: orange, yellow green, light brown, and dark brown. I remember red being added (and upon looking it up, that was in 1987), but apparently red had already been used from 1960-1976, until people started to believe that red dyes caused cancer. I still think of the blue ones as the “new” M&M’s, and still think they look out of place, but apparently they’ve been around since 1995!

Fun fact: Did you know that Steven Spielberg originally wanted to use M&M’s in the movie E.T., but Mars turned him down? So instead he approached Hershey, which was more than happy to have Reese’s Pieces featured in the film!

 

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Apparently Amusing

January 1978

The Secret Society of Super-Villains #12

Here we’ve got another installment from our friends at Fun Factory (see a 1980 ad from them here). In this ad they have fewer items, but devote more space to each one.

On the pocket spy scope, the lens is “optimally ground to view ever detail” – I always get a kick out of finding typos in printed material (I’m an editor by trade, so spotting errors is what I do), but I find it especially funny that this is in a sentence talking about detail! I also love that it’s “Great for watching sports, girls, counter spying” … so, it’s great for being a stalker, then?

On the X-Ray Specs, I like that they put the disclaimer-esque “Apparently” in front of the “see thru” bit – they never said you could actually see through stuff, so no complaining when it doesn’t work! Also, “Apparently see thru bones”? Aren’t bones the one part you’re supposed to see (not see through) with X-rays?

 

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CBA IRL – Lethal Enforcers II

I’ve got a bunch of CBA IRL things I’ve been meaning to post, so I’m going to try to get caught up with some of these.

Here we’ve got my copy of Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters for Sega CD, along with the Justifier… and the pink Justifier! You see, on the Lethal Enforcers games, if you wanted two players, you couldn’t just plug in two of the regular Justifiers (the blue ones), you needed one blue Justifier (which plugged into the game system) and one pink Justifier (which plugged into the blue Justifier). Because of this odd setup, the pink ones are kind of hard to find.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the pink Justifier back in the day – I actually received it as a Christmas gift about ten years ago. I’m still pretty happy to have it, though!

 

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I’d Trade a Frantic Family for a KitKat! Or for a Regular Cat…

January 1998

Thunderbolts #10

KitKats have always been one of my favorite candy bars, so I’m excited to finally be posting an ad for them! And in a historical note: This ad features a kid taking a selfie – long before selfies were a thing!

This one is done in the style of a Mad Magazine fold-in – but who wants to fold up and crease their classic comic books?! Well, thanks to the magic of photo editing software, I’m able to show you the finished result without having to harm my book:

 

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CBA IRL – GoBots

My childhood GoBots are currently packed away (but hopefully not for long, because I recently acquired ample shelf space on which to display more stuff!), but I have this one proudly on display in my office, so wanted to share with you:

Believe it or not, I found this GoBot – still in its original package – at Goodwill in the ’90s… for 25¢! This is still one of my all-time favorite thrift store finds!

Check out my post for Challenge Of The GoBots here and my post for GoBots by Monogram Models here.

 

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Were the Dancing Ones Called Go-GoBots?

May 1986

Masters Of The Universe #1

Back when I was a kid, I remember thinking of GoBots as cheap imitations of Transformers. I still watched/liked the show, but didn’t think it was as cool for some reason. I also remember asking for Transformers for Christmas/birthdays, and getting GoBots instead. I only ever had four of them: Leader-1, Road Ranger, Rest-Q, and Hans-Cuff. However, I did appreciate the fact that they were the same scale as Hot Wheels, so at least I could play with my GoBots with my other cars.

Well guess what – years later I found out that it was actually the other way around: GoBots came out first, and Transformers copied them! It makes me wonder why Transformers always seemed like the “main” cartoon to me (and apparently many others) – maybe they just had better marketing?

In an interesting twist of fate, Tonka (makers of GoBots) was actually acquired by Hasbro (makers of Transformers) in 1991, so now they’re all (technically) part of the same family anyway!

I love the “THEY’RE AWESOME!” in the middle of this ad. To me, it kind of feels like a temporary placeholder that they either forgot to replace, or they just couldn’t come up with anything better, so decided to leave it as is.

So I spent quite a bit of time scouring the internet to figure out who the GoBots (other than Leader-1) in this picture are – I was able to come up with two of them, but still have no idea who pink one is – any ideas, anyone?

To see one of my GoBots toys, click here for my CBA IRL post!

 

Do you enjoy reading Comic Book Ads? If so, please consider supporting me by clicking here for my Amazon link – I’ll get a percentage from everything you order! Thanks!