1990s Comic Books Ads!
A week or so ago, I bought a big pile of old comic books. Since I have little interest in what Ghost Rider was doing in 1994, my purchase was mostly made to find more of those great old ads. Here are five, at random!
Bic Wavelength Pens
Fantastic Four #67 (2nd printing, 1994)
I’d completely forgotten about these! Bic’s “Wavelengths” were regular pens with plastic “wrappers” around the bodies, or shafts, or whatever you call the stick-like parts.
Rods? Batons?
Many Wavelengths had distinct themes, but there seemed to be even more with completely abstract patterns in crazy colors. It’s hard to believe in 2013, but pens with wacky wrappers really were a big deal.
If you were a chewer like me, you could easily bite the wrappers off of the shafts (or rods, or batons), which revealed normal Bic pens underneath. I did this with virtually all of my Wavelengths, no matter how great the designs were. I dunno, man. Destroying them with my teeth just made me feel so accomplished. I say this not with pride, but with confidence that thousands of you also chewed them, and felt exactly the same way when you did. Read More…
Ocean Creatures Crackers!
The real world kept me from Dino Drac for a week, and now I’m all rusty. I have longer posts waiting to be written, but today calls for something breezy and brainless.
How about cheese crackers shaped like squid?
Ocean Creatures! I found them at Dollar Tree, and was immediately enamored with the concept, the sea life shapes, and the fact that it was all promised to taste like delicious phony cheese.
They’re obviously inspired by Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, which is literally the only food on the planet that I’d be willing to eat exclusively for the rest of my life. I love those fish. Choosing between the Parmesan and Cheddar flavors is my own personal version of the Judgment of Solomon. I’m not sure what I mean by that.
There must be a hundred different Goldfish ripoffs out there, and you know they’re ripoffs, because even with the thousands of animals begging to be immortalized as fun-shaped cheese crackers, these companies always pick some kind of fish.
So why am I covering Ocean Creatures instead of some other borderline-bootlegger? Because they picked six different fish, dummy.
(Okay, three fish, a marine mammal, a cephalopod and an echinoderm. But this is a case where clarifying only makes things better.) Read More…
Five Random Action Figures, Part 5!
I was supposed to see Pacific Rim tonight. Then our plans changed. Then I went on Wikipedia and read every single thing that happens. On the idiocy scale of 1 to 10, I like spaghetti.
I’m seeing it tomorrow, but I’m still pissed enough to let those feelings seep into this fucking article about stupid old toys that ten people care about. If I seem irritated, it’s because of our friends who bailed… not Fugitoid.
Onward with the fifth edition of Five Random Action Figures!
Granite
Inhumanoids, 1986
Another Inhumanoids figure was featured in Part 3, so I’ll skip the thirty-paragraph dissertation about the series. As for this guy, he represents the “Granites,” a race of heroic rock creatures who helped us humans survive our battles with giant, rampaging monsters. Which takes my brain straight back to Pacific Rim. Fuck the world.
The aforementioned monsters were the best toys in the line, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Granite. Part of it is pure nostalgia, since I got him for Christmas literally seconds before opening my beloved ALF plush doll. Granite’s proximity to that grand event made him seem so much more… I don’t know… shiny.
But even when I put on my Objective Helmet, he’s still a fantastic action figure. Granite has two or three inches on He-Man, plus the added bonus of gemstone eyes that glow under sunlight.
There’s a neat “generic” quality to him, too. Like, imagine having the artistic talent of a five-year-old, and then imagine drawing a kid who’s holding an action figure. I bet it’d look something like Granite. Large, simply colored, and with eyes that are just two green dots. Read More…
The Popsicle Parade – Part 3!
It’s been a while since the last edition of The Popsicle Parade, and summer isn’t getting any younger. Here are five more treats from yesteryear’s ice cream trucks, represented by big yellow stickers that photograph horribly!
#16: Firecracker!
If you think this one’s boring, it’s only because you haven’t looked closely. First, let me point out the uncommon upgrade to “SUPERCICLE” in the upper-left corner. That means the Firecracker was large enough to give us those faint but heinous sores on the corners of our lips. The bright side is that a big cold popsicle would’ve immediately soothed them.
I’m also fascinated by the trio of flavors. Sour green apple is normal enough, but mixing that with cotton candy and red hot cinnamon made the Firecracker as unique as it was enormous.
I believe these arrived long after ice cream trucks became a thing of my past, but had Firecrackers existed when I was hailing them down, there’s no way I would’ve passed on mega rare RED HOT CINNAMON. In the world of popsicles, finding that flavor was like spotting Ho-Oh. Read More…