New Universe Supersleuth Sweepstakes

What's the ad for?

New Universe Supersleuth Sweepstakes
Year
1987

Spotted in

The scoop

I have never read any of the New Universe so I know absolutely none of the answers to the questions featured in this contest. Jim Shooter has mentioned that he plans to cover the history of the New Universe in his blog. I believe that the Valiant universe that he created a few years later was what he had hoped the New Universe would end up becoming. I was a big fan of the early Valiant comics. I think I will have to pick up some of the old New Universe titles.

Bubble Yum Maze

What's the ad for?

Bubble Yum
Year
1982

Spotted in

The scoop

Another maze and another contest from Bubble Yum. You could win some cool prizes like a Panasonic Reggie Vision with video cassette recorder and sound camera. I'm not even sure what that is. Looks like a VCR to me.

Comics form the 70's and 80's always had advertisements for gum. I don't recall seeing many ads for gum in comics today. Maybe I'm just not reading the right comics.

Bubble Yum Dream Fun Room

What's the ad for?

Bubble Yum
Year
1979

Spotted in
Conan the Barbarian # 106, Marvel Comics
The scoop

Bubble Yum held this contest entitled "Number Yum" in 1979. You could win a jukebox and a pinball machine. Pretty cool. To enter you had to count the number of times "Number Yum" was said in either the TV or radio commercial. I actually wrote Hershey's to see if I could find out who won the contest. Unfortunately no one was able to help me. I couldn't find the "Number Yum" commercial but this one is interesting.

Super Cobra

What's the ad for?

Super Cobra
Year
1984

Spotted in

The scoop

Nothing much here. Just another video game ad. They seem to be the most popular. I took a look on eBay to see if I could track down one of the Flight Jackets that was given away as a sweepstakes prize. Couldn't find one but they are over 25 years old. Maybe they didn't even end up giving them away. I wonder how often that happened? Go here to see the game in action as it's featured on a show called Starcade.

Marvel Try-out book

What's the ad for?
The official Marvel Try-out book
Year
1987
Spotted in
Conan the barbarian giant sized annual 12, Marvel
The scoop

When I first came across this ad I thought it was for the contest that Marvel held using this "try-out" book. The original book was published in 1983 with the winners being announced in 1986. The concept was developed by then editor Jim Shooter. The book described the various jobs of writer, penciller, inker, letter and colorist and provided pages to do the work on. You would submit your work with the prize being a regular professional assignment being to complete the Spider-Man story used in the try-out which was to be published the following year. The issue was never published which I guess makes it a no-prize.

 

The winner of the penciller category was Mark Bagley who went on to have a successful career in comic books including a famous run on Ultimate Spider-Man with Brian Michael Bendis.

 

This ad, however, is from 1987, a full four years after it was first published and the contest was over. I guess they were just trying to unload some unsold copies.

 

Win a real Spacecraft!

This incredible ad was found in a tattered copy of Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #73, from 1967 (hilarious cover). What makes this incredible is the prize is that you could actually win a genuine Gemini Spacecraft prototype! Can you imagine having that sit in your backyard? Nineteen feet of crazy fun. Wow, that would put even the coolest tree-house to shame.

When I saw this ad I had to find out what the story was. Who won this prize and where is this space capsule now? All the credit has to go to Comic Coverage website. That's where I found most of this information.

So the winner of the price was a 13 year old scout named Alen Hanshew from Portland, Oregon. So what did young Alen do with his new space capsule? He gave it to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Not that he had much choice in the matter. Reading the ad it says;


"How will it feel to present your spacecraft to your city for a park or a museum? Famous, that's how"

So all the winner won was the capsule to be donated to his or her local museum. Kind of let down don't you think? I bet you that kid had grand plans of what to do with his new space capsule. I bet you he was mighty disappointed to find out he didn't actually get to keep the capsule. I guess it wasn't even delivered by airplane but rather by train. At least Alen Hanshew became famous right? Or maybe he just felt that way.

Today I am off to the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. This will be my second year attending. It's going to be a great weekend.

Win all you can haul

These contests are the stuff that children's dreams are made of. A Toys R Us shopping spree?...wow. One hundred lucky kids won a $1000 shopping spree. Whatever happened to those kids? Did the prestige of winning this contest change their lives? I'm sure gaining all these toys would make someone the most popular kid in the class, but did any of those children use that popularity to leverage a greater social standing. Climb up the grade school hierarchy? Were you one of those children? Are you the CEO of some big company as a result?

Gobots! All the Gobots!

 

This ad appeared in G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #43, Marvel, 1986. Poor Gobots. The Transformers poor cousins from the east part of town. Oh Gobots, when you transform you simply stand up, hardly looking like a sentient robot. I mean look at the blue car robot in the ad...lame. So too were there names. There was no Optimus Prime or Megatron. No instead you had names like Tank (turned into a tank), Loco (turned into a Locomotive) and Dozer (who...wait for it, turned into a bulldozer). Anyone who was a child in the Eighties remembers watching the Transformer cartoon but who recalls watching the Gobot cartoon? It ran for 65 episodes don't ya know?

Another fact. Both the Gobots and Transformers came overseas to North America from Japan (surprise!). However did you know that they were both originally human-piloted? That is a significant change. So why didn't Gobots gain the popularity that the Transformers saw? These are just uneducated guesses but I'd say that marketing was a huge part of it. The Transformers had personality and character with cool names. Everyone remembers the tag-line  "More Than Meets The Eye" and "Robots In Disguise", but what was the Gobots tag line? No seriously what was it? Oh yeah...it was lame.

Nestle I guess couldn't enlist the help of the Autobots or even the Decepticons for that matter. So they enlisted the help of the Gobots. Some lucky kid won a complete collection of the toys. Oh, well. I'd still be pretty pumped at winning a bunch of toys. Let's face it, toys are toys...or are they?