Marvel's Super Slurpee Fun Game

What's the ad for?

7-11's Super Slurpee Fun Game
Year
1981

Spotted in...

The Scoop

To celebrate the near start of summer I thought I would share this Marvel Slurpee ad/contest. Your chance to win thousands of dollars in cash. I like the instructions on how to play...

"With the edge of a coin, gently scratch-ff the gold squares on the front of your game card."

Like that needs explaining? Then again, this was 1981. Perhaps the concept of scratch-and-win was new. When I was a kid in junior high (Calgary, 1989/90), Hostess potato chips ran a contest featuring a scratch-and-win Nintendo Power Pad. Every card was a winner; you just had to scratch the correct squares to get matching symbols. Someone in my school came up with the idea of carefully placing pieces of Scotch Tape onto the squares and then slowly pealing the tape off. A thin layer of the silver scratching material would come off with the tape. Now if you held the Power Pad game card up to the light, you could make out all the symbols hidden underneath. Most cards won you a free bag of chips or a bottle of pop but soon kids started showing up with wearing Nintendo swag (T-shirts and hats). It was a good run for us and I'm sure we all gained a few potato chip pounds but when your young it didn't matter, we were outside riding our bicycles and playing street hockey all the time anyway.

Then in the fall a new contest started. In each bag of potato chips was another scratch-and-win game card, this time featuring NHL teams. Same concept, this time match the team logos and win something. Every card was a potential winner. We tried the same trick again but it didn't work. The game cards were now made of thicker paper. There was no way you were going to see through these ones. I wonder how much money Hostess lost because someone decided to "save" costs on thinner paper.

I find it hard to believe that it was only the population my junior high whom were doing this. Did anyone else remember doing this? There were even rumors of a local kid ratting us out by telling Hostess what we were doing, which in turn lead to the thicker paper being used for the next contest. Supposedly he received boxes of free chips and stuff. In retrospect I don't think that was the case but you never know.

Free Baseball From Nestle Quik

What's the ad for?

Free Baseball promotion from Nestle Quik
Year
1985

Spotted in...

 

The Scoop

Steve Garvey endorsed Nestle Quik and helped get baseballs into the hands of American children.  Hopefully it prompted those children to go outside and play sports....oh wait, this was the eighties. We were already outside playing. Maybe they need this promotion now.

Ninja Turtles Cereal - "It's Radical Tasting Cereal Dudes!"

What's the ad for?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal
Year
1991

Spotted in...

The Scoop

 Oh nostalgia. It will make people do things like try and recreate a crappy cereal they ate as kids. You gotta check out this link here, where some dude tries to recreate the TMNT cereal using the available cereals of today. I guess he didn't see the eBay listing for an unopened box. Only $49.99.

 

 

Spider-Man meets June Jitsui!

What's the ad for?
Twinkies
Year
1979

Spotted in

The Scoop

As requested by a reader, here is an ad for a Hostess product called Twinkies. I think we all know what a Twinkie is and I think we all remember these ads featured in both Marvel and DC comics. I know Curt Swan did a lot of the art in the DC ads but what about Marvel ones such as this one? Mike Esposito perhaps? And how about the villain June Jitsui? Besides having a cleaver name she actually appeared in Marvel continuity thanks to an issue of Fin Fang Four Return! The appearance is described below. Courtesy of  http://www.marvunapp.com.

"The robot Elektro, mistakenly identified as a villain and arrested, was ushered into the prison's S-Wing where he met various past Spider-Man villains, including June Jitsui. Later, inspired by Elektro's defiance, she and the other inmates of S-Wing smashed their way out only to be subdued by the prison guards using sedation foam."

Scottie- A Cracker Jack Story

What's the ad for?
  Crackerjack
Year
1983

Spotted in

“I have just one request before you disintegrate me!” I said. “Can I finish my lunch?”

What's the ad for?
Banana-Talkies and Banana-Compass
Year
1979

Spotted in

I'm not sure how a Banana-Compass would send for help but hey, maybe it's different then a regular compass. I stole the below images of the Banana-Talkies from ebay. Anyone every get one of these?

Marvel Team-up featuring Cap'n Crunch and Spider-Man!

What's the ad for?
Cap'N Crunch breakfast cereal
Year
1986

Spotted in

The Scoop

Spider-Man helps the Cap'N battle the evil Sogmaster! Watch out world....the Soggies may rule! Just maybe. Check out this link for Sogmaster's bio...in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe style. Funny.

We Rescued Breakfast!

What's the ad for?

Nintendo Cereal System
Year
1989

Spotted in

The scoop

 A cereal based on a video game? Not a first but the Nintendo Cereal System was unique that it gave you the choice of two different cereals. The box was split in half with one side offering fruity flavored Marios, Koopa Troopas and other Super Mario related characters while the other sided featured berry flavored Zelda related gear like boomerangs, keys and shields. A box of this cereal recently sold on eBay for $200! You can see the TV advert here.

Oreo Cookie maze

What's the ad for?

Oreo Cookies
Year
1985

Spotted in

The scoop

Oreo cookies..."Milks Favorite Cookie," but  where does the name come from? Wikipedia says this...

"Oreo comes from the Greek root for appetizing as in orexin or orexigenic (appetite stimulating) or anorexic (loss of appetite). There are many theories pointing to the origin of the name 'Oreo', including derivations from the French word 'Or', meaning gold (as early packaging was gold), or the Greek word 'Oros', meaning mountain or hill (as the original Oreo was mound shaped) or even the Greek word 'Oreo', meaning beautiful or nice. Other theories are that the 're' from cream was 'sandwiched' between the two Os from cookie, or the word 'just seemed like a nice, melodic combination of sounds'. A TV spot for the Got Milk? campaign showed a false etymology where, when at a board meeting to decide the name of the cookie, one of the members is asked for his opinion; the member, who just ate a cookie and does not have any milk to wash it down responds "I don't know," which is heard by the board member as "Oreo."

ICEE Bear Club

What's the ad for?

ICEE Bear Club
Year
1981

Spotted in

The scoop

A fan club for a slushie? Works for me. Did you know that Canadians consume more slushies per capita then any other country with Winnipeg, Manitoba being crowned the Slurpee capital of the world eleven times in a row. The fan club is still around albeit under a different name (Too cool club). It's free but you get no cool t-shirt or anything.

Morning Funnies Cereal

What's the ad for?

Morning Funnies Cereal
Year
1989

Spotted in

The scoop

I have never heard of this short lived cereal before I ran into it in a comic. I like the idea of a box you can open up and read. When I was a kid I would read anything that was placed in front of me. In Canada every thing is written in both French and English. Now all the French I know is from the reverse side of cereal boxes and stuff. They released only 9 different boxes meaning that if you bought the cereal a lot, chances were you were reading the same comics...and had serious tooth decay.

Check out the commercial here.

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?

Chewy Newtons

 Oh, look another maze. Fig Newtons, man do they even make these anymore? I haven't had one since I was a kid. Here we also have Apple Newtons...not quite the same ring to it. They also came out with Blueberry, Cherry, Strawberry and Grape Newtons but sorry, they had no banana newtons.


Back in the day Doctors believed most health problems to be related to digestion problems. They recommended having a biscuit and some fruit. This led fig lover Charles Roser to come up with Fig Newtons in 1891. You can't make this stuff up. The dude must have been rich after that idea. I'm a lover of many things, figs not one of them but maybe I could come up with something cool with something that I love...it will probably just turn out rude and crude.