So a little while ago I was approached by another website/blog about the possibility of sharing my collection of 80s stickers on their nostalgia site.  What I thought was pretty cool about the idea is that their site, though not strictly, is more or less aimed at preserving and celebrating pop culture stuff from a Filipino perspective, which as I'm lead to believe is heavily influenced by Japanese, Spanish and American pop culture.  So on the one hand we have a similar shared background of interests and on the other I'd be both introduced to aspects of pop culture that I haven't experienced as well as being syndicated for an audience that might not normally stop by Branded.  The site is called Nostalgia Manila and will feature a bi-weekly syndication of past Peel Here columns in a condensed format.  So starting today...



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So for any new visitors to Branded in the 80s, I'd like to say come on in and don't worry about wiping your feet at the door, I'm plently messy and uncouth, UNCOUTH I tells ya.   As for my non-Filipino visitors, I urge you to go check out Nostalgia Manila because there are a lot of hidden treasures there (including streaming good quality episodes of great 80s cartoons) and if you're like me and sort of shy away from site with non-english language text, than you can get a new perspective on the same stuff that we all love (don't let the mixture of English and Tagalog scare you away from some great content.)

Growing up I watched a lot of movies, a least when I compare my list to the people I know well; I mean I'm no Harry Knowles or anything. So what I've begun to notice in the last few years is a weird trend in my nostalgia for childhood movies. There is a strange delineation in how I feel about the movies that I remember seeing from about the age of 13 on. When I look at my DVD collection I think I pretty much own most of the flicks I saw before I turned 13, good, bad, or indifferent, there just seems to be a special place in my heart for these flicks. After 13 for some reason it was a lot easier to just say "meh" when I saw something that, if I'd seen it a couple years earlier I would have absolutely flipped for.

Case in point is my feelings for the first two Alien films. I saw these films out of order, watching Aliens late one night with my mother in one of it's million airings on HBO, but I didn't catch Alien until around the summer I turned 14 in 1991. I adore Aliens, but for the longest time I've just sort appreciated Alien, not really loving or hating it. Personally I think this is odd because I'm more or less predisposed to loving everything about the film; I love horror, trilogies, 70s sci-fi, Harry Dean Stanton, Ridley Scott, and for the most part H.R. Geiger. I'd also like to believe that my feeling don't stem from a common rift between the fandom of the two flicks, namely that Alien is slower and more of a suspenseful horror flick, while Aliens is more rooted in Sci-Fi and is action, action, action and therefore possibly more "fun". I actually think Alien is a better film, yet if I had to save one or the other from a burning building, it would be Aliens. In fact it's this gut reaction that leads me to believe that nostalgia is really the deciding factor here. When I think of Aliens, I remember a piece of my childhood, yet when I think of Alien I just remember stuff like starting high school, which is definitely outside of my nostalgia zone. I wonder if this is slowly going to change over the years or if I'll still be pretty comfortable drawing the line at age 13? Is nostalgia simply a matter of time passed, or is it something special about the time in question?

So I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Self, why is Shawn babbling on about all this in a Peel Here column?" Well, it's because this week I've got an almost complete set of the 1979 Topps Alien sticker cards to share and when ever I'm dealing with this flick, first and foremost I always wonder why I don't love it as much as I think I should.


This set was pretty awesome because it was merchandising a movie with a large cast of actors, none of which were the focus, so each had an equal share of screen time for the most part. All of them get a portrait sticker in that awesome poppy Topps style.

1979 was an interesting time for the Topps trading card company as it saw a slight shift in their design of non-sports trading cards. I think there was a decision, consciously or not, to shift the sets towards a more collectable design, so you saw them dropping aspects like speech bubbles on the basic non-sticker cards, and adopting more collectability trends like puzzles on the sticker card backs. It became more about completing a set than having fun with what ever cards you did purchase. In just a couple years you'd also see a trend towards more stickers and less cards what with sets like Supergirl, which had two to four times as many stickers as the normal sets and also tried to work in the scene by scene story of the normal cards to the sticker card backs.

These Alien stickers mark the transition between sets like Mork and Mindy (which had blank sticker backs) and Buck Rogers (which had a puzzle poster.) The Alien stickers didn't have a puzzle yet (though what an opportunity missed, can you imagine how cool it would have been to have a large image of the creature), but then did start utilizing the space on the sticker backs in a way that I haven't seen Topps do in other sets, they placed inter-company ads on the cards.


You get ads for Bazooka gum, Pop Bottle candy, Ring Pops and a Topps branded trading card carrier, another staple of the by gone 70s and 80s (like those large molded plastic carrying cases shaped like Star Wars character busts or the overly large G.I. Joe utility belt where you could store your figures.) I think these are pretty cool, and I never realized that watermelon flavored candy was big in the late 70s. I thought that was a product of the 80s. Similarly I didn't realize there was a "smooth & juicy" version of Bazooka gum, I was weaned on the regular sort of hard individually wrapped chunks you bought by the pack or the pound. Smooth & Juicy in apple flavor no less! Why aren't candies apple flavored now? Its always green apple flavored or extreme, sour, tingly, melt-your-head green apple flavored. I always thought cherry was to candy as apple was to juice, but you think apple would dominate all categories of fruit flavored items if only because of its relative cheapness.


As for the non-portrait stickers Topps went with a pretty nifty egg shape outline, which beats the hell out of the odd isosceles trapezoid design on the Buck Rogers cards. I also dig the green and yellow color scheme even though neither is really featured in the movie. I also really like most of the scene choices for the stickers in which we get shots of all the vehicles (well at least the Nostromo and the escape pod), primary landscapes, some "team shots" as well as being suited up for the planet walk, an Alien still, and what's really cool is both a practical shot and a painting of that large weird skeleton/husk/body that the crew found on the derelict alien ship. I've always been insanely curious about this creature and the ramifications it has on the universe of the Alien films, the idea that there are other races and civilizations out in the cosmos yet it's not really addressed in the franchise (unless you count Aliens Vs. Predator, which I don't because I really didn't care for it.) I thought it was a hugely brave decision on Ridley Scott's, Dan O'Bannon's, and Ronald Shusett's parts to introduce this creature and ship and then abandon it for story purposes. I love this kind of red herring back-story in movies.


Of the 22 (there's that Topps multiple of 11 mentality coming in again) sticker cards, I'm only missing number 18, which besides the corridor sticker above is actually probably pretty boring. Jeff Allender's House of Checklists has it listed as "Asteroid Colony Design". I managed to find this set for $0.10 plus shipping, so I'm not complaining or really missing that sticker much. I guess I'm immune to the Topps collecting bug.

Next Week on Peel Here, The Silverhawks!

I noticed that a weird trend in comic book advertising at the beginning of the 80s, a concentration of BB gun ads. At first I didn’t think much of it, but as I stumbled upon more and more ads it seemed like they were becoming more and more disturbing. I'm certainly not anti-gun or anything, but these drawings of fathers snuggled up close to their sons who are intently aiming their Red Ryder's at some can or tree stump off panel is kind of weirdly creepy to me.


A couple of these Daisy ads feature former Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas and his son, and they aren't all that bad. There's some father-son bonding going on, very picturesque and it reminds me a lot of the relationship between Ralphie and his father in A Christmas Story. Ralphie just wants an Official Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing that tells time, and on Christmas morning, there it is behind the desk, carefully wrapped and hidden so that the mom wouldn’t know ('cause we all know he'll just shoot his eye out right.) I guess since I didn't grow up with guns, the imagery is just a little off for me.

Hell, I wanted a BB gun just as much as the next kid and I bothered my parents for one for years just like Ralphie. They finally succumbed when I was about twelve and picked up a cheap Marksman air pistol, a model that I bet a lot of kids were saddled with because of its price and how easy they were to find. I was in a state of rapture for months. Not only was it a pistol as opposed to a rifle (I'm more of a handgun guy when it comes to aesthetics I guess), but also it was solid metal and must have weighed like 4lbs which made it feel all the more real. Though I always sort of missed it having a "clip" that I could slam into place, I was unending impressed by the faux slide assembly style of cocking the pistol. You pulled back on the slide (though it was only on the back half of the pistol and not the entire length of the barrel) and had to push it back hard to compress a spring or something. It was actually a really horrible gun with seriously bad accuracy and cocking it required the combined strength of Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and a steroid enhanced puma, but I loved it nonetheless. So on the one hand I completely understand where these ads are coming from, but on the other the pictures and ideas presented just seemed wrong to me.


In this first Crosman ad there's nothing more going on than a kid cocking his trusty BB rifle as he stares down lovingly at it, but I think it's the gist of the ad that bugs me. The Crosman 788 BB Scout is apparently made for the kid who isn't old enough to operate a normal sized rifle. "Hey parents, if the kid can't handle it should he wait until he can, or should we make a designer version molded specifically for his little hands? Yeah, that's what we thought too, and that's why we're now considering a partnership with Tonka to make a tiny but durable molded plastic rifle, complete with carbine action and a 150 BB shot capacity." Can't let the toddlers run out of ammo, at least that's what my grandma used to say. Seriously though, it just seems weird to me to be modeling guns for kids too young to handle what is effectively a middle school aged kids weapon.


Then comes the craziness. Setting up a BB gun range in your living room or basement? Really? My mom wanted me to keep my pistol in the garage for crying out loud. Honestly the mom in that picture looks like she's quietly opposed to the whole thing. The ad does kind of have a nice "shoot your TV" kind of vibe to it though. "Hey Mom? You need to hole punch that piece of paper? Don't worry; I'll get it with trusty blue here! Pa-Ting!  Hey sis, that pimple still bothering you 'cause of your big date with Davy Jones from the Monkees? Don't worry; I'll shoot the puss out if it from 40 yards, I've been practicing on the dog! Heck, I'm getting so go with this thing I can change the channel and adjust the rabbit ears with it!!!"


For some reason the most disturbing ad for me is this last one with a father and son making camp and in the dark, by the fire the kid is wiping that gun down after a fine day's shootin', all decked out in the free Daisy swag he's managed to acquire. Like I said, I know this is probably just the stupid PC-ness of our modern society that's pervaded my thinking, but the picture is just creepy to me.


"I shot that can good Dad, didn't I"  "Yeah, son, you really pinged the hell out of it, I'm so so proud of you." Shudder. I guess it's sort of like watching that early first season episode of Dif'rent Strokes where Mr. Drummond has just punished Arnold and then Willis gets upset and runs to take a dip in the whirlpool. Mr. Drummond comes in, has a heart to heart with him and then there's a big make-up hug, a big half-naked, wet young boy and older adoptive father make-up hug that seems so wrong, even though at heart it really is sweet. The times they are a-changin'…

Well even though I've been sort of quiet of late on the podcast front here at Branded, I did manage to end up as a guest on another show, namely the awesome Make Like a Tree Comics podcast, which is a forum for Jerzy Drozd and Sara Turner to take readers behind the scenes on the comic books they both write and draw. Jerzy wanted to start a discussion on the concept of All Ages material (stuff like super hero comics, cartoons, etc), so he invited Mark Rudolph of Control Voice Comics (CV Comics for short) and myself to a roundtable discussion on the topic (the mighty Hoover was also invited as he's a great friend of Jerzy and a bastion of knowledge on the subject, but unfortunately he couldn't make it), which we only really hit the tip of the iceberg.

You can find the episode on the MLaT Talkshoe page; it's Episode 16, All Ages for All Ages. While you’re there I urge you to check out the other episodes where Jerzy, Sara & Hoover talk about the MLaT family of comics (like The Front and File 49), as well as heading over to the MLaT site and reading the comics and checking out Mark's stuff at CV Comics.

Since we mainly tried to focus on what we enjoy about the concept of All Ages material on the podcast I thought I'd add a little bit to the idea here by mentioning a few of the misconceptions of All Ages stuff. I'll be honest, I tend to be guilty of having that initial gut reaction to the phrase, the one where all I imagine is Mr. Rogers or the Sesame Street movie (Follow That Bird) and I tend to forget that All Ages doesn't mean "For Kids Only" which is sort of the rap it's been stuck with. I don't want to speak for everyone, but I believe that a lot of people have this reaction and I was trying to think of why that is. The best conclusion that I could come up with is that since the birth of film and comics there's been a push to segregate media due to its suitability for children and over time it's cemented this false notion that there are things for kids and things for adults and neither the twain shall meet. I mean if you take a gander at the whole Comics Code Authority debacle, the Hays code days, or the inception of the MPAA ratings system you can get an idea of how the idea of keeping adult material out of the hands of kids has shifted to creating content geared towards specific age groups.

For instance, using movies as an example, from 1968 through about 1984 the majority of films produced by Hollywood fell under either the G or PG (formerly GP) rating, so films like Rocky & Airplane! were rubbing shoulders with flicks like The Black Hole and The Black Cauldron. I'm not sure how long since any of you have seen Airplane! but it's pretty raunchy, I mean it's got BJ jokes for crying out loud and it's rated PG! But then, after Spielberg unleashed Temple of Doom and his produceorial effort Gremlins on the public parents groups got their panties in a bunch and started writing letters about how much of a travesty it was that these films were PG (now remember, PG more or less stands for Parental Guidance, which translates into suitable for some children, but not all and ultimately it's up to the parents to decide, which these groups can't seem to handle.) So Spielberg suggested to Jack Valenti that a new rating be created, a PG-14 that would indicate that maybe pre-teens shouldn’t be admitted alone.

Well Valenti and the MPAA settled on PG-13, and from then on Hollywood began to change. See PG-13 usurped aspects of both the PG and R rating in such a manner that with the exception of full frontal nudity and extreme bloodshed and language most films began to fall under the new rating. Because of this studios realized that if they toned down more adult fare they could now broaden their viewing audience on about 80% of their pictures, so for the first time in a number of years the studios began to take a heavy hand in the artistic side of things and pushed for a targeted and specific output from writers and directors trying to get flicks that met the expectations of the widest audience possible.

Well at the same time the public began reacting to these changes as well, and soon enough kids who were used to what would have fallen under the PG rating were now looking to PG-13 and PG gained a reputation for being "for kids", something to graduate out of. Films that were more or less for adults that were now slapped with a PG rating began to be ignored, the audience thinking it must be bad or "written down to a kid's level." A perfect example of this is the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

As for comics, after the CMAA introduced the Comics Code Authority with was a self censoring seal of approval that basically stated that the material in the comics was free from anything violent, gory, crime laden, horror filled, or sexy. The major publishers all adopted the comics code for the most part and from then on the comic book medium became synonymous with "being for kids" and honestly the publishers didn't help by more or less writing down to a child-like level.

This mentality has pervaded into the collected subconscious to such a degree, that it's become a common misconception to think that certain things are for kids, e.g. anything without extreme violence, without heaps of bad language, or tons of boobie shots. Think about all of the comic book flicks that have been hitting theater screens for the last 7 years, and try and come up with the one major complaint from most filmgoers. The one I hear the most is that these films aren't realistic because they aren't gritty, don't have enough real action, and there aren't in-depth convoluted stories. Hell, I'm just as guilty. When I think of the perfect Captain America movie for me, all I can imagine is Cap thrown into Saving Private Ryan, but with more red-skull-exposed Nazis running around for him to smack upside the head with his shield.

Anyway before I get off onto a rant about which is the right way to handle comic book properties, I have to say that neither, or more accurately both, are right. What we're missing in the world today is a tolerance for both mature and all ages material and that it's okay to like one, both or neither, and that's not what I see most of the time.

Anyway, getting back to the MLaT podcast that I was a guest on, what would you say are some of the aspects of All Ages media that intrigue you the most?

When I was scanning the Madballs sticker sheet this past weekend it reminded me of a Bonkers candy ad that came out around the time I started collecting comics. That led me to digging through some of the scanned comic ads I've acquired and as I was searching for the Madballs ad (or at least what I thought was a Madballs ad) I thought it would be cool to cobble together all of the Bonkers candy ads I had on hand. I'm not sure how many ads there were over the years, but I found 6 that represent a nice three year period in the 80s.

For those not familiar with Bonkers candy, it was a Starburst-like fruit chew made by Nabisco under their Life Savers subsidiary in the 80s and 90s. The candy was packaged similarly to Starburst as well, individually wrapped in a long sleeve, but instead of coming in a mix of flavors, each sleeve had only one. They were a little bit softer than Starburst and were shaped more like a chunk of gum (think Hubba Bubba or Bubble Yum) and were made up of two sections, an outer layer and a more intensely flavorful inner layer, both usually of the same flavor variety. It originally came in three flavors, Grape, Orange, and Strawberry, but would eventually be available in a few others, as we'll see below. The product's tag line was that it was the candy that would "Bonk You Out!" The oldest ad I could find in my collection was from 1984 and it looks like it was introducing the initial product line.


The cool thing about this ad is that it looks like it was drawn by Jack Davis (he of EC comics and MAD Magazine fame.) Davis did a bunch of advertising artwork throughout his career for but I still find it kind of weird and interesting to see someone's art who I am familiar with in comics on mass produced products advertising like this. It'd be like seeing Todd McFarlane doing a Capt'n Crunch ad or something (I bet those Soggies would have been pretty damn cool.)

I was way into Bonkers during my elementary school days. There was a 7-Eleven at the opening to our subdivision (which was about a mile from my house) and I'd always ride my bike up there after school and on the weekends to play arcade games, drink Slurpees, and to load up on pocketfuls of Jolly Rancher sticks, Nerds, Runts, and Bonkers. I'm sure watermelon was my favorite flavor, but I know I had my fare share of the three original flavors as well.


This second ad is from 1985 and is more of an order form for a bike bag premium. By this point they'd certainly come up with their advertising campaign idea of having giant fruit falling down on whoever eats the candy (which made for some fun commercials in the 80s.) This ad also looks vaguely like a piece of Jack Davis artwork, thought I'm wondering if it wasn't bastardized by someone else. The kid just looks too happy and it lacks that sketchy hand that Jack has. Maybe someone at the ad firm finished a doodle of his or something.

With this next ad from 1985 introducing the new watermelon flavor (which was the big new candy flavor that was sweeping the nation in the second half of the 80s) the art, though retaining a certain Jack Davis quality seems to be diverting even farther from his style. I'm not positive but I'd have to believe that at this point the in-house Nabisco art guys were talking over.


With the new watermelon flavor Bonkers took a deviation from the normal candy design and went with two colors to more accurately mimic the watermelon eating experience (though as my Mom always told me, eat the rinds and you'll get the runs.) When I was reading through other blogs that had Bonkers candy posts there were a couple of people who seemed to remember a version of the candy that was yellow and red (which they figured was probably Strawberry Banana) so I'd have to think that if there was such a variety (which I think there was) than it probably came after Watermelon was introduced. Of course there were also a few brands of bubble gum that were experimenting with double flavor combos at this time and if I remember correctly they were also shaped like Bonkers (or vice versa) so we all might be remembering that as well.


1985 would also introduce another Bonkers promotion, but this time instead of a silly bike bag, this time you could earn a kickass freaking robot watch (Kronoform watch to be exact.) God did I love these robot watches to hell and back. I must have had at least three of 'em in various colors (one of which I think was even Transformers branded.) These watches were the perfect camouflage for bringing toys to school and they were proven to be 92% less likely to be confiscated by the teacher. I learned a powerful lesson in the 1st grade when I brought a bunch of my Empire Strikes Back figures to school one day and went home minus a Bespin Luke, an Ugnaut, and my Hoth Leia. Even if the teacher did catch you with one of these watches, it's not like they were going to take your watch away. How would you know when to wait out front to get picked up or when 15 minutes had passed during recess with out a watch? Hell, kids are stupid, if you tell them they have five minutes to take a potty break and you confiscate their watch they'll probably sit on the can all day thinking only four minutes passed, I know I would.)


In 1986 there was an interesting if not somewhat disgusting (well to me at least) development in the Bonkers camp, Chocolate Bonkers. I am seriously not a big fan of chocolate flavored things. I mean, if you want to eat chocolate, eat chocolate. The worst is chocolate bubble gum, which just seems like a nightmare made real for my chewing displeasure.  Chewy chocolate should be copyrighted by Tootsie Rolls andyway which is about as far in that direction as I'm willing to go, and even then only for a roll or two.

This all brings us to the reason I started this post, which is the 1986-1987 Bonkers Ugly Balls promotion which coincided with the Madballs craze and had a lot of people like me confused figuring they were one and the same.


Matt over at X-Entertainment did a nice write up on the whole situation, and he even has a bunch of the related commercials for eyeball melting viewing pleasure. Captain Clueless always weirded me out because for such a clueless guy he sure did look like he could pummel the ever-living crap out of me. And the blonde hair always seemed weird too, with the red gloves and stuff, he looks like a weird amalgamation of the Hulk, Fabio and DC's the Creeper.

Thanks to an awesome eBay store, the Swoopermarket, which stocks a really awesome variety of 80s vintage stickers, I was finally able to procure a sheet of stickers that I've been trying to get my hands on for a while. Back around Christmas I stumbled upon an auction for a package of Madballs stickers from 1989 that I really wanted to win so that I could share the stickers on Peel Here. Well for the longest time the only person with these stickers on eBay was only selling them in bulk (10 or 50 packages of 4 sheets each) and for a pretty heft price. What in the hell was I going to do with 40 identical sheets of Madballs stickers? I'll be honest, I don't have the patience to re-sell stickers on eBay for profit, so I resigned myself to skipping Madballs on Peel Here. Then the Swoopermarket got some sheets in stock and presto, here are they are...


I pretty much missed out on the whole Madballs craze in the mid to late 80s as I really hadn't developed my taste for monster themed products yet and I was more into Transformers and G.I. Joe. In fact I was more of a brand loyalist when it came to toys (or anything really) so I just didn't venture outside of that comfort zone much. In retrospect, how can I not love a line of toys that are like Rob Zombie drawing come to life? I mean, who doesn't love a toy with the name Aargh? Madballs are also just another link in the gory, deformed, slime covered, frankensteind, fetal monster art tradition that goes all the way back to folks who collected detailed medical drawings of cadavers or human oddities. From carny sideshow memorabilia, to the monster magazines and model kits of the 50s and 60s, to the Topps Ugly sticker cards of the 60s, to bubblegum machine finger puppets, to DC's Plop comics, on through 80s skateboarding art & Garbage Pail Kids in the 80s, Madballs are just another extension of the weird interest we have in the morbid and macabre (an extension that you could bean a friend in the head with, which make it a very versatile morbid piece of art.)

There's also something very 80s heavy metal about the design on these toys.  Between Eddie (the Iron Maiden mascot), Vic Rattlehead (the Megadeth mascot), and the various Pusshead drawings for Metallica, there's a very similar feel to the line-up of the Madballs toys.  Anyway, last year American Greetings (who I believe own the rights to the toyline) were going to team up with Art Asylum to re-introduce the Madballs toys to the public, going so far as to set up a webpage, though I haven't seen anything actually released.  There are a still a few fan pages floating around the internets though, and Matt over at X-Entertainment has written pretty extensively on the subject (as well as ripping and proving awesome Madballs commericials for download.)

Obviously the main reason I began putting this site/blog/podcast (etc) together is my love of mulling over nostalgic memories and all the crap I had/wanted/loved as a kid. Well there is an aspect to this desire that is even more seductive than the nostalgia for stuff I had myself, the memories of things that my friends had that I always loved or wanted. When I think back on my collection of G.I. Joe figures versus the figures that my friends had I get more of a thrill thinking about their figures. Sure, I love my Storm Shadow, Dial Tone and Cobra Eels, yet on the other hand my friend Bryan had Barbecue, Scarlet and Gung Ho, which seem cooler because I never had them.

One of the other things Bryan had that I used to covet was a board game called Go For It, which was released by Parker Brothers in 1986 or so. My family had all of the basic games, Monopoly, Clue, Life and Scrabble, but I always wanted more. I remember back in the day you'd stroll into Toys 'r' Us and there would be a virtual wall of board games along one side of the store, floor to ceiling, and all of them were tempting. Risk, Castle Risk, Yatzee, Shoots and Ladders, Candyland, Operation, Trivial Pursuit, not to mention the million and one games based off of popular properties of the day, from M.A.S.K. to Goonies, E.T. to G.I. Joe, there were just so many seductive options. As it was my parents only really broke out the board games around Christmas, in particular on New Year's Eve when we'd eat shrimp, drink champagne (just a tiny glass for the kids) and play a mammoth game of Monopoly.

So, long story short, every time I'd go over to Bryan's house and we were trying to decide what to do my answer was always the same, "Lets break out Go For It." Basically it's the quintessential 80s "gimmie-gimmie, I want more" game of status and collecting stuff, which is basically the yuppie credo, and it's perfectly captured in the artwork that adorns the box…


I mean how much more 80s could you get? You've got airbrushed silk workout shorts, leg warmers, sweatbands, suburban mansions, wind surfing, solid gold singing, Ferrari driving, tennis playing, executives behind the desk, lush green lawns, and a little bit of Europe just to make things feel a little international. For me this evokes Wimbledon, John McEnroe, Olivia Newton-John getting physical, the Surfing fashion craze, Princess Dianna, hardly working at the office, Magnum P.I., and Life Styles of the Rich and Famous all rolled up into one awesome piece of cover art. If there were only some checkerboard, neon, and a Patrick Nagel painting in the background it would be perfect.


According to the back of the box this is the game where you can have it all by risking what you have to get what you want. How poetic is that. Sure it makes logical sense, but it sure as hell sounds a like sleeping to get to the top to me.

I managed to find a copy on eBay that was both in nice condition (it looked barely played with) and complete with all the pieces.


Here's what the game board looks like when you set it up. The board itself is based on the calendar year with 52 spaces, each representing a week of the year. Each player gets a birthday themed marker that is placed on the board in the spot of their actual birthday and stays there throughout the game. All the players use the same time marker piece to "move" around the board. In the middle there is a tray set up with all the crap you can acquire and then there is a section of the News cards at the top.


There are also 12 career cards that are shuffled face down and dealt, one to a player. Your career card lists how much you will earn throughout the game, though money is merely a means to an end and doesn't help you win the game. Each career card has six job levels, each defined by owning between 0 and 12 pieces of status (i.e. the cards that you acquire in the game), and you go up a level as soon as you get enough status.


Of the 12 career cards there are 6 different pay tiers ranging between a top pay of $175,000 and $200,000. The two lowest tiers include jobs in Broadcasting, High Technology, Publishing and Sports, which actually seems to be very out-dated, even for the 80s as Bill Gates and Tiger Woods would agree.


The middle range jobs include Advertising, Law, Finance and Fashion. The pay scales on the jobs is about 50%/50% on accuracy, but as you get into the better paid jobs a weird jump develops between 4 and 8 status cards that is pretty unrealistic, in the beginning you have a $25,000 jump, but by the last set of jobs you’re making a $75,000 dollar leap.


The best set of jobs consists of Music, Real Estate, Acting and Medicine, though the highest position on the best two is only $25,000 different than the lowest, and at the end of the day they are all high paying jobs. No janitors or mail clerks here.

Since a few of my friend's birthdays were coming up (as well as mine), and because we are all turning 30 this year we decided to get together and have a game day where we veg out to card and board games while overdosing on snacks and novelty soda and beer. I figured it would be a great time to relive the thrill of playing the game and a good opportunity to get some pictures for this review.


Basically the game goes like this. You start out with like $15,000 and then each player takes a turn rolling the dice, moving the time marker appropriately, and then reading out what is on the space and following the instructions. These spaces determine whether a player is allowed to buy status cards from the tray or other players, and then in particular what types of cards (there are fours different types of status cards, vacations, stuff, cars and homes.) The object of the game is to get a set of 12 cards, three different from each category (and by different I mean each card has to be worth a different amount, so say a $4,000, an $8,000, and a $16,000 set of vacation cards.) As you travel around the board (and throughout the "year") you get paid only once when you pass the Labor Day space. You use the money to buy the status cards and honestly after the first couple of turns around the board you'll have enough money to purchase mid-size countries in Europe so it's not a worry. When you feel that you have enough status to win the game you announce that you are "Going For It" when you pass Labor Day (any number of players can do this at the same time) and the game goes into a Clue like sudden death round where you play one more year and based on your prediction and the reality as you pass Labor Day again you'll either win as you thought, or have to pay a penalty for prematurely blurting out your intentions of being yuppie scum.


During game play there will be plenty of status swapping and stealing as well as plenty of ups and downs, most of which won't have anything to do with your money. There are special "News" cards that spaces will instruct you to pick up and play that mostly reward (with discounts on status or free status) and rarely punish the players (I mean we're in this for greed, but un checked and only rewarding greed.) There's also the whole birthday marker thing. Whenever a space is landed on that has a birthday marker, all the players must give one status card (or in the event they don't have one money) to the player whose birthday it is. So there is always status flying across the table. There's also an option to trade up any purchased status card by "Going For It" (see the theme yet?) where the player gambles the status card by rolling the dice, a 5 or lower and the card is lost, but with a 6 or greater you can trade the card in for one of greater value in the next column.


One of the things that I remembered the most about this game was the birthday markers, which were more or less birthday themed. There's a cupcake, a birthday hat, an ice cream cone, a present, a cake and, um, a slice of pizza? Yes, I guess the game designer (Charles Phillips, who also brought us Advance to Boardwalk, Free Parking and Castle Risk) was a big fan of hitting Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz on his birthday.


My favorite part of the game though, is of course the status cards. Even though I was only 9 when I was playing it there was something addictive about the idea of collecting trips to the Australian Outback, Pontiacs and $400,000 townhouses. Like I stated above there were four categories of crap you could get…


…my favorite of which was the Goin' Places cards. My goal each time I played was to get that Australian camping trip because I wanted to bag a koala to take home with me. This, of course, was followed by the Orient Cruise because I liked the splash of colors. I never wanted the Florida fishing trip because I lived in Florida at the time and it just seemed like a waste of money. The airbrushed art isn't quite as cool in these cards as it is on the box cover, but it's still pretty nifty.


It’s with the Feelin' Good status cards that you really get an 80s feel to the game, what with the $12,000 TV and VCR systems (did it ever cost that much, even for the best of the best?), leg warmers on the gym membership (if I ever paid $8,000 for a gym membership I think I'd kill myself), and a sweet new pastel wardrobe. Life is good.


Looking back, I'm slightly disappointed wit the Wheels status cards as it really doesn't quite capture that 80s car feel. Sure all of these cars scream the 80s (boxy Volkswagens, nondescript sedans, and Corvettes) but where are the true luxury cars? Where are the Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porches? Where are the BMWs? Where's my damn DeLorean?!? Sure the '57 Chevy was pretty big in the 80s what with Christine, Eddie and Cruisers and the rest of the weird 50s nostalgia that hit hard in the decade, but $30,000? I doubt it. It is kind of cool that there aren't like 600 SUVs here, just the one Jeep which is all I really remember in the 80s anyway.


With the House 'n Home status cards, even as a kid I knew there had to be something fishy about the $400,000 houses. A Ranch for $400,000? It better be made of solid gold.


Anyway, the game play is pretty balanced and when you get used to the idea of collecting status cards instead of cash it actually becomes kind of fun, especially in a dated ironic way. I'm glad I got a chance to play it again after 21 years, and now that I own it hopefully I'll be able to bust it out more often. Here are some scans of the rest of the game pieces, the money, News cards, the board broken up by month and the instructions as well as a couple more pieces of swell airbrushed 80s consumerist art. News Cards

Yesterday marked the passing of one of the most memorable TV personalities from my childhood growing up in the 80s, Don Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard. Here's the statement his family issued on the website this morning:

“It is with deep sadness that we regret to announce the passing of Don Herbert - the one and only "Mr. Wizard". Don lost his battle with cancer today, June 12, 2007, at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time - slightly more than one month shy of his 90th birthday. He was lovingly surrounded by his family, who are at once, saddened by his passing, and relieved that he is no longer suffering.

We all feel extremely lucky to have had him in our lives and to have known and worked with Don over the years. We have also been tremendously honored to carry on his legacy as an original and truly legendary figure in the worlds of both Television and Science Education. He has been inspirational and influential in so many ways and on so many lives and we are comforted in the fact that his ground breaking work and legacy will continue to inspire many more people for years to come.

Thank you so much to all of you for your support and sympathy.

Sincerely, The Family"

Though he was extolling the virtues of science on TV from 1951 through to the mid 70s in either his Watch Mr. Wizard shows, or his 30-second science snippets on Saturday mornings during prime cartoon time, I knew him best as the host of Mr. Wizard's World, which began airing on Nickelodeon around 1983 and seemed to air at least until the early 90s. The collage of sounds from the opening of the show is more or less burned into my brain, in particular the sound of the shopping cart with the giant test tube dropped into it. Retrojunk has the opening of the show in it's TV archive for your viewing pleasure.

Whether he was showing us how we could move our entire body through a single sheet of paper (buy folding and cutting it so that it would unravel into a very large hoop) or why it's impossible for the human body to create enough suction to drink water with a two-story tall straw, he was always there on TV with something crazy, interesting, or downright amazing to show. There were two main science shows I remember from the 80s, 3-2-1 Contact! and Mr. Wizard, and Don Herbert always won out when I'd be flipping stations.

For those of us who remember it and want to relive the nostalgia, the show is available on DVD from Herbert's own studio store. There are 8 volumes of the show available, each with 4 uncut episodes of the show (which are $18 each plus about $5 shipping) and you can purchase them individually or in an 8-DVD mega set for $125. Here are some links to the individual volumes pages (which list episode content as well as providing clips):

Volume 1 (episodes 1-4)

Volume 2 (episodes 5-8)

Volume 3 (episodes 9-12)

Volume 4 (episodes 13-16)

Volume 5 (episodes 17-20)

Volume 6 (episodes 21-24)

Volume 7 (episodes 25-28)

Volume 8 (episodes 29-32)

I remember in the 8th grade when I got so jazzed at the announcement that Mr. Wizard was going to come to our school and perform some experiments for the various classes in the gym. I picked out a spot up front and center on the hard gym floor but was disappointed when it wasn't Don Herbert, just some guy calling himself Mr. Wizard who showed up. At least I learned that it would be terrible to cut open a diaper and pour the absorbent beads into my eyes that day, as well as that having your leg fall asleep to a point where the pins and needles feeling was so bad that I had to do a weird Mr. Roboto dance just to get up and keep my balance was very embarrassing. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always thought that the pins and needles dance would have been worth it if the school had popped to fly out the real Mr. Wizard…

Finally, after a month of waiting, I have my own car back from the shop. The paint job looks great again (as it should for the frickin' price my insurance company paid, which makes me wonder what in the hell kind of paint job you'd get at a Maaco for only a few hundred dollars) but more importantly I'm in my own comfortable car again.  I never realized how much I'd miss driving it, but our rental was very small and had the worst blind spots known to modern car design, so that could account for some of it.  I'm also floating on air a little bit because this past weekend I got an opportunity to play a board game with a bunch of friends that I haven't sat down with for 20 years.  For now I'm gonna leave it anonymous because I'm going to write about it here soon, but playing it brought back a lot of memories of the 80s and how weirdly freaking consumerist the nation was becoming.

So what do we have this week for Peel Here column number 31?  Well a small-ass sticker book for one helluva big-ass truck, the Antioch Publishing Bigfoot 4x4x4 Facts & Photos sticker book.  I've talked about my weird affinity for these little square books with "12 Collector Stickers Inside" before, they definitely represent the 80s in my mind, and in particular this book because it serves as a snapshot for a sort of shift in the general mindset in America at the time.  While in the 60s and the 70s there was (at least what seemed like) a greater importance placed on pop culture and consumerism where the two began to reflect and directly challenge politics and other more serious issues (music taking on the establishment, counter culture movies, etc.), in the late 70s and through out the 80s (all the way to today sadly) pop culture and consumerism became the news, it was politics (Regan began his "career" as an actor), and suddenly knowing just how many pairs of shoes Imelda Marcos owned was a serious issue (kidding, though only a little folks.)  So while in the 70s Evel Knievel was a household name for using motor sports as entertainment where the slight possibility (though no one really wanted to see him fail) of crashes and injury were a draw, in the 80s and with the Bigfoot monster truck we had an era of crashes and destruction eschewed in where no one was happy unless cars were destroyed and the possibility of danger and injury was imminent.  The possibility of going to a monster truck show and losing your hearing was a positive thing.

Now I'm not knocking Bigfoot or the whole monster truck experience in particular, I was just as addicted to the idea of Bigfoot and Grave Digger as anyone else, but it does make for a pretty good turning point in the decade shift where outright destruction and the biggest loudest trucks became popular.  I know that there were already demolition derbies and stuff, but nothing that ever reached the popularity of Bigfoot.  Waste and luxury items for one and all was en vogue, and your place in life was judged accordingly.  Sadly nothing has really changed.




This is getting a little off topic though, so lets shift back to the stickers and try not to think about social commentary.  So the book is called Bigfoot 4x4x4, and if you know your monster truck trivia you know that the 4x4x4 stands for any vehicle that has four wheels with four wheel drive and in addition (and this is what makes it special) four wheel steering so that if the front axle goes out, you can put a pin in it and steer with the back wheels.  This was the advance in design that led to the first Bigfoot being manufactured, and it was the beginning of an empire of motor sports that was merchandised to hell and back.  Not only were there stickers, but also a set of trading cards, innumerable toys (the Playskool version of which I had as a kid), and even a Saturday Morning Cartoon, Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines.  Bigfoot also made appearances in flicks like Take this Job and Shove It, Cannonball Run II, and Roadhouse, not to mention plenty of TV shows.  A whole industry popped up around the idea of Monster trucks and there were tons of derivative merchandising from stuff like The Animal, the Truck toy that had animal claws hidden in the wheels that would pop out for extra traction, to stuff like Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, which is basically Bigfoot in space (vs. plants, but that's a story for another time.)



The stickers that came with this book were pretty cool if only because there were 12 different stickers instead of the normal 6 that were provided with duplicates.  There are two missing in the book I managed to find, which is actually pretty good for these books seeing as how the stickers would be the first thing to go, and from the context clues of the sticker void borders I can guess that one had Bigfoot hauling ass through a pond, and the other was of the version with the 10' high tires (which is pictured below, in fact I think it is the picture from below.)  There were also a couple of the obligatory I (heart) stickers which were pretty darn big in the 80s.  The one sticker I love the most though is of the small monster truck that looks like it's trying to mount Bigfoot, which is just weird.  There's also a nice shot of the Bigfoot shuttle on the bottom right, which was a different design but made by the same team of people.



The book opens with a bang, and plenty of exclamation marks to knock home just how exciting this truck is, not to mention exploring the idea of Action Page Turning!



Did you know that 22 years after the publication of this book that there are actually like 19 or so Bigfoot trucks (or is it Bigfeet?)  Though I can understand the various clone trucks with the augmentations, but constructing a clone truck for the purposes of showing it in multiple places at once is capitol "L" lame.  When I was 12 my dad took me to a car show because the actual Batmobile from the Burton movie was on display.  It was awesome.  I also had a friend that managed to get a chance to get a photo standing next to Airwolf (one of the operational ones used in the filming of the show) which is like 10 times as cool as the Burton Batmobile.  If either of us found out that these weren't the actual vehicles it would have just really sucked.  It reminds me of all the little kids I've seen over the years getting their comics signed by various guys in Spiderman and Spawn outfits at comic conventions.  You just don't have the heart to tell them that "No, that really wasn't Spiderman.  Seriously kid, I saw him taking a dump in a door-less toilet stall and he was on his cell phone talking to his uncle, and it sure as hell wasn't a collect call to heaven he was making, so you know…"  So when you're going to some Planet Hollywood or the monster truck version of Medieval Times just remember, that's probably just a big-ass truck that's never crushed a car in its life.  Come to think of it, a monster truck version of Medieval Times would be super rad.



I don't think I understand the author's use of exclamation points here.  "The puddle shown here is on the track of the Indy 500!"  Um, what's exciting about that?  I think there should have just been one 500-point font exclamation mark on each text page, which would get the point across, "YEAH BIGFOOT!!!"



They should so make a Bigfoot with the tires so big that the Atlantic Ocean would be like a puddle.  Australia could be where it lived (in the outback), and it would help to cur the ever-rising Kangaroo population.  That would be the one that Jesus would drive.  They'd have to rename it GODfoot though. GODfoot vs. Grave Digger at the GA Dome tonight, WOO HOO!!!

While rifling through more comics and comic scans I've managed to come across a few more cool Saturday Morning Cartoon ads from the mid to late 70s, so I've put them together as a sort of addendum to the Essential Saturday Morning Cartoon Ads, 1979-1989, which will partially cover 1976-1978.

First up we have this pretty cool CBS ad from 1975.


This is the beginning of the short lived period of live action Filmation Saturday morning shows with the introduction of the Ghost Busters, a show that I've talked about here before. There's also a weird show called the Space Nuts starring Bob Denver which just has me scratching my head. Rocky Mountain High in space apparently, but nutty. Weird. This is also the year that the Mighty Isis debuted on TVs across the nation.

Next there's another CBS ad, this one from 1976 which is very similar the 1975 ad but with Isis and Shazam flying in the opposite directions.


I was born in '77, so I think I can say that I missed the boat on pretty much all of these shows except for Fat Albert, which I've seen in reruns for years. I am becoming more familiar with some of these other shows though through my growing love of the Filmation cartoon and TV studio work. I'm actually insanely curious about the Secrets of Isis live action show, which I believe is very similar to the Wonder Woman live action show from around the same time. I've been seeing Isis everywhere now it seems, and I can't wait for the entire series to hit DVD on July 24th. I'm also sort of curious about the Shazam show, though I'm a little more familiar with this character. I'm not positive, but I believe there were a few crossover episodes between Isis and Shazam so there should be some Captain Marvel appearances in the Isis DVD set that's coming out. Both of these shows are more or less DC comics properties, both of which had comic series (though I think Shazam/Captain Marvel was actually part of a different company that DC bought at one point.)

This ad also announces the first of the three live action Filmation sci-fi kids shows, Ark II, which I think was about a sort of futuristic Ark which was manned by a crew collecting/protecting flora and fauna specimens. This time line of shows actually feels a lot like how I remember watching Saturday morning TV as a kid, starting early with the Looney Tunes, and then progressing until later in the day there were variety or sports-like shows.

This next ad is from the following year (1977) and is also from CBS.


I have no idea why CBS chose to go with a bananas theme for this ad, no idea what so ever. 1977 would bring us the 2nd live action sci-fi show from Filmation, Space Academy (the 3rd was Jason of Star Command which you can see in the other SMC ads that came later.) I've actually sat down and watched most of the Space Academy show which is pretty campy but still a lot of fun. I'm so glad that BCI is putting out all of these Filmation shows on DVD as it's given me a chance to see what it was like on Saturday morning before I was watching. This year also saw the beginning of the Batman cartoon, also by Filmation I believe, and also coming out on DVD soon through Warner Bros. In this ad Shazam was dropped from the schedule though Isis was back for more with a second season. So what in the hell is that weird creature in the Batman portion of the ad? It looks like a cross between Bat-Mite and the Great Gazoo.

This last ad is from NBC in 1978 and is broken up into two pages, one announcing the shows and one with a little trivia quiz.


Apparently crime solving dogs were all the rage in the 70s between Scooby Doo, the Clue Club from the 1976 CBS ad, Woofer and Whimper from the 1977 CBS ad, and now this sleuth looking dog from the 1978 NBC ad.


I think somewhere I also have one NBC ad from 1968. I'll have to dig that out and add it to this list. Also if anyone out there has any other ads from this period, 1975-1990 or so and you'd like to donate a scan, please let me know. I think it would be pretty cool to have a nice complete set of these to provide a nice cartoon time line. Also, if anyone has any scans of the ads that ran in TV guide, that would be awesome as well as I've never seen any of those.

I really haven't written all that much about my stint collecting comics in the pages of Branded, so I thought I'd rectify that by sharing some advertisements for comic crossovers that I was mildly obsessed with as a kid. Though, like most kids, I had my fare share of comic books growing up, I didn't really get serious about it until around 1989 or so after coming off of a period of intense baseball card collecting. I'd had a falling out with a friend (who had gotten me into collecting baseball cards) and I was ready to trade all my cards in for some cash to put towards another hobby, anything other than more cards.

I think I had about 15 dollars saved up from Christmas and raiding my parent's penny jar (I was allowed to keep anything that I counted and rolled), and it was burning a new hobby sized hole in my pocket. My mom let me tag along with her to a new grocery store called Florida's Choice (it was the first mega-sized grocery store I remember going into, much larger than the Albertsons, Goodings, and Publixs in the area) which had a seriously gaudy neon sign made up of pinks, pale greens and baby blues. The cool thing about this new store was the size of its magazine section was located in its own little room next to the pharmacy and a pretty big plants and flower area. For some reason, I think because the store didn't have a toy section like Albertsons did, I decided to spend all my money on magazines, in particular any Martial Arts, Cracked or Mad magazines I could find. While flipping though the racks my eyes were drawn to the bottom shelf where all of the comics were lined up. I decided that since the issues were pretty cheap, at $1.50 each, I'd grab as many different titles as I could to see if any of them were cool. I ended up buying some miscellaneous issues of Mad and Cracked, a Kung Fu magazine for the weapons ads, an issue of G.I. Joe, one of the 80s DC Starman comics, Uncanny X-Men 242, and Wolverine number 6. These last two had a very drastic and lasting effect on my pre-teen mind as I was introduced to the long and complicated continuity of the X-Men universe.




Though Wolverine was more or less a stand-alone series, issue 242 of the Uncanny X-Men was smack dab in the middle of a huge crossover storyline that had me completely baffled until I realized that there were other X themed comic titles, like X-Factor and the New Mutants. It was while trying to find all of the corresponding issues of the Inferno storyline that I waded hip deep into the world of comic collecting, weekly hitting up my local 7-Eleven, the spinner rack at Albertson's and eventually a little hole in the wall comic store in Orlando called Phoenix & Dragon Comics and Collecting. I ended up putting every penny I could scrape together into buying back issues of X-Men comics or anything that had a guest appearance by Wolverine. As I inched my way backwards I would always get stupidly excited when I stumbled upon another crossover series. Eventually I'd be able to mark my collection by these story arcs beginning with the Mutant Massacre, which ran through Uncanny X-Men 210-213, X-Factor 9-11, New Mutants #46, Thor 373-374, and Power Pack #27.


According to the Wiki entry on this crossover, Chris Claremont, who was one prolific freaking x-themed comic writer, had decided to take out the who Morlock encampment in the sewer tunnels under New York because he was tired of that idea. Marvel and Claremont were also planning on jostling the line-up of the X-Men so they planned an even that they could envelop this all into. Claremont took aim and shot down series regulars Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler, as well as Angel and Karma (in X-Factor and the New Mutants respectively.) Though Marvel was no stranger to long crossovers (e.g. the Secret Wars) they handily provided this sewer pipe themed map to the Mutant Massacre series in their titles just before these issues started hitting store shelves. Though the ad comes off as pretty goofy, with Nightcrawler, Beast and a couple of the Power Pack members acrobating around the maze of issues, the actual storyline was pretty dark and disturbing. Actually, aside from listing the issues and order to read them in, this ad completely misses the feel of the crossover which is something that Marvel would rectify in future crossover ads.

The Mutant Massacre crossover was also cool because it took place during the Marvel 25th anniversary celebration, so a lot of the comic covers featured the neat character portraits surrounded by a bevy of other characters, a design that I've shown my love for here in the past. The issues were also some of the more expensive titles in the run of Uncanny X-Men, and therefore had to be purchased as Christmas and birthday presents, which also added to my love for them. In fact, I think at the time when I was first collecting these, they were going for around $20 a pop which my parents had a hell of a time understanding, and which is a perfect example of the insanity of the secondary market (something that would put me off of comics after the stupid collecting boom in the early to mid 90s.) I never did find the entire crossover, mainly because after I got into the X-Men characters I very rarely wanted to stray much further, even if they popped up in other titles, so I never read the Thor and Power Pack issues until Marvel reprinted them in their Essential series which I thought was an awesome touch. The Mutant Massacre also served as the relative beginning marker for my X-Men collection as I only bought a handful of issues that came before it. I always dug this story because it set up the rivalry between Sabertooth and Wolverine as well as cementing Psylocke as a permanent (well as permanent as any member of the X-Men ever really is) member of the team. It was also the changing of the guard that would lead to the Team that I was introduced to in issue 242.  (You can find out more about the crossover here.)

The next big crossover, and the one that the Mutant Massacre effectively set up would be the Fall of the Mutants, which ran through Uncanny 225-227, New Mutants 59-61, and X-Factor 24-26. Though there isn't an over arching storyline that connects the different titles, each goes through a very similar and fundamental change as does the world that the titles takes place in does.


Before I get to the story, I want to say just how much I love this poster/Ad that ran in Marvel titles leading up to the crossover. It's very morbid and drastic in its depiction of the trail of dead mutants and sort of marked the height of the various X-titles more adult take on comics. The X-Factor story line isn't quite as serious and adult, though it's certainly going in that direction. The other two books though, even with their otherworldly fantastical villains, deal with a more down and dirty approach, a very gritty realism that is mostly missing from super hero books (and what makes stuff like the Dark Knight Returns and the Watchmen so novel.) This is perfectly illustrated in this ad, which I had a copy of hanging on my wall through 2 houses and four apartments, over a 10 year period.

As far as the plot and story gores for Fall of the Mutants, each plot shift in the three books marks the demarcation point for where I entered the storylines, so I'd always come back to this point as where I fell in love with the X-Men. In all three books the idea of the Mutant Registration act is introduced, which is basically a government mandate that all mutants need to register, giving up their identity and listing their powers, in essence painting a target on their heads. It basically echoes the beginning of the Holocaust, an idea that runs through a lot of the x-writing (not to mention how Magneto's past is retconed to tie into the Holocaust.)

In the Uncanny book three main things happen, Storm gets her powers back, the entire team sacrifices their life, souls and all, to defeat their enemy (which after they are resurrected causes a shift in their outlook as far as how they operate and puts them on the offense instead of waiting in defense mode where most super hero comics reside), and they are presented with a mystical item called the Seige Perilous which would feature heavily in later issues (and would be the cornerstone of some brain storming fan fiction sessions between my friends and I.) Basically the X-Men become true outlaws, taking up residence in Australia and picking enemy targets to hit. This is also the beginning of the team that I am most familiar with consisting of Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, Dazzler, Longshot, Havok, Wolverine, Colossus and sort of member Madelyne Pryor (or the anti-Jean Grey.) The structure of the Xavier institute is lost, and I love it. In fact this is probably why I love film X2: X-Men United so much because it's very similar in feel. I've never been an Xavier fan, and pretty much I only like the school as the setting for books like the New Mutants and Generation X.

In the New Mutants portion of the story the team has to deal with the death of one of the team members (Cypher, a troubled mutant who never felt like he was doing much as his mutant ability was to decipher languages.) Coming from the point of view of what's basically a kids title, this was a pretty big shift in tone, and had some pretty big effects on the team including them breaking away from the Xavier institute (they already think the X-Men are dead thanks to the Uncanny portion of Fall of the Mutants.) This was also the beginning of the end of this series as it never really gained the same head of steam it had, and would eventually devolve into X-Force, a book where the less said the better.

The changes in X-Factor saw the return of Angel (thought dead after the Mutant Massacre storyline where because of injuries received he had to have his wings amputated which lead him to attempt suicide) as Archangel, the introduction of Apocalypse as a villain, and the procurement of his Ship as X-Factor's new base of operations, which would easily widen their storytelling scope as they could easily go into space and beyond. Obviously the biggest change was Angel shifting into Archangel, which transformed him from a playboy backer for the Xavier institute who was basically a silly character who ended up being the "dude with wings who carried a mean bazooka", into an almost Wolverine like character, cold, distant with newly forged razor sharp adamantium wings that contained nerve toxin tipped feather darts, not to mention having blue skin to boot. This shift was very important to this original X-Men team bringing them effectively up to snuff, hardening them a little, and basically being a rival for the current regular X-Men team. The addition of Wolverine to the original X-Men cast was really a stroke of genius, a theme which has been repeated a million times in every derivative of the X-Men comic, from Alpha Flight to X-Force and all the other permutations in between. This is also the beginning of the end of X-Factor comic, not in terms of characters, but just its survival as a comic independent from the core X-Men book. Since the characters were shifting a bit to become more like the current X-Men they were soon worked back into that book, and the X-Factor title was left to be rebooted from scratch a couple of unsuccessful times.

Now getting back to where I was introduced to the X-Men comics, a year or so after Fall of the Mutants we had Inferno which was a much more widespread crossover that had ripples throughout the rest of the Marvel universe. It basically ran through Uncanny 240-242, X-Factor 36-38, and New Mutants 71-73, though it was introduced earlier in the Uncanny books, not to mention in a New Mutants like spin off prequel called the X-Terminators.


The story also ran through a bunch of other titles including the Amazing, Spectacular, and Web of Spiderman, Daredevil, the Avengers, Power Pack, Cloak and Dagger, the Fantastic Four, Excalibur, and the short lived Damage Control (as well as getting a What If…? spotlight issue.) Though it'll always have a strong place in my heart as my introduction to both comic collecting and the X-Men, it's certainly the weirdest of the initial X-crossovers as it concerns itself with super heroes facing off against demons, both personal and actual. Many of the ongoing story arcs were concluded or came to a head in this story including the X-Men finding out about X-Factor (and the group basically coming back together, well at least setting the ground work for that), Wolverine sharing his feelings for Jean outright, Madelyne Pryor coming out as the Goblin Queen, the outing of Mr. Sinister, the revelation of where Magik's powers come from, and in the Spiderman end of the Marvel Universe, the Hobgoblin actually became a real demon.

This Inferno Ad is very much in the style of the Fall of the Mutants ad, with plenty of dark imagery and possibly dead X-characters. I especially love the sort of Return of the Jedi era Leia in bondage reference with Magik chained to S'ym, it's a nice if inappropriate touch.

All in all, I really dig these types of internal company ads.  I'm not sure if there was one for the X-Tinction Agenda (which was the last major crossover I collected), but I hope there was.  At one time or another all of these ads have lived on my walls, and in my scrapbooks, and now they can live on this site as well.

Man, what a weird freaking month it's been.  I can't wait for everything to start calming down, hopefully by the end of this week when I'll hopefully finally have my car back from the shop (stupid vandals) and will have gotten back into the daily grind at work.  I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm trapped in this weird therapy session between me and life and the doctors has just given us both those foam rubber bats to get our aggressions out, but life always gets the one with the stainless steel pipe in the center whereas mine has a wet paper towel roll tube in the center.  It's at times like this when I revert back to my middle school era mindset and I imagine threatening life with crazy stuff like: "If you try and beat me up again I swear that I'll drop my pants and pee on you!"  Threats like that don't age very well.  I can say that I never got into a fight in middle school so I never had to act on the threat, though I did get some funny looks.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about peeing on bullies' legs, I'm hear to talk about stickers, and talk about stickers I shall do.  I've been waiting awhile to get to the subject of this week's Peel Here, almost a year in fact.  I've been sitting on it for a couple of reasons, one because I didn't acquire this set of stickers until recently as it's both sort of rare and pretty expensive for stickers, and two because I wanted post about it in a timely fashion with the release of an awesome DVD set that streets today, 6/5/2007.  So what is this fantabulusly amazing set of stickers that I'm so stupidly excited about sharing?  Why it's the Donruss CHiPs sticker card set from 1979.

I've had a very strange obsession with CHiPs since I was a wee little kid.  I think it's because, like Star Wars, I was ushered into the world at the same time as the show, so for the first six years of my life there were always two constants, CHiPs and Star Wars, one grounding me in reality on TV and the other lifting my head above the clouds in space.  It was also the show that weaned me on hour long action dramas in the 80s and would lead to a steady diet of Airwolf, the A-Team, Knight Rider, the Dukes of Hazzard and Street Hawk.  There was always something really cool about catching an episode of the show because I was young and was rarely allowed to stay up and watch it.  When it started coming on in reruns it mostly aired during the day when I was at school, so it became an even rarer event, and would eventually be the cornerstone of my staying-home-sick TV watching.  Being sick as a kid meant that I'd get to stay home and watch CHiPs, the Love Boat, Gomer Pyle, Bewitched and Alice.

It also doesn't hurt my nostalgic love for the show that my friends and I went through a tiny obsession with Erik Estrada in high school after learning that he was on a Mexican soap opera, Dos Mujeres, Un Camino, which was like the go-to joke for our little group.  Anyway, when I started digging into this sticker collecting thing CHiPs was one of the first things I looked for and was both happy and sad to find out that this card set existed.  On the one hand it was an awesome set with tons of stickers, but on the other it had an asking price of about $50, which in my book is like $45 too much.  I placed it on my "To Acquire" list (along with the Dungeons and Dragons Lazer Blazers and the 1980 set of Topps Monsticker puffy stickers which is my all time holy grail item) and waited for a reasonably priced set to pop up on eBay.  It did and here we are, basking in the light of Erik Estrada in horseback and Larry Wilcox's million-dollar smile.

There are 66 sticker cards in this set, 60 with scenes from the show and 6 badge and portrait stickers.  This is the first set of Donruss sticker cards I've run into for the 80s, though I think they also did a series of Dukes of Hazzard sticker cards and I'm sure there were plenty of sticker subsets in their more normal baseball card sets.  Though most of these cards are dedicated to a million similar portraits of Ponch and Jon there are a few with the secondary show characters, like card #7 above.  There are also a bunch of "lazy" scenes which almost come off as creative like the 2 sticker action scene of our fearless duo prying open a what looks like a camper door.  Riveting stuff…

There are a couple of nice shots of Jon above and his penchant for "blonde" nightsticks and gloves.  I always though that was weird, but I guess it's one of those tricks production designers can pull so that the audience can tell the two apart in scenes when they're driving with their helmets on.  I'm sure I cared to know who was riding left and who was on the right, I mean I'm sure the plots depended on such details.

You know, Ponch isn't the only Chipie who enjoys a little bit of horseback riding in his off time.  I'm glad they have fun hobbies that get them out of the house as opposed to my inane commentary on these stickers, which is a pretty weird hobby.  I wonder how hard it would be to write Peel Here entries while riding on horseback so that I could bring all this crap full circle.  I bet there were a lot of girls in the 80s that gave a little bit more than a passing thought to sticker collecting while on horseback (or pegasusback) while having tea parties with penguins and watching their teddy bears roller skate.  What would that scratch and sniff smell like I wonder…

Now these are some better stickers (it was getting kind of repetitive there.)  There's Jon skateboarding and Ponch doing some lovely disco dancing.  I can't wait to get this DVD set to start re-watching all these episodes.  I wonder what funeral they're attending? Seems like a bleak sort of scene to pick for a sticker, let alone two stickers.

Jon sure is doing a lot of pointing in this set. We also get to see some more extracurricular hobbies here in the jet skiing and fixing up trashed cars stickers.


So who was the genius that chose the shot for sticker #40?  Hmmm, long shot of one of the actor's backs with barrels and a car, now that's an interesting sticker.  It's about as good as Ponch standing sternly by a train.  You'd think that there were better scenes to choose from, but maybe after I start watching the show again I'll realize that they stood around and sternly look at stuff for the majority of the show.  At least we get another skateboarding sticker here, a pratfall at that.

I think my favorite sticker in this set is Ponch and Jon by the water cooler.  That has to be the most "set up" of shots ever, I mean who actually stands around the water cooler and raps about work or gossip?




I really dig these last six die-cut stickers because they feel the most like real "stickers" as opposed to cards that moonlight as stickers.  I think this is definitely something that Topps has perfected and I can see where Donruss just doesn't have a good idea of what (design-wise) makes a good sticker.  I do like that the who set of cards are also stickers though, and eventually Topps would switch over to this in their later 80s fare (very well in the Garbage Pail Kids series', though I realize that the precedent for that goes back to the Topps Monster Initials, Ugly Stickers, and Wacky Packs, but they also did some ugly sets like the Supergirl sticker cards, and another set which I will get to eventually.)

Donruss was also not so "on the ball" as there are a couple examples of errors with this series of cards.  First off, there is a repeated set of cards, Ponch with the motorbike mask around his neck, which are in the set as both stickers 23 and 54.  There are also a bunch of twin cards that are actually minutely different, like stickers 20 and 35 below illustrates.  This is just plain lazy and shows that there was a ton of care that went into this set.  I think this is where Topps excels and is probably why they were on top as far as popularity and merchandizing gigs go.  Like I said the only two Donruss branded sticker sets that I know of in the 80s are the Dukes of Hazzard and this CHiPs set, though there were also Knight Rider and Magnum P.I. cards.  Fleer wasn't far behind Donruss with only Dune, V, and Bo Derek cards.  I'm sure there are some sets I've missed but I know that Topps had way more, and much better quality.


The other weird signature of a Donruss sticker card set is it's card back puzzle, which is actually a feature in many sticker card sets, but what sets Donruss apart is the size of their puzzle.  As we've seen in most of the Topps sets I've shared, the puzzles were typically made up of 10 card backs.  Donruss, apparently said screw that and decided to make their puzzle a true poster consisting of all 66 card backs, a gigantomungus and even somewhat complicated puzzle that is one hell of a bitch to scan.

The puzzle is actually two separate posters, one of Ponch and one of Jon that are joined in the middle by card backs that overlap the two pictures.  Even though the cards don't match perfectly, it's would have been pretty cool to get this, essentially free, with the set of cards.  It's something that you could actually put on the wall and call a poster.  Though I'm tempted to do just that, I can't justify the money spent, so no falling asleep to Erik Estrada unless I find a cheper poster of him.

Next week on Peel Here, the freaking Silverhawks.

Today was a very strange day. It started with my (now) wife and I trying our damnedest to get married while battling the crazy squid-like bureaucracy of Georgia and its many twisted tentacles of changing rules and absent judges. We had our research on the whole getting married thing done months ago as we're both anal and hate running into problems, and for once being prepared worked against us. The rules for what you'd need to get a marriage license changed exactly a month ago and there was no grace period. We needed two forms of IDs now instead of the one we were told we'd need, and the second forms were things we didn't have access to (passports or birth certificates) and today was the freaking day. We had it planned, it's our 7 year anniversary of being together (I'm slightly obsessed with 7 incase the image above wasn't enough of a hint) and it was the perfect day. Supposedly. Long story short, what should have taken us 30 minutes turned into a four hour marathon of driving from county to county acquiring a license, finding a judge, and getting everything together. We did it finally and we are now in blissful marriage mode.

Well being the dork that I am and knowing that some toys I've been craving for years (well officially for months, but before that these were my dream toys) were about to hit store shelves, we made a quick post wedding run to Wal-Mart to see if the new adorable Transformers Robot Heroes chibi figures were in. Oh they were in...


There were six sets on the pegs, the five above and a Mirage/Starscream pack, and I bundled them all up in my arms very lovingly as we made our way to the check out counter. I was so happy until Carrie scanned the first one at the self-serve check out lane and an error message came up on the screen. "Item restricted for purchase." What the blue blazers fuck does that mean? I was thinking that since they were so new that maybe they hadn't been entered into the system. We called the cashier over and she tried it and then took them all from us with no explanation. WTF?!? I followed her after a second and asked what was up and she just said these are restricted. I asked to see a manager and she led us over to a customer service guy who look frazzled and overworked and who didn't appear to give two licks off a rats ass what our problem was. She kept repeating restricted and he just said that it was probably a recall and that he was sorry but he couldn't sell them to us.

I started to form an argument about how I'm an adult and that there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to buy them when I just gave up because at the end of the day he works at Wal-Mart and he honestly doesn't care if I live or die or pitch a fit because I can't have my stupid little plastic toys. I don't think I've ever had something like this happen to me, I mean it's pretty stupid and I know that eventually I'll be able to buy these dumb toys until my bank account is completely depleted, but it still irked the living hell out of me. Apparently either Mr. Hasbro or Mr. Sam Wal-Mart doesn't want me to own these yet.

As a stupid P.S. to this I looked up Hasbro recalls online and there are none listed for these toys.

Though I believe that the idea of using cartoons as 25-minute food and toy ads began in the 60s and 70s, the practice was perfected in the 80s. As a perfect example of this I present this 15-page preview of the M.A.S.K. comic book, which was added to a bunch of regular DC Comics titles as an insert, stapled into the middle of the book, in September of 1985. DC had the license on a few cartoon/toy lines in the 80s that they did similar inserts with comics including He-Man and one of the weirder 80s Matchbox car lines. This preview, I believe, is the first half of the first issue of a four part mini series that was testing the waters on the regular series that would appear the next year (and which was subsequently canceled after the 9th issue.) I think DC was trying to repeat the success of Marvel, which had many long running comics that were spun-off of cartoons and toy lines including the Transformers, G.I. Joe, and ALF, not to mention a ton of other series that weren't as successful like Count Duckula, the Ewoks, and the Thundercats.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 1


It's funny, even though I watched the cartoon religiously as a kid and collected the toys, and even though somewhere deep down I realized that M.A.S.K. was an acronym for some longer name, I never knew what it stood for, or that the villain's code name (V.E.N.O.M.) was an acronym at all. I also think it's funny, now that I'm on the subject, that I never realized just how much of a rip-off this toy line was. I mean, Venom? Might as well call it Cobra. The Alt modes of all the vehicles are just a derivative of the Transformers. I will say that the size of the figures and the whole helmet gimmick was outstanding though.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 2


Man, Matt Trakker was a wealthy adventurer and sportsman, go figure. Isn't that the mold for like all DC comics heroes?

M.A.S.K. Preview page 3


Another thing I love about cartoons as toy ads (and in extension comics like this that are just there to hit the market that doesn't watch the show or to reinforce the market that already does) is that everything that is purchaseable gets a name. No, it's not enough to sell Matt Trakker in a box with his vehicle; it has to be Matt Trakker, with his car Thunderhawk, and his mask Spectrum. It's both deceptive and brilliant at the same time.

As far as the plotting of the comic goes, I love how in two short pages the writer has made Matt out to be the penultimate leader. He's wealthy, an adventurer, a sportsman, the fastest man in a racecar, he works with the secret Peaceful Nations Alliance, and is so humble as give all the credit on his racing win to the pit crew while speeding off without accepting the trophy for his win. And damn those evil creeps from Contra World ruining his moment in the sun, I tell you what.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 4


I love all of the techno babble explanation in this comic, not to mention all the secrets, secret headquarters, secret frequencies, etc. Very melodramatic.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 5


The one thing I want to know is why Dusty Hayes chose to work in a pizza joint instead of a BBQ shack?

M.A.S.K. Preview page 6


Man, every guy in the M.A.S.K. crew has the same hairy arm, and they're all holding something in their hands as they get the call. I'm all for repeating panels gimmick, but only when it's effect is to the betterment of the story, not out of laziness. BTW, Sato's line there at the end is probably one of the worst pre-battle bits of monologue ever. I will say that I'm a big Brad Turner fan. Condor is my favorite vehicle in the M.A.S.K. line-up as toy motorcycles and helicopters we my favorites as a kid.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 7


M.A.S.K. Preview page 8


I will say that for all the hokey dialogue and exposition, that is one heck of an "energizing the masks" panel. That's the best use of sound effect/exposition text ever. ENERGIZE!

M.A.S.K. Preview page 9


Man, m-e-l-o-d-r-a-m-a-t-i-c! "...mind-stunning...", really? Also, dig the screw up in the second to last panel that's got Sato speaking exposition text.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 10


Oh man, Matt even adopted a kid? Is Matt 80s cartoon for Jesus?  Also, check out that Shatner-screaming-at-Kahn pose Matt's sporting, nice.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 11


Can a robot whisper? Oh wait, I guess Princess Leia got 3-PO to whisper in Empire. Either way, there's another weird 80s stereotype, scared robots. What gives with that?

M.A.S.K. Preview page 12


So like, I totally buy masks that give telekinetic powers, pyrokinetic or hydrokinetic powers, but who in the hell thought up a mask that creates daggers that fly out? I mean I've heard of staring daggers at some one, but in the words of Balki Bartokomus, "that's ridicolos."

M.A.S.K. Preview page 13


I always seem to concentrate on the negative with comics it seems. Oh well. Um, "...it's an ambush of some sort..." What in the hell does that mean? Of course it's an ambush, and there's only one sort, and sort where someone ambushes you. Why are evil leaders always halfwits? Sometimes I wish there were more Dr. Claws and Mum-Ras out there and less Cobra Commanders.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 14


It's also kind of funny that the artists chose to render the vehicles with the affiliation if it wasn't obvious since there are no iconic symbols in the M.A.S.K. universe to help tell good and bad guys apart.

M.A.S.K. Preview page 15


Last complaint, I swear. Um, how could Bruce tell Matt had a "long face" under the Spectrum mask? Seriously though, I think that the writers should have taken more of a chance with this preview and had it end in a cliffhanger, so if you wanted the rest of the story you'd have to buy the first issue of the comic. Maybe this wasn't part of the 1st mini series issue after all.

Well, to end this little preview and to go right for the gusto, DC also included an ad for both the Toys and the TV show right at the end. I guess they were into being blatant about it.


Man, I wish this show would get released on DVD. I know I whine about this all the time, but I'm sick of paying good money for bootlegs and I haven't seen this show in almost 25 years. I can still sing the theme song though...