This ad ran in approximately five million comics in the seventies, and only over time have I come to notice some its...stranger elements.First up, a few years ago, I finally noticed the unbelievably odd line in panel 3 "Don't worry, this is New York. No one will help her." Holy crap, what an odd line to put in an ad for a kid's toy!
Secondly, this has to be the only time I can think of where another comic book company's character appeared in a DC or Marvel book--loooong before Superman met Spidey--and of all characters, it was the decidedly adult b/w magazine star Vampirella!
(This had to be one of those weird moments in publishing where Jim Warren couldn't run an ad for Vampirella in a DC comic, but a company licensing the character from Warren could. Weird, like the moment when Charlton almost ended up with the rights to publish the Super Friends comic)
Third, this is just a really grim ad. Frankenstein killed people, sure, but this is one of the rare times I can think of where he's portrayed as being flat-out evil, kidnapping an innocent woman off the street! Why do I think that the guys who make the Saw movies had this model kit?
6 comments:
LOL! I remember that ad. Looking back on it now, it was kind of creepy since it was geared for kids. Have we become too politically correct?
As much as I wanted the Monster Scenes when they came out, I just knew that my mom would freak and use it as an excuse to cut me off from all monster toys--the way she used my sticking my sister's face into a bowl of soup to prohibit the Three Stooges.
Last year I was doing work for a client who had to load software onto my laptop. When I handed it over to the tech guy, I forgot that I had saved the "This in New York" panel as my desktop. Boy, did he give me a look when he handed it back.
I must have had the coolest (or most naive) parents! I had ALL of this stuff! Wish I had it now.
There was a huge outcry over this ad at the time, and a parents group formed to get the Aurora kits off store shelves. Frankly, even as a nine year old, I agreed with the people saying it was inappropriate and tasteless. This was only seven years after the murder of Kitty Genovese, which makes it about as ill-timed as we might now consider a toy ad aimed at kids that joked about terrorists flying hijacked jets into skyscrapers.
it does seem astounding that, considering all the people that have to check an ad before it goes out, all those steps, that no one at any point said "do we really need this line?"
I remember the ad.
I also bought the Frankenstein kit and I think at least one of the lab components. And my friend's sister had the Vampi figure, which he gave to me (hopefully sis didn't mind, I really don't remember -- I was like eleven at the time).
I never thought twice about what was being protrayed in the ad. It seemed to me like an attempt to modernize the classic horror movies which often featured monsters lumbering off with women.
Looking at the last panel of the ad, you can actually imagine the kid is actually dismembering the victim instead of building her.
Post a Comment