Let's get silly with Superman #3. No, not the movie, Superman III.
Man, those kids from Peanuts went through some dark times, didn't they?
This ish had an interesting story about the merchandising of Superham:
The first such commercial endeavor was a radio show:
Now, the funny thing is that this issue was from late 1939. The radio show would come about in February of 1940. I can't help but think they knew at the time there would be an Adventures of Superman radio show, but this story sure didn't put it in a favorable light. Instead, the lumped it in with silly things like:
Superman Gasoline... the recommended fuel for:
And then there was this merchandising prophecy:
That, of course, didn't begin to cover all the merchandising that would take place with the character. But did they know by then that these things would be out there? I'm not an expert on comic book memorabilia... are there any collectors that can tell us when the Superman merchandising boom took place?
We didn't have Jimmy Olsen working at the newspaper yet, by the way:
Is that Dennis the Menace? Because I'm pretty sure that's Dennis the Menace. Maybe he could let the Peanuts gang crash at his place, seeing as how their orphanage burnt down and all.
Ah, the tomfoolery! I love it!
See you tomorrow!
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4 comments:
Nothing says streamlined like a pink and yellow car. When I wrote you awhile ago, this was the Archives I got on Amazon for $4.25. It had a little tear on an inside page. So I had #1-4, with the front and back covers, plus the ads. I'll check later to see if there were any merchandising in the ads.
Nice! I'd like to figure out if they were sneaking in some criticism about the merchandising of the character that actually existed, or if they were objecting in theory and then changed their tune when the $$$ rolled in. That may give us a clue!
I don't know where I read this-- maybe the Gerard Jones book on Superman-- but someone mentioned that Betty Boop in her day was phenomenally popular as a merchandising property.
I could see that, Gene. You *still* see Betty Boop stuff every now and then.
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