RetroFan #2 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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Fall 2018 No. 2 $8.95

Open the vault of TV horror-hosts, with

Welcome to Horrible Hall… The Groovie Goolies

& fiendish friends this crazy Dinosaur Land Take a Look at Superhero ViewMasters

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Tune in to the Sixties’ most bewitching, munsterific sitcoms! Featuring Andy Mangels • Scott Saavedra • Mark Voger • and the Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

It’s GROOVY, baby! Follow-up to Mark Voger’s smash hit MONSTER MASH! All characters TM & © their respective owners.

From WOODSTOCK to THE BANANA SPLITS, from SGT. PEPPER to H.R. PUFNSTUF, from ALTAMONT to THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY, GROOVY is a far-out trip to the era of lava lamps and love beads. This profusely illustrated HARDCOVER BOOK, in PSYCHEDELIC COLOR, features interviews with icons of grooviness such as PETER MAX, BRIAN WILSON, PETER FONDA, MELANIE, DAVID CASSIDY, members of the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, CREAM, THE DOORS, THE COWSILLS and VANILLA FUDGE; and cast members of groovy TV shows like THE MONKEES, LAUGH-IN and THE BRADY BUNCH. GROOVY revisits the era’s ROCK FESTIVALS, MOVIES, ART—even COMICS and CARTOONS, from the 1968 ‘mod’ WONDER WOMAN to R. CRUMB. A color-saturated pop-culture history written and designed by MARK VOGER (author of the acclaimed book MONSTER MASH), GROOVY is one trip that doesn’t require dangerous chemicals! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • Digital Edition: $13.95 • ISBN: 9781605490809 Diamond Comic Distributors Order Code: JUL172227

LOU SCHEIMER

CREATING THE FILMATION GENERATION Hailed as one of the fathers of Saturday morning television, LOU SCHEIMER was the co-founder of FILMATION STUDIOS, which for over 25 years provided animated excitement for TV and film. Always at the forefront, Scheimer’s company created the first DC cartoons with SUPERMAN, BATMAN, and AQUAMAN, ruled the song charts with THE ARCHIES, kept Trekkie hope alive with the Emmy-winning STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES, taught morals with FAT ALBERT AND THE COSBY KIDS, and swung into high adventure with TARZAN, THE LONE RANGER, ZORRO, HE-MAN, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, live-action shows SHAZAM!, THE SECRETS OF ISIS, JASON OF STAR COMMAND and others. Now, LOU SCHEIMER tells the entire story to best-selling author (and RETROFAN columnist) ANDY MANGELS, including how his father decked ADOLF HITLER, memories of the comics of the Golden Age, schooling with ANDY WARHOL, and what it meant to lead the last all-American animation company through nearly thirty years of innovation and fun! Profusely illustrated with PHOTOS, MODEL SHEETS, STORYBOARDS, PRESENTATION ART, looks at RARE AND UNPRODUCED SERIES, and more—plus stories from TOP ANIMATION INSIDERS about Scheimer and the story behind Filmation’s stories!

By RetroFan’s ANDY MANGELS!

(288-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.95 • ISBN: 9781605490441 Diamond Comic Distributors Order Code: JUL121245

AGE OF TV HEROES Examines the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes! FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER features the in-depth stories of the actors and behind-the-scene players that made the classic super-hero television programs we all grew up with. Included are new and exclusive interviews and commentary from ADAM WEST (Batman), LYNDA CARTER (Wonder Woman), PATRICK WARBURTON (The Tick), NICHOLAS HAMMOND (Spider-Man), WILLIAM KATT (The Greatest American Hero), JACK LARSON (The Adventures of Superman), JOHN WESLEY SHIPP (The Flash), JACKSON BOSTWICK (Shazam!), and many more! Written by JASON HOFIUS and GEORGE KHOURY, with a new cover by superstar painter ALEX ROSS! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $9.95 • ISBN: 9781605490106 Diamond Comic Distributors Order Code: DEC091015

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The crazy cool culture we grew up with Columns and Special Features

Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum Bewitching, Munsterific Sitcoms of the Sixties

CONTENTS Issue #2 | Fall 2018

Retro Interview Ira J. Cooper – Ben Cooper Halloween Costumes

Retro Television Haunting the Airwaves – TV Horror Hosts

Retro Interview Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

Retrotorial

Too Much TV Quiz

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor…

Retro Toys Sindy, the British Barbie

RetroFad Mood Rings

Retro Collectibles Superhero View-Masters®

Retro Travel Geppi's Entertainment Museum

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Mornings Groovie Goolies

Departments

The Oddball World of Scott Shaw! Dinosaur Land

Mood: Awesome! 56

Super Collector Collecting Lunch Boxes, by Terry Collins

ReJECTED RetroFan fantasy cover

RetroFan™ #2, Fall 2018. Published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Four-issue subscriptions: $38 Economy US, $63 International, $16 Digital Only. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Elvira © Queen “B” Productions. Marvel heroes © Marvel Characters, Inc. View-Master © Mattel. Groovie Goolies © the respective copyright holder. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2018 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224

by Michael Eury

Recently, when channel-surfing, I stumbled across the Sixties sitcom The Flying Nun on Antenna TV… and its theme song reduced me to tears. That’s not necessarily a testament to an emotionally stirring musical composition (although I will extend props to composer Dominic Frontiere for this catchy little ditty; an accomplished arranger and jazz musician, Frontiere also scored the themes for other TV classics including The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, and The Rat Patrol). Instead, the theme struck a reverberant chord of nostalgia. In my mind’s eye, I was no longer a happily married, middle-aged man, but a pudgy grade-school kid plopped onto the couch with a stack of “funnybooks” in my lap. My dad, in an undershirt and his “skivvies,” was snoring from his comfy chair as he “rested his eyes.” My baby brother was “varooming” while careening Hot Wheels across the floor. And from the next room, my mom was humming along with a Chubby Checker record while hemming a skirt on her jackhammering Singer sewing machine. That flood of sounds and memories, all triggered by a simple sitcom theme. Those tears quickly dried to a wide grin of contentment as I remembered, as I often do, the joys of my childhood and the great gift my brother and I received from our parents—a safe and loving home environment. That, to me, is the power of nostalgia—it’s a comfort zone into which we can retreat to escape the realities of a world that seems determined to pummel us senseless with its violence, hatred, and catastrophes. I’m guessing that a great many of you feel the same

way—that’s why you read RetroFan. Glad you (and your inner child) are here! Unexpected circumstances have led RetroFan #1 columnists Martin Pasko and Ernest Farino to depart our pages, although Ernie’s absence is short-lived… he’ll be back next issue! To Marty we offer our best wishes, friendship, and deepest respect— plus an open invitation to return whenever you can. This has opened the door for some new voices in the mag, starting with our own designer, Scintillatin’ Scott Saavedra, whose lollapalooza-ing layouts delighted you in our first issue—and whose gut-busting (not “butt-gusting,” as I flubbed at a recent comic-con panel) “ReJECTED” fantasy cover from issue #1 still has us laughing! “Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum” joins our line-up this issue, and wait’ll you read his take on those spooky Sixties sitcoms that continue to bewitch us! Also, a big thank-you to Cemetery Plots’ Dan Johnson and Monster Mash’s Mark Voger for stepping in for crypt-keeping duty with their horror-hosts article and Elvira interview! Columnists Andy Mangels and Scott Shaw! are back with more fun facts and freaky faves, and guest writers Elizabeth and Ian Millsted, Robert Conte, Michael Soloff, and Super Collector Terry Collins—plus ye ed, ’natch—are on board with crazy, cool contributions to this groovy grab bag of goodies. So how ’bout I shut up and rev up our retro engines? Blast off, baby! Coming soon: RetroFanmail, our letters column! We’d love your feedback on this issue. Write to ye ed at euryman@gmail.com.

RetroFan.org EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow CONTRIBUTORS Terry Collins Robert V. Conte Michael Eury Dan Johnson Andy Mangels Elizabeth Millsted Ian Millsted Scott Saavedra Scott Shaw! Michael Soloff Mark Voger DESIGNER Scott Saavedra PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Scott Awley Ernest Farino Heritage Comics Auctions Scott D. Marcus Bethan Millsted John Morrow Queen “B” Productions Mark Vanis J. C. Vaughn VERY SPECIAL THANKS Ira J. Cooper Cassandra Peterson If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

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SCOTT SAAVEDRA'S SECRET SANCTUM

Monsters in the House Bewitching, Munsterific Sitcoms of the Sixties by Scott Saavedra

This is how I heard the story. Early in 1965 my father won $100 from a betting pool at work. He was then an elevator operator at the stunningly deco Bullocks Wilshire department store in famous Los Angeles, California. My parents had a fifth child on the way. Certainly, $100 would help pay upcoming hospital bills, right? The cash prize made it home in the form of a brand-new color television set—a $400 color television set that knocked out the back window of my parents’ Ford Comet station wagon because it wasn’t tied down when it was brought home. A new color TV set that we didn’t need but my father bought—because that’s what he told everyone at work he would do in the heat of his winning moment. That was fine by me and the rest of my siblings, current and to come. My mom? She got over it. It was a big, beautiful, steel box, colored and imprinted to look like wood. It stood on RetroFan

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Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum

(ABOVE RIGHT) Elizabeth Montgomery examines the second issue of the Bewitched comic book (Dell, 1965), shown above. Art by Henry Scarpelli. Photo courtesy of Ernest Farino. (RIGHT) Monsters were “IN” during the Sixties and ads for Aurora monster model kits appeared in comic books for much of the decade. From the collection of the author, who has never built a single one.

four tapered legs and from the back one could see a village of amber-lit tubes on the inside. That is, if you ever took your eyes of f of the screen in front long enough to bother looking. Of course, it was on that magnificent color-emanating beast that I watched shows in black-and-white. It was unusual for my family to be on the leading edge of such a technological shif t. At that point, the three major television networks—CBS, NBC, and ABC—had yet to broadcast a majority line-up of color programs. And even with an all-color schedule beginning with the Fall 1966 season, it would take years for black-and-white shows to fade from traditional over-air broadcasting. Af ter all, reruns of older shows helped to fill the long hours before the all-important evening primetime schedule. It was in those hours that we kids—first the five of us , then six, then seven—sat there in my parents’ modest post-war rental on a busy street across from the mighty Ventura Freeway in Southern California. And with the noses of those old enough to sit up on their own hovering inches from the convex, glowing screen, we watched that TV to death. I am not kidding. Don’t get me wrong, we did lots of other stuf f too. We played simple make-believe games like “Avoid the Lava!” and “Drive-In Movie Theater!” and “AHHH! Earthquake!” like all the other perfectly normal kids. Once, I tried to launch my then-youngest brother into the lower atmosphere using a simple plastic barrel and fire. To this day, I am truly and deeply sorry that I failed. But watching television? We all really liked that; it was our unifying passion. And three shows (among many) that we enjoyed watching 4

over and over again debuted in 1964 before roughly half of us had even been born: Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters.

The Monsters are Due on Burbank Boulevard

The early hope for television was that it would bring culture and knowledge into the home. The reality, at least as the newly named Federal Communications Commission chairman, Newton Minow, framed it in a 1961 speech to broadcasters, was less impressive. He felt that TV programming was a “vast wasteland” soiled by a procession of “formula comedies about totally unbelievable families,” among other sins. He also complained about cartoons. I think he might have been crazy. Interest in matters spooky and supernatural had blossomed since the late Fifties with the syndication to television of dozens of old black-and-white horror films, including classics like Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein. For me, I’ve loved monsters so long I have no idea when they first captured my attention. I know I wanted the Aurora Frankenstein model kit from a young age. It was first introduced in 1961 and advertised in comic books seemingly as much as those ubiquitous Charles Atlas ads. Sadly, at 98¢ I couldn’t afford it (who had that kind of money?), but it never failed to fire my imagination. So… the supernatural was in the cultural soil, and plenty of folks wanted relief from the brewing social storm that would define the Sixties. By 1964, I think America was a bit overdue for some spooky television fun. With the arrival of Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters, ABC and NBC took a welcome detour from the usual assortment of variety, crime, Western, and “rural RetroFan

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Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum (CENTER) Endpapers to The Munsters and the Great Camera Caper (Western, 1965) provide a gorgeous view of the Munster family home at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Illustration by Arnie Kohn. From the collection of the author. (LEFT) Ad for a coveted Munsters lunchbbox. Courtesy of Ernest Farino. (BELOW) Point-of-purchase display box for Addams Family bubble gum cards. Courtesy of Heritage.

Bewitched © Sony Pictures Television. The Munsters © Kayro-Vue Productions and TM Universal Studios. The Addams Family © Filmways TV Productions.

comedy” shows. Granted, at their core the three shows were essentially situation comedies about three families, but they were three very unusual—some would even say “unbelievable”—families. But it wasn’t the structure of each family that was odd, since each had your era-acceptable breadwinner dad, stay-at-home mom, at least one kid, and an assortment of eccentric relatives. It was that these families featured a (Transylvanian) twist that would contribute to them remaining beloved to this day. Bewitched told the story of a young couple in a “mixed-marriage” (the show’s joke, not mine): Darrin Stephens, a mortal (or muggle to you kids) played at first by Dick York (see sidebar), and Elizabeth Montgomery’s Samantha (Sam for short), a witch (witch!). Darrin had a wild itch against the use of magic largely, it seems, since it disrupted the happy conformity of—oh—America, I guess. Sam, while not ashamed of what she was, tried to accommodate him. Complications arose, as they do, and magic both irritated and mitigated things. It didn’t help that Endora (Agnes Moorehead), a Darrin-resistant mother-in-law, constantly and literally popped in and out of their lives. Further tipping the cauldron was an endless parade of magical relatives and confused mortals. There were also a couple of magical kids, first Tabitha (Erin Murphy), then toward the end of the run, Adam (Greg and David Lawrence). The Addams Family was about an eccentric but very goodnatured familial unit consisting of a witch (maybe) and… and… what? Deeply committed Goths? Carnies? They seemed essentially human except for the sentient wig, Cousin Itt, or the wandering hand, Thing. John Astin’s Gomez Addams was the high-energy RetroFan

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patriarch. He was wealthy, impulsive, and hyperactively in love with his femme (“Tish! That’s French!!”). Morticia (Tish being her nickname), played by Carolyn Jones, was the calm and steadying influence, making observations that might alarm more “normal” folks (“This morning when I woke up and the sky was all dark and cloudy, I knew right then and there that this was going to be a lovely day”). Often described as “Frankensteinian,” Lurch (Ted Cassidy), the groaning “man” of few words, was considered family but functioned as the butler (“You rang?”). Morticia’s Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) enjoyed dynamite (kind of a good thing, in a fantasy- comedy sort of way) and could power a common incandescent light bulb with his head. Grandmama (Blossom Rock), Morticia’s mother, was both a witch (possibly) and a knife-thrower (definitely). There were two dour children, Wednesday and Pugsley (Lisa Loring and Ken Weatherwax). The Munsters were clearly monsters in appearance (except for dear, unfortunate Marilyn, played at first by Beverley Owen) but not in temperament, mostly. Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), made from the re-animated remains of the dead, was as kind and sweet as a child so long as he didn’t get so frustrated that he stomped his feet hard enough to shake the house. His wife, Lily (Yvonne De Carlo) was a—non-practicing?—vampire. Much like Morticia, she was the adult of the family. Unlike Morticia, she was feisty and treated both her husband and father like misbehaving children. Grandpa, Lily’s father, was also a vampire and a mad scientist, a hobby that led to antics and shenanigans performed by Al Lewis. Herman and Lily’s son, Eddie (Butch Patrick), was halfvampire, half-werewolf (wait, what?). 5

Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum

Grave Robbers from Hollywood

The shows all debuted in black-and-white in the Fall 1964 season. Bewitched was out of the gate first on September 17th, The Addams Family appeared on September 18th, and The Munsters landed on September 24th. All were inspired by or based on pre-existing material. Much as Dr. Frankenstein created his monster, these shows were developed from bits of whatever scraps could be dug up, electrified, and brought to life. Screenwriter and former radio child actor Sol Saks’ creation of Bewitched was inspired by the movie I Married a Witch and Bell, Book and Candle, a Broadway play turned movie in 1958. According to The Addams Chronicles by Stephen Cox, a collection of Charles Addams cartoons in a bookstore window sparked David Levy (an ex-NBC executive) to create The Addams Family. The most explicitly monster-filled show, The Munsters, was drawn from Universal’s collection of famous movie monsters by writers Norm Liebman and Ed Haas following a proposal by Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, writers for Rocky and His Friends/The Bullwinkle Show. The idea of a monster family goes back to at least the Forties with a concept for a theatrical cartoon series worked out by legendary animator Bob Clampett. The Burns/ Hayward proposal also was considered as an animated vehicle, but that notion was dropped. It wasn’t just concepts that were borrowed. An episode of Bewitched, “Samantha’s Power Failure,” had a plot straight out of l Love Lucy. Samantha’s Uncle Arthur, played by the great Paul Lynde, and her “identical cousin” (oh, good grief), Serena, lose their powers and have to get a job struggling with bananas, nuts, and chocolate on a conveyor belt. And what’s this? That classic I Love Lucy episode of Lucy and Ethel struggling to dip candy on a conveyor belt was directed by William Asher, who later became not just Elizabeth Montgomery’s husband but a producer and director on Bewitched. Sets and locations managed to get recycled as well. The Munster family’s Victorian home, minus the spooky stuff, could be seen in the background of a number of productions because since the 1950s it was one of many homes on Universal’s backlot. Years later, after being significantly remodeled (boo, hiss), it was used on Desperate Housewives. The interior set of the Stephens’ home was used for various other programs including one inspired by the success of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie. The exterior of the Stephens’ house was also used by the I Dream of Jeannie crew as the home of one of its primary characters, Dr. Bellows. For the first few years, the house exterior of the Stephens’ neighbors, the Kravitzes (which wasn’t even across the street from the Stephens’ home on the studio lot), was once used as the family home for The Donna Reed Show. And it was the opening of The Donna Reed Show, with its characters saying goodbye to Mom as they leave the house, that The Munsters spoofed with its own opening sequence. That can’t possibly be everything, but you get the idea. What a bunch of ghouls.

’Twas Color Killed the Beast (TOP) Charles Addams' Homebodies, the collection that inspired the television show. (BOTTOM) Poster for the 1966 Universal color release, Munster Go Home. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions. 6

At first, viewers seemed to take to the strange but good-natured fun. The three programs all ended the season in the Top 30 of primetime shows; Bewitched, at second place, was the highest rated comedy; The Munsters ranked 18th place; and The Addams Family was a respectable 23rd according to Nielsen Media Research. A contemporary review of Bewitched in The Hollywood Reporter best summed RetroFan

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Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum

THE THING WITH TWO HEADS

(TOP) Inspired by the success of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie was one the more popular fantasy sitcoms of the Sixties. Dell Comics' I Dream of Jeannie comic series, however, lasted a mere two issues. (BOTTOM) 1965 Topps test issue for a proposed Bewitched card set. Courtesy of Heritage.

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The most notable, almost legendary, even, actor replacement in television happened on Bewitched. During the third season, actor Dick York (who played Darrin Stephens, Samantha’s mortal husband) was having difficulties as a result of back problems suffered while making a movie a few years earlier, causing adjustments to filming to accommodate him. There are episodes where he is only seen in a sitting or lying posture or where he doesn’t appear at all, with Larry Tate filling in as the bedeviled mortal. Following a fifth-season seizure on set, Dick York not only never returned to Bewitched, but an addiction to pain killers kept him from acting again for nearly 20 years. Dick Sargent, who was actually offered the role of Darrin originally, joined the show in 1969 with the sixth season. It was a death that forced the recasting of the nosy neighbor, Gladys Kravitz, played originally by Alice Pearce (she had been offered the role of Grandmama on The Addams Family but turned it down). Pearce had been diagnosed with terminal cancer before the start of filming Bewitched, a fact she kept secret. She died during the second season and was replaced by Sandra Gould, whose frantic call for her character’s husband “Abner! Abner!!!” is still shorthand for a nosy neighbor at work. Nobody could ever replace David White as Darrin’s boss, the weakwilled Larry Tate. But there were two Louise Tates, his wife, played first by Irene Vernon and then by Kasey Rogers. Darrin’s father, Frank, was played by Robert F. Simon, then by Roy Roberts, and then by Robert F. Simon again. The recasting of Marilyn Munster, originally played by Beverley Owen, with Pat Priest, is a sturdy part of Munsters lore. Owen left after 13 episodes to return to the East Coast, where she married Sesame Street writer and producer Jon Stone and continued her education. Less well known, the very occasionally reoccurring character of Edward H. Dudley, played by Bewitched’s own Uncle Arthur, Paul Lynde, was inhabited once by Dom DeLuise. The Addams Family managed to survive with only one major character shift. The thing without a face (or body), Thing (full name: Thing T. Thing—the T is for Thing), was played by Ted Cassidy, except when Cassidy, as Lurch, was in a scene with Thing. In such an event, it (not to be confused with Cousin Itt) was played by assistant director Jack Voglin. And in the strangest casting change of all: the original Eddie Munster, Butch Patrick, played Pugsley in The Addams Family Fun House, a 1973 TV movie, making him a kind of Lon Chaney, Jr. of spooky kid actors. (TOP) Screen captures from the Bewitched animated openings from Season One and Six starring Dick York (LEFT) and Dick Sargent (RIGHT).

Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum

up the more generous attitudes toward these imaginative programs: “It’s all a lot of nonsense taken in stride, and when it’s all over, one is left with the feeling, ‘I wonder what they’ll be up to next week?’ ” That good feeling didn’t last as long as some of us might have hoped. The first two seasons of Bewitched and the only two seasons of The Munsters and The Addams Family were filmed in black-and-white, as were most shows at the time. As mentioned earlier, a full season of color network programing didn’t begin until 1966, the year Batman and Star Trek biffed and beamed their way into our homes. After that, if you weren’t in color you were… oh, I don’t know, worthless, I guess—pretty much an attitude that continues to this day. But just because all network shows were eventually broadcast in color, that didn’t mean everyone had a color television set (unlike my family). At the beginning of each new color show, NBC’s announcer Ben Grauer, for example, proudly intoned that the upcoming show would be presented “in Living Color.” Such announcements were for the benefit—or humiliation—of viewers who hadn’t yet purchased a new set. Bewitched lasted eight seasons and switched to color with the third (1964 and 1965 episodes were colorized decades later for DVD release). But The Munsters and The Addams Family were cancelled after just two seasons. The popularity and newness of color broadcasting likely had some impact. The cultural phenomenon of the twice-a-week Batman almost certainly had an effect on The Munsters’ ratings. Perhaps there was just only so much off-the-wall craziness the American television-viewing public could take at the time. (By the way, the Dynamic Duo managed to cross paths with Lurch one time as they were climbing up a wall and the Addams’ butler poked his head out a window. I have no idea what Lurch was doing in that building and I’ve searched the whole Google to try and find out.) Things like “cancellations” and “actors out of work” didn’t mean much to little kids like me. We were watching a ton of TV, playing with army men, not building Aurora Frankenstein models, and just indulging a perfectly normal interest in America’s space program. For us, the shows didn’t die, they simply appeared over and over again. Sure, there were times in the olden days when they weren’t available to watch or were temporarily forgotten. But once seen, they couldn’t be un-seen (in the best possible way) and the beloved characters, once beloved, remained so. The success of the shows in syndication and their enduring popularity bear this out.

The Son of the Return of the House of… of… Wait, Where Was I?

(TOP) A Munsters promotional photo signed by Al Lewis (Grandpa) and Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster). (BOTTOM) An Aurora model kit of the Munsters' (un)living room featured everyone but Marilyn (poor Marilyn). Courtesy of Heritage. © Kayro-Vue Productions and TM Universal Studios.

There were other fantastic television situation comedies of the Sixties. I Dream of Jeannie (1965), My Mother the Car (1965), and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968) come immediately to mind. They were about a man and his beautiful genie who uses magic, a man and his dead mother who haunts an old car, and a woman and a manly sea captain ghost who is in a bad mood, respectively. I Dream of Jeannie had a sturdy five-season run. The others faded away. Bewitched had a long life in reruns. Magical daughter Tabitha inspired two spin-offs: one was animated, Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family in 1972 (good Lord), and the other was the live-action Tabitha (1977). Cartoon versions of Dick York and Elizabeth Montgomery appeared in a 1965 episode of The Flintstones. A Bewitched motion picture with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell was made in 2005. I think I’ve seen it. Other countries, including Japan and Russia, have attempted remakes of the show. The popularity of The Addams Family (and, let’s be fair, the wonderfully dark genius of Charles Addams’ cartoons) did lead to two fairly wellreceived movies, The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). On television, Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977) featured most of the old cast, and followed Jackie Coogan and Ted Cassidy’s participation RetroFan

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Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum

in the 1973 Addams Family Saturday morning cartoon. An animated The Addams Family appeared in 1992 with John Astin voicing Gomez, and another animated version is coming for Halloween 2019. Addams Family Reunion and The New Addams Family materialized at the end of the 20th Century. A theatrical movie, Munster Go Home!, followed completion of second-season filming of The Munsters in 1966. It had nearly all of the main cast (Marilyn was played by Debbie Watson) and was shot in color. The Munsters’ Revenge was a 1981 TV movie with the original cast except for Marilyn and Eddie. Here Come the Munsters (1995) was a TV movie with a new cast. An updated series, The Munsters Today, ran from 1988–1991. Mockingbird Lane was a 2012 effort to create a dramatic version of the beloved and perfect comedy original. And these programs continue to be shown and available to multiple generations of viewers. Like any decent monster, they refuse to die.

A Brief Reflection on the Sociological Elements of Supernatural-Based Humor Programming for Network Television Broadcasts During the Sixties

This is a big topic, but the clock on the wall says I’m running out of time so I’ll keep it short. Elizabeth Montgomery’s character, Samantha, somewhat demure at first, found her footing during the show’s long run. Even though she was more powerful than her husband and, at 150 years old, much older than him as well, she was his equal in importance to the household and their marriage. That kind of (admittedly

1964 Addams Family trading cards from Donruss. The Addams Family © Filmways TV Productions. Courtesy of Heritage.

DOORKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS At a young age I didn’t fully appreciate that actors on my favorite shows were also real people. But, of course, they were and they all had lives before and after the roles for which they were often most famous. After eight seasons of Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery did notable work on much more serious television dramas and was politically active and volunteered as an advocate for those suffering with AIDS. Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) was typecast following the end of The Munsters. It didn’t help that the show was popular in reruns, and that kept fixed in the public mind his role as the big guy with the flat head. Gwynne did get his acting career up and running again with notable roles in films like My Cousin Vinny. He was also an artist, having written and/or illustrated a number of children’s books. Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) began performing as a child in film in 1917. He was in Charlie Chaplin’s silent classic, The Kid. After having his earnings squandered by his mother and stepfather, a law was eventually passed to protect child actors that was

unofficially known as the Coogan Act. Maurice Evans played Samantha’s father, the cleverly named Maurice (did witches just not have last names? I guess Dr. Bombay did). He also played Dr. Zaius in the original Planet of the Apes and its first sequel. It must be said that while he was a serious Shakespearian actor, Holy Flippin’ Golf Balls, he was Dr. Zaius (Dr. Zaius!). William Asher wasn’t an actor on Bewitched but a director and producer. He is credited with being the creator of the American situation comedy, a term usually compressed to sitcom. He helped plan John F. Kennedy’s inaugural ceremony, with Frank Sinatra. Aunt Clara, the confused, ineffective witch who was very beloved by Samantha Stephens (and viewers), was played in all her stammering, befuddled glory by Marion Lorne. Thorne’s portrayal of Aunt Clara included an endearingly odd hobby: she collected doorknobs. Turns out, Thorne collected doorknobs in real life, too, often using her own as props for the show.

One of Fred Gwynne's books for children, A Chocolate Moose for Dinner (Windmill Books, 1976). From the collection of the author.

RetroFan

Fall 2018

Scott Saavedra's Secret Sanctum

lopsided) equality between the sexes was a very unusual situation in the situation comedies of the Sixties—bewitching, munsterific, or otherwise. Also, the kind of tolerance exhibited by Samantha, Gomez, Morticia, Herman, and Lily for those different from themselves were admirable traits then, now, and always.

A Death in the Family

(TOP) A 1964 Milton Bradley card game named "Stymie" that shows a magical mother-in-law intruding on a young couple's honeymoon. The mind reels. Courtesy of Ernest Farino. (LEFT) Package and card from Leaf's 1964 trading card set. Courtesy of Heritage.

SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT BURIED Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters all had appealing theme music. Only The Addams Family theme was actually broadcast with singing. For shows with so much talent on display in the writing, the set design, and the acting, it was all a pretty dismal showing. The Addams Family theme featured Ted Cassidy song-talking “neat,” “sweet,” and “petite.” Why? It makes zero sense. The cool finger snapping almost makes up for the completely random rhyming words. Almost. The Munsters’ lyrics were never heard on air, which is good since they include lines like, “Whatever ever happened to Eddie? “Did I freak or go insane?” Apparently, Butch Patrick recorded the song years later. Bewitched—and this really surprised me—had lyrics too. Among lyrics thankfully not heard on air: “You witch, you witch, one thing that’s for sure, “That stuff you pitch—just hasn’t got a cure.” The Munsters #12 (Gold Key, 1967). 10

Our color television set was finicky. Sometimes the picture would blip out, requiring someone to bang the side of the box until the image and sound returned. And sometimes, incredibly, the banging wouldn’t work and “Uncle Sal” (my father’s handy-man cousin) would be invited to dinner and, “Hey, Sal, could you look at the TV, it’s acting up.” Eventually, all things come to an end (like this article—soon—I promise) and our beautiful color television died, exhausted, in the early Seventies. My parents replaced it with a JVC Videosphere Portable television with pull-out rabbit-ears, a rechargeable battery, and a groovy chain with which to carry it. It had a shiny white plastic body with a dark plastic window over the small, small, tiny, little screen. It looked like a space helmet (its best feature), was roughly the size of a small one, and it didn’t broadcast in color. What... Monsters...! Samantha’s nose twitch, Darrin’s endless frustration, Herman’s earth-shaking laugh, Grandpa’s sure-to-fail schemes, Lurch’s groans, Gomez’s enthusiasm, and Morticia’s Mona Lisa smile still bring the welcome warmth of comfortable, bemused memories. It was a good time for those of us concerned only with childish things. A time to watch television to our heart’s content and see our ooky, spooky, TV friends, some of the most colorful characters ever… in living black-and-white. SCOTT SAAVEDRA is a graphic designer, artist, and writer. He is perhaps best known as the creator of the long-ago comic-book series, It's Science with Dr. Radium (SLG), and he wrote for the short-lived Disney Comics. His first monster-related job was drawing storyboards for The Hideous Sun-Demon Special Edition. His fanzine, Comic Book Heaven, about crazy, vintage comics, had a devoted but, sadly, tiny following. The Karloff version of The Monster is his favorite. Check out his Instagram thing, won't you? (instagram.com/scottsaav/) RetroFan

Fall 2018

Masquerading on Halloween has long been an American tradition and is one of childhood’s most beloved rituals. For the kids of yesteryear that scoured store shelves and racks for that perfect trick-or-treating costume, one manufacturer’s name stood supreme: Ben Cooper. From the late Thirties through the late Eighties, New York-based Ben Cooper, Inc. was one of the top producers of inexpensive retail masks and costumes featuring everything from generic goblins, popular licensed characters, and media figures (including U.S. presidents). Ben Cooper and his brother Nat Cooper recognized the commercial value of pop-culture icons and built an empire upon affordable dress-up ensembles, trading on their skills as theatrical costumers. Boys and girls who are now adult RetroFans fondly recall their Halloween candy quests disguised as their favorite characters, decked out in Ben Cooper costumes of everyone from Donald Duck to Cinderella, Fred Flintstone to Princess Leia, Pac-Man to Wonder Woman, Mr. T to Miss Piggy— even offbeat trick-or-treating personalities such as Chuck Norris and Captain Merrill Stubing from The Love Boat! Ben Cooper products are best remembered for their vacuformed plastic masks, with eyeholes and usually with nostril holes and mouth slits, held onto a kid’s face with a rubber band; and their vinyl costumes, brightly colored smocks that secured in the back with strings not unlike the ties on the backs of hospital gowns. The masks were sometimes dead-on depictions of their host characters—Ben Cooper’s Dick Tracy mask, for example, almost looks as if cartoonist Chester Gould had drawn it; while others were less-accurate representations of their characters—such as Aquaman, whose generic white face with blond hair was covered with an orange domino mask with scales. Ben Cooper costume fronts sometimes recreated the outfit of the characters they represented, but more often than not displayed an illustration of the character (or of a TV show’s cast), complete with the character’s or show’s logo for the benefit of those clueless, candy-shoveling parents who might otherwise ask of the well-costumed trick-or-treater, Now who do we have here? Ben Cooper, Inc.’s costumes were usually marketed in a colorful box with a cellophane “window” which allowed the mask inside to be seen, although costumes could sometimes be found sold on cardboard hangers or in window-less boxes. Many of the company’s masks were also sold separately. Ben Cooper masks and costumes not only helped define Halloween as we know it (and perhaps pointed some future cosplayers toward their passion), but the company itself also helped rescue the holiday in the early Eighties in response to parental fears over potential candy-tampering (copycatting the horrific Tylenol®-poisoning murders of 1982) by forming the Halloween Celebration Committee as part of a public-awareness

RetroFan

Fall 2018

Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

Mickey Mouse was long a bestseller for Ben Cooper, Inc. © Walt Disney Productions. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

campaign to spotlight ways to safely enjoy trick-or-treating. Ira J. Cooper, son of Ben Cooper, Inc. co-founder Nat Cooper, was long affiliated with the costuming giant and is currently authoring a book, Seven Decades of Ben Cooper: A Visual History (publisher and release date to be announced), which will reveal in detail the company’s rich legacy. In this exclusive RetroFan interview, conducted in late March 2018 by email and telephone, Ira shares some of his recollections of the family enterprise. This is no trick—you’re in for a treat! RetroFan: How did brothers Ben and Nat Cooper segue from being costumers for the New York stage to the Halloween costume business? Ira Cooper: Nat said that they figured out that they could not keep making one cos12

tume at a time and complained, “Taking the train to Chicago every time an actress busted a seam…”. They both saw a potential in the nascent cartoon characters of Disney and others and figured kids would dress up for play. Halloween was still a holiday of homespun costumes, but in the cities like New York and its crowded environs where people worked long hours in tiring jobs, ready-made costumes could be sold at the five-and-dime stores at a reasonable price. More expensive dress-up was sold to the department stores. Ben and Nat were masters at observing the “market.” RF: Why did the family business take Ben’s name instead of being, say, Cooper Costumes? IC: Ben had a son (Bobby Cooper) before the war [WWII] and so he had a deferment.

Nat had been a salesman while they both worked in and around the customcostume business, but volunteered for OCS [Officer Candidate School] thinking that he would otherwise, as a single man, be drafted into the infantry. He figured his chances were better as an officer—and he had a college degree from St. Johns in New York City. Ben started the official corporation in his absence and Nat joined it shortly after his return from Europe at the end of the war. RF: What roles did wives Frieda (Mrs. Ben) and Dorothy (Mrs. Nat) Cooper play in the company? IC: None. I will have anecdotes about family members in my book… but they were never in the business itself.

RetroFan

Fall 2018

Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

The wonderful world of Disney provided a bottomless character catalog for Ben Cooper, Inc. (ABOVE) Cinderella costumes are spotlighted in this 1950 ad from the Toys and Novelties trade journal. (BACKGROUND) The Mousketeers are promoted in this 1956 ad from Playthings. (Marketer Herman Iskin was at one time Ben Cooper’s business partner.) Courtesy of Ira J. Cooper. (LEFT) A boxed Cinderella costume. © Walt Disney Productions.

FACE FRONT While Ben Cooper’s Halloween costumes were staples for Baby Boomers, many of the company’s plastic masks were sold separately, allowing the trick-or-treater the option to build his or her own ensemble. Imagine the kid who bought this Sixties’ translucent Mummy mask begging his Mom for enough gauze to complete the outfit! Photo by Tim1965/Wikimedia Commons.

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Fall 2018

Variations were no strangers to the Ben Cooper line, as the company regularly improved its product. Here are three versions of its Dick Tracy mask, the first with a fixed mouth (the standard), and the others with a hinged, moveable mouth. Dick Tracy TM & © Tribune Content, LLC. Courtesy of Heritage.

Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

Beginning in the Fifties, Ben Cooper’s Superman suits flew off the shelves— and kids were later warned that the capes would not let them fly like the Man of Tomorrow. Superman TM & © DC Comics. Courtesy of Heritage.

RF: How many employees did the company originally have? When did expansion occur, and how many employees did Ben Cooper, Inc. maintain at the company’s peak? IC: The company had a number of seamstresses and packers/shippers from the start—perhaps as few as five, ten, or 20 in their very early days. They eventually grew to about 750 at the height of the production season at the Brooklyn factory with a number of others in warehouses, an ancillary sewing plant in the South, and eventually the use of factories overseas.

described here. I believe that they had an early Disney license, and as near-contemporaries of Walt they worked with him at times. But I think they got the license for playsuits (more expensive department store goods) upon acquiring the Playmaster Corporation. Their first foray to Los Angeles to see Disney about an original product was likely after the war in order to secure the license for inexpensive Halloween costumes. Trips to Disney before that were no doubt to create a business relationship and to get approval for various new designs.

RF: It’s been reported that in 1937 Nat Cooper ventured from the company’s Brooklyn headquarters to Hollywood to meet with the Disney company to negotiate Ben Cooper, Inc.’s first licensing deal, for Mickey Mouse. Did Nat have a prototype in hand? What anecdotes can you share about this monumental meeting? IC: I do not have any stories about this, and I am not so sure about this “lore” as

RF: After Disney, what was Ben Cooper, Inc.’s next big licensing score? IC: It was actually more Disney, because although Mickey was popular, he evolved as to his looks so that he became more and more kid friendly. This required a risk of capital. Snow White was next, and the prospect of success was not necessarily optimistic. But like Walt, Ben and Nat saw the value in the sheer quality of what

Disney was producing and so they risked it. Ensuing licenses ran the gamut from Looney Tunes to Universal Monsters to the eventual rise of Superman. RF: How long did it usually take for a costume’s development, from sketch to production? IC: Nine months if there was no rush, six months rushed, and three months if it was a major new property with potential right away. The process involved artists, sculptors, engineers, fabric production, pattern cutting, etc. Samples and art were often hand-carried to the various artists and sculptors in the area of the Brooklyn factory. It could take weeks to sculpt a mask to Ben’s liking. Nothing was accepted without finessing the design, execution, and fit. RF: Ira, what’s your earliest personal memory of the family business? IC: Visiting the factory on 32nd Street at

SLICK(ER) MERCHANDISING IDEA Were raindrops fallin’ on your head back in the Seventies and Eighties? Then you needed a poncho from Ben Cooper, Inc.! Young Ira Cooper pitched this concept to the company, and ponchos became part of the product line. As with Cooper’s Halloween costumes, the ponchos featured both generic monsters such as a “Ghost” and “Dracula,” but also licensed properties, running the gamut from family favorites (the Little Rascals, Bozo the Clown, Holly Hobbie) to superheroes (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk) to media favorites (Star Wars characters, Max Headroom). The ponchos included a “topper mask” to make the misty-weather masquerade complete! 14

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Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

Bush Terminal when I was about in kindergarten. Their second and largest factory was on 34th Street. RF: What roles did you have at the company throughout your time there? IC: Mostly as outside salesman, and for a while, as assistant to Bobby Cooper (more about that experience in my ensuing book). I was at times an independent salesperson on the West Coast with my own organization, and a direct employee when I lived in New York. Prior to graduating college, I worked summers in the factory, the packing operations, outside warehouses, and as the salesman for parts of New England. RF: The company produced coonskin caps during the frontier hero craze of the Fifties. What were they made of, and where did the materials come from? IC: Mostly fake fur, although Nat told stories of using some real fur at the height of demand.

(TOP) A boxed John Lennon costume, from Ben Cooper’s Beatles selection of the Sixties, and a costume out of the box. (Sorry, no Yoko Ono available.) (LEFT) Kids went ape over this 1963 King Kong mask and costume from Ben Cooper.

RF: Also in the Fifties, Ben Cooper, Inc. produced Superman costumes and capes, during the heyday of TV’s Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. How many of these were sold during that time? IC: I do not know the volume, but Superman approached Mickey Mouse in volume—but not overall, as Mickey sold to a wider age range of kids than we see today for superheroes. In those days, Superman was strictly for boys ages eight and up. RF: Did the company ever face any negative publicity from incidents where children injured themselves when trying to fly while wearing a Superman cape? IC: Yes. Famously, a child was killed jumping out a window. Those were not the days of instant litigation. There was a warning on the Superman playsuit that said, “Remember, this suit will not make you fly. Only Superman can fly.” RF: What were “Glitter-Glo” costumes, and when did they come about? IC: Glitter came about in the late Fifties, early Sixties to make kids more visible as they went out trick-or-treating. Most costumes were black or other dark colors, as there were not that many choices in cheap rayon, and witches, skeletons, and others were necessarily dark in order to be realistic. Glitter was added for safety but RetroFan

Fall 2018

ended up a company “trademark” of sorts. Costumes were much more enticing with glitter, and it thereby became a higher price point. RF: The smell of Ben Cooper Halloween masks provides a vivid memory for kids who wore them. What were the masks made of? IC: “Virgin vinyl” was how it was described, virgin being important as it did not have any other coatings or paints on it that might have been unsafe. Lead was not known to be an issue, but material that went through various factories and handling was simply not clean enough for the paint. I think they would be considered PVC, but my understanding is that PVC itself changed over time.

RF: Who were some of the standout costume artists who worked for Ben Cooper? IC: Ben did not hire a lot of artists. There were two who held long-term jobs with him: Henry Porter, who went on to become an African-American artist of note, and Frank Romano, who was with the company for many decades and is the one responsible, along with Ben’s specific direction, for the look of the Ben Cooper line and the interpretation of the licenses from the late Fifties-on. Frank is in his nineties and still active, still painting. I am working with his family to reproduce some of his original art. RF: Ben Cooper, Inc. created a “Spider Man” Halloween costume in 1954, eight years before Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man 15

Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

them after the president’s assassination. Did any actually make it into the market? IC: Yes. Jack Kennedy was killed in November, after the first distribution. An image of a public servant does not have to be licensed. It was Ben and Nat’s sense of propriety that led them to take it off the market permanently. Might be different today. RF: Ponchos were another of Ben Cooper, Inc.’s product line, from superhero ponchos with masks for children to patterned poncho blazers for adults. Were there any other non-Halloween costume/mask merchandise produced by the company? IC: The ponchos were my idea—I brought the first sample to Ben while I was in high school and had gone camping with a camouflage poncho. (There’s more on Ben’s style and willingness to encourage others in my book.) The company rarely went too far afield of a novelty price point, and anticipating the growing clothing market was something they noticed, but generally put their resources into successful Halloween product, where the retailers knew them to be successful and dependable.

(RIGHT) In 1954, Ben Cooper released a “Spider Man” costume—almost a decade before Marvel Comics introduced its own web-spinner. (TOP) The original Cooper Spider Man costume, in an open box, from the collection of John Cimino. (BOTTOM RIGHT) In the early Sixties, Cooper licensed Marvel’s Spider-Man, one of Spidey’s first forays into merchandising, and kept producing Spider-Man costumes for years. Shown here is a Cooper SpiderMan suit from 1976.

RF: The company’s major licensing coup of the Seventies was Star Wars, one of the first merchandising deals struck for the property—before anyone could anticipate its wild success. Tell me about the demand for Star Wars costumes for

Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

premiered. There’s been conjecture among some comics fans that someone at Marvel might have drawn “inspiration” from Cooper’s costume. What’s your take on this? IC: Wish it were true, but it is not—and I have information from Nat in that regard. It’ll appear in my book… RF: Speaking of superheroes, in the Sixties Ben Cooper produced some of the earliest merchandising for superheroes, including Spider-Man and Green Lantern, anticipating the decade’s superhero boom. Who on staff first realized the appeal of superheroes? IC: This was nearly all Nat—something for which he rarely gets the credit—although 16

it was Ben who saw it, let’s say, concomitantly, and turned the comic and cartoon art into Halloween art that kids would want to wear. But it was Nat who pushed it, as he was directly connected to the growing world of comics and TV cartoons (which he monitored in great detail). Ben saw the immense value in the costume front being a “billboard” for the character’s most salient features. Had they gone for realism (with some notable exceptions) they would have lost that “look at me” value of the costume that the child showed off one night per year. RF: In 1963 Ben Cooper, Inc. produced masks of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy, but destroyed RetroFan

Fall 2018

Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

Halloween 1977 and how the company managed to meet it. IC: This will be in my book in more detail, but it was a whirlwind effort of 24-hour production. Bobby Cooper was, in my estimation, very instrumental in this success. RF: What differentiated Ben Cooper’s Halloween costumes from Collegeville’s and other competitors? IC: The quality of art, the costume fit, and finish. Ben was a perfectionist and would miss production dates to perfect some of the smallest details if Nat and later, Bob would let him! RF: Were there any costume licenses that Ben Cooper, Inc. attempted to acquire but lost to a competitor? IC: Universal Monsters and Looney Tunes tumbled between Ben Cooper and Collegeville. Peanuts was unobtainable once Collegeville had it. Jaws was a miss and went to Collegeville. Bland Charnas Company had one or two. But Nat was a master at reading the “tea leaves” of cartoon/TV and comic production. Movies, except for Star Wars, rarely created merchandising successes until the Seventies—and even then it was spotty.

(TOP) Star Wars was a lucrative property for Ben Cooper, Inc. in the Seventies and early Eighties. (LEFT) Who will you be? Many of Ben Cooper’s costume choices from Halloween 1968 were on view in this colorful Woolworth’s ad, courtesy of Ira J. Cooper. Note how the dominant image of Spider-Man—pickup art by Marvel Comics’ John Romita, Sr.— has been modified to look like the Cooper version of the Wall-Crawler’s costume. Some of the characters shown in the ad, like Aquaman and the Thunderbirds, will be featured in upcoming RetroFan issues!

RF: Of Ben Cooper’s many costumes—from original characters to licensed characters— what’s your personal favorite (or favorites, if it’s impossible to single out one)? IC: Rusty from Rin Tin Tin. Then I got a little older and it was Zorro, but then, from about age eight-on, I wore Superman exclusively. RF: What factors led to Ben Cooper, Inc.’s financial problems and eventual closure? IC: In my book there will be considerable detail on this… but suffice it to say that the model would have been a good one even at a reduced volume for many decades— but those family members who eventually took over the company gambled (on more than one way) and lost. Rubie’s [Costume Company, which now owns Ben Cooper], with their design and realistic accessorizing and designs, are the rightful heirs to what Ben and Nat started—in my personal opinion, of course. RF: What’s the story behind your forthcoming book, Seven Decades of Ben Cooper: A Visual History? RetroFan

Fall 2018

Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm. Stormtrooper image courtesy of Heritage. C3P0 photo by Tim1965/Wikimedia Commons. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

GETTING JIGGLY WITH IT In the mid-Seventies, Ben Cooper, Inc. also produced Jigglers, rubber action figures suspended on rubber bands that bounced when dangled. They were sold in colorful display boxes usually found on the counters of discount stores. The Jigglers product line started with horror figures but soon expanded to include Superman, Batman, and Marvel Superhero assortments. 17

Retro Interview: Ira J. Cooper

square. There was some argument over the trademark, which was owned for a short time by Jon Miller, but it has reverted back to Rubie’s. My interest had been and still is purely historical. RF: What is it about Ben Cooper Halloween masks and costumes that has fascinated fans for several generations? IC: The quality of Ben [Cooper’s] and Frank Romano’s art and the anticipatory nature of Nat, and to some degree Bobby Cooper’s understanding of a growing fascination with licensed characters and the venues in which they were shown, marketed, and merchandised.

Nat and Dorothy Cooper, 1967. Courtesy of Ira J. Cooper.

IC: [After originally working with a partner] I am doing this solo now, and it will take some time to get it right—but better from a Cooper than a corporation, it seems to me. RF: I understand that there will be new Ben Cooper Halloween costumes this year. What do you have in the works? Where will they be marketed? IC: This never was planned by me. Ben Cooper was bought by Rubie’s, fair and

Despite his charmed childhood, as a kid RetroFan editor-in-chief MICHAEL EURY never went trick-or-treating (although as an adult he’s been known to dress up as various caped crusaders, cartoon characters, and human oddities). As such he never learned how to beg, something you should remember when asking him to serve on a fundraising committee. Michael also edits TwoMorrows’ BACK ISSUE magazine, which has been nominated for Eisner, Eagle, and Gem Awards (maybe one day it’ll win one), and has written numerous books about comics and pop-culture history including Hero-A-Go-Go: Campy Comic Books, Crimefighters, and Culture of the Swinging Sixties and Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure.

(TOP) This Godzilla costume, produced during the King of the Monsters’ Seventies’ stardom in a Saturday morning cartoon and Marvel comic book, is rare in today’s collector market. (BOTTOM) Cooper’s Alien costume, released in 1979, featured a monster from an R-rated movie that most trick-ortreaters were too young to see! Godzilla TM & © Toho, Ltd. Alien © 20th Century Fox.

Ira Cooper laments that Ben Cooper, Inc. competitor Collegeville acquired the lucrative Peanuts license, a perennial favorite with its beloved pantheon of pint-sized personalities, as well as Jaws, which enjoyed a midSeventies merchandising blitz most notably attached to the first film, Jaws, and its sequel, Jaws 2. In addition to boxed costumes, Collegeville also marketed many of its costumes in the “Hanger Assortment,” as shown here in a catalog image for the Jaws 2 ensemble.

Jaws 2 © Universal Pictures.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

RetroFan

Fall 2018

BACK ISSUE #107 FEATURES

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RetroFan's

Too Much TV Quiz

If your old man used to gripe that you’d never learn anything with your nose glued to the boob tube, here’s your chance to prove him wrong. (Father doesn’t always know best.) Each of the TV show workplaces in Column One employed one of the characters in Column Two. Match ’em up, then see how you rate!

1) Danfield First National Bank 2) Astrospace Industries 3) Mel’s Diner 4) WJM-TV 5) Rampart Hospital 6) Commerce Bank 7) San Francisco Memorial Hospital 8) Rob’s Place 9) County General Hospital 10) Shotz Brewery

Television image scanned by SenseiAlan. Altered by SMS. c 2.0 20

RetroFan

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RetroFan

Fall 2018

Mel, kiss my grits!

A) Nurse Julia Baker–Julia B) Jane Hathaway–The Beverly Hillbillies C) Shirley Wilson–What’s Happening!! D) Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney– Laverne & Shirley E) Ted Baxter–The Mary Tyler Moore Show F) Theodore J. Mooney–The Lucy Show G) Dr. David Zorba–Ben Casey H) Nurse Dixie McCall–Emergency! I) Dr. John McIntyre–Trapper John, M.D. J) Flo Castleberry–Alice Alice © Warner Bros. Television. Ben Casey © Bing Crosby Productions/American Broadcasting Corporation. The Beverly Hillbillies, Laverne & Shirley, and The Lucy Show © Paramount Home Entertainment. Emergency! © Universal Television. Julia and Trapper John, M.D. © 20th Century Fox Television. The Mary Tyler Moore Show © MTM Enterprises. What’s Happening!! © Columbia Pictures Television.

RetroFan Ratings 10 correct: Fine-Tuned RetroFan Sock it to me, baby! I bet you know theme song lyrics too! 7–9 correct: Rabbit-Eared RetroFan Dy-no-mite! You wasted your childhood with the rest of us! 4–6 correct: Fuzzy-Receptioned RetroFan Up your nose with a rubber hose ’til you spend more tube time! 0–3 correct: Tuned-Out RetroFan Ya big dummy! Put down that book and go watch some classic TV!

ANSWERS: 1–F, 2–A, 3–J, 4–E, 5–H, 6–B, 7–I, 8–C, 9–G, 10–D. RetroFan

Fall 2018

MONSTER MASH

The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America, 1957-1972 Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream! Once Frankenstein and fiends infiltrated TV in 1957, an avalanche of monster magazines, toys, games, trading cards, and comic books crashed upon an unsuspecting public. This profusely illustrated full-color hardcover covers that creepy, kooky Monster Craze through features on FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine, the #1 hit “Monster Mash,” Aurora’s model kits, TV shows (SHOCK THEATRE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS, and DARK SHADOWS), “MARS ATTACKS” trading cards, EERIE PUBLICATIONS, PLANET OF THE APES, and more! It features interviews with JAMES WARREN (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines), FORREST J ACKERMAN (Famous Monsters of Filmland), JOHN ASTIN (The Addams Family), AL LEWIS (The Munsters), JONATHAN FRID (Dark Shadows), GEORGE BARRIS (monster car customizer), ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH (Rat Fink), BOBBY (BORIS) PICKETT (Monster Mash singer/songwriter) and others, with a Foreword by TV horror host ZACHERLEY, the “Cool Ghoul.” Written by MARK VOGER (author of “The Dark Age”). (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 9781605490649 Diamond Order Code: MAR151564

SWAMPMEN

MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS SWAMPMEN dredges up Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, Heap, and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou, through the memories of the artists and writers who created them! Features interviews with BERNIE WRIGHTSON, ALAN MOORE, MIKE PLOOG, LEN WEIN, FRANK BRUNNER, STEVE GERBER, STEVE BISSETTE, RICK VEITCH, GERRY CONWAY, VAL MAYERIK, JOE ORLANDO, MARTIN PASKO, JIM MOONEY, JOHN TOTLEBEN, TOM YEATES, KAREN BERGER, JESSE SANTOS, MICHAEL USLAN, MIKE KALUTA, ROY THOMAS, and other, with a new FRANK CHO cover! (192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $9.95 ISBN: 9781605490571 Diamond Order Code: MAY141629

TwoMorrows.

10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

The Future of Pop History. Phone: 919-449-0344 • E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Order online at: www.twomorrows.com

THE BEST OF

THE TERRIFYING SEQUEL:

Since 2000, FROM THE TOMB has terrified readers worldwide, as the preeminent magazine on the history of horror comics, with stellar writing and intensely frightening illustrations from the best talent in the industry. Produced in the UK, issues have been scarce and highly collectible in the US, and here’s your chance to see what you’ve been missing! This “BEST OF” COLLECTION compiles the finest features of FROM THE TOMB’s ten years of terror, along with new material originally scheduled to see publication in the NEVER-PUBLISHED #29. It celebrates the 20th Century’s finest horror comics—and those they tried to ban—with a selection of revised and updated articles on BASIL WOLVERTON, JOHNNY CRAIG, RICHARD CORBEN, LOU CAMERON, RUDY PALAIS, MATT FOX, ALVIN HOLLINGSWORTH, plus publishers including ACG, ATLAS, EC, FICTION HOUSE, HARVEY COMICS, SKYWALD, WARREN, HOUSE OF HAMMER, A-BOMB COMICS, CANNIBALS, and others!

Just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets again, FROM THE TOMB (the UK’s preeminent magazine on the history of horror comics) digs up more tomes of terror from the century past. IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB (the second “Best of” collection) uncovers Atomic Comics lost to the Cold War, rarely seen (and censored) British horror comics, the early art of RICHARD CORBEN, GOOD GIRLS of a bygone age, TOM SUTTON, DON HECK, LOU MORALES, AL EADEH, BRUCE JONES’ Alien Worlds, HP LOVECRAFT in HEAVY METAL, and a myriad of terrors from beyond the stars and the shadows of our own world! It features comics they tried to ban, from ATLAS, CHARLTON, COMIC MEDIA, DC, EC, HARVEY, HOUSE OF HAMMER, KITCHEN SINK, LAST GASP, PACIFIC, SKYWALD, WARREN, and more from the darkest of the horror genre’s finest creators!

FROM THE TOMB

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 (Digital Edition) $9.95 • ISBN: 9781605490434 Diamond Order Code: AUG121322

IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $10.95 • ISBN: 9781605490816 Diamond Order Code: OCT171887

RETRO TELEVISION

Haunting the Airwaves

by Dan Johnson In the days before there were a thousand cable channels and streaming services, you were darn lucky to have three, maybe four, local TV stations you could pick up with your rabbit ears. Even with fewer alternatives, back then there was still a lot of competition on the part of local stations to fill timeslots with shows that would woo viewers to tune into their channel. The thing is, the programming had to be affordable. “B” horror and science-fiction movies made for cheap TV filler in the late-night hours, especially on the weekends. But getting people to tune in for cinematic clunkers like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die was not an easy feat. Early on, the stations knew you needed someone to help get you through these stinkers, be it a wacky vampire whose biting wit included corny puns, or a sexy ghoul who specialized in double entendres. These were local horror hosts, the men and women who dressed up as mad scientists, monsters, and femme fatales with names like Dr. Morgus and Crematia Mortem, and on the weekends they welcomed you to sit through I Married a Monster from Outer Space… if you dared!

A Long, Sordid Tradition

The best-remembered horror hosts came from the medium of television, but introducing morbid stories of the macabre is a tradition that goes all the way back to the days of radio. Each week, listeners tuned into shows like The Hermit’s Cave and Inner Sanctum, where they were greeted by hosts that would introduce that evening’s story. These spooky ladies and gents would keep listeners company in the dark, and then invite them back the next week to have the bejeezus scared out of them again. RetroFan

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(TOP) TV’s first horror hostess, Vampira—Maila Nurmi—in a signed publicity still from the Eighties. (INSET) Vampira and the mighty Tor Johnson, in Ed Wood’s 1959 classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions. Plan 9 © 1959 Reynolds Pictures. Courtesy of Mark Voger.

Retro Television

The tradition carried over to comic books in the Fifties, with the most memorable horror hosts being the Crypt Keeper, the Vault Keeper, and the Old Witch, telling terror tales in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. Throughout the early Fifties, there were dozens upon dozens of knock-offs of the EC trio enticing kiddos to hand over their dime (the cost of a funnybook back then) for an afternoon of thrills, chills, and shocks. As horror comics were beginning to be stamped out of existence due to a real-world witch hunt that led to the creation of the censorship board called the Comics Code Authority—under whose watch stories about vampires, werewolves, and zombies were strictly forbidden—the first of the great television horror hosts was rising to fame out on the West Coast.

The Ghoul Next Door

One thing you can say about Vampira, she was a real scream. Indeed, that was how she greeted her viewers each week, by slinking down a long hallway, staring into the camera, and then letting out a blood-curling screech. From there, she entertained her audience with dark-gallows humor while wearing a black dress that looked like she had been poured into. She was the perfect combination of sex and horror and from 1954 to 1955, she took Los Angeles, and later the nation, by storm. Vampira’s real name was Maila Nurmi. She was a young actress whose big break came when she attended a masquerade party dressed as cartoonist Charles Addams’ character Morticia Addams. A producer for KABC saw her and knew she was perfect to host horror movies on his television station. Refining her look and taking the name Vampira, Nurmi took to the airwaves on May 1, 1954, and quickly became a hit with local viewers as she ridiculed the movies she hosted. Vampira was such a sensation, she was featured in Newsweek and Life magazines and appeared on The Red Skelton Show. Sadly, her success was what led to her cancellation. The station wanted to own the rights to the Vampira character, but Nurmi refused and was dropped from the air. Thanks to her memorable, yet non-speaking appearance in schlock director Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, her memory lived on decades after her show was over. 24

While Vampira was giving up the ghost in the west, Monster Mania was about to hit America, and soon every major city in the United States would lay claim to their own late-night creeper as one of the most successful movie packages ever to hit syndication.

Shock it to Me!

In October of 1957, Columbia Pictures’ television division, Screen Gems, packaged 52 Universal horror films for syndication around the country under the name Shock Theater. It was—pardon the pun—a monster hit. Kids who had never seen Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster or Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf Man were discovering the old fright films as they aired on the weekends… and they couldn’t get enough of them. Fueled by Shock Theater’s rollout (and a follow-up in 1958 called Son of Shock), along with Forest J Ackerman’s hit monster mag Famous Monsters of Filmland, a whole generation of Monster Kids was spawned. But someone needed to host these movies, and many a local actor or station employee stepped forward to do just that. If they could wear a fright costume and tell a joke, they could be a host. Many of these Shock Theater hosts are lost to time, remembered only by those few who got to see them when they were on television. Some of the ones in the larger cities of America went on to become legendary, though. No horror host had a bigger market than the gentleman who got his start as a simple, unassuming actor who had the good fortune to play an undertaker on a local Western show in the City of Brotherly Love.

Good Night, Whatever You Are

When WCAU-TV in Philadelphia bought Shock Theater and was looking for a host, it was suggested that the guy who had been playing the role of the town undertaker on the station’s locally produced cowboy show, Action in the Afternoon, would be perfect. That was how John Zacherle came to become the horror host known as Roland. With his unseen wife, My Dear, and assistant, Igor, Roland cracked wise at the movies he showed and had much fun with them. Zacherle was close friends with another broadcasting legend from Philadelphia, Dick Clark. It was Clark who gave his friend the nickname of “The Cool Ghoul” and helped him produce a single that became a nationwide hit, the novelty record “Dinner with Drac.” When WCAU changed affiliation in 1958, Zacherle decided to make a move to New York City and WABC. He was signed on to host Shock Theater there, but he couldn’t use the name Roland. Instead, he simply added a “y” to the end of his name and was forever known from then on as Zacherley. As Zacherley, he hosted horror movies until the early Sixties. Zacherle was unique in that he continued playing Zacherley as he hosted cartoons and even a teen dance show throughout the decade. During the Seventies and beyond, he was just himself playing records on various RetroFan

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Retro Television

radio stations in the Big Apple. Up until his death in 2016, the Cool Ghoul was still in demand for horror conventions and the occasional acting role. All said, his career spanned six decades. Not all horror hosts had the longevity of Zacherley. Let’s look at some of the hosts who burned out quickly, but whose memory still lives on in the hearts of their fans.

From Ghost To Ghost

In Chicago, the host of WBKB’s Shock Theatre was Marvin, played by Terry Bennett. Marvin was way-out as a beatnik. Like Zacherley, he had a wife, Dear, who was only seen from the back or from the front if her face was obscured. Bennett’s real-life wife, Joy, played this part. Marvin proved to be such a hit with viewers in the Windy City, he even got a second show that last half an hour called The Shocktale Party. Marvin was hugely popular with viewers, which is why many of them were saddened and outraged when Shock Theatre was dropped in 1959. In his final episode, Marvin finally let his fans see Dear’s face as he turned her to the camera and she said goodbye. If there is a mecca for horror hosts, it is the state of Ohio. This state has produced more horror hosts than any other in the Union. The Buckeye State gave us such frightfully fun folk as the Ghoul; the Son of Ghoul; Dr. Creep; Mad Daddy; Hoolihan, Big Chuck, and Little John; the Cool Ghoul; Fritz the Nite Owl; and Moana. But there is one name that towers above them all: Ghoulardi. From 1963 to 1966, Ghoulardi ruled the airwaves hosting Shock Theater on WJW-TV in Cleveland. Ghoulardi’s alter ego was Ernie Anderson, a local voiceover announcer, disc jockey, and actor who started on Cleveland television working with a partner named Tom Conway. When Anderson started hosting Shock Theater, he set out to make Ghoulardi his own kind of horror host. Ghoulardi was a hip cat that specialized in off-the-wall, madcap humor. Ghoulardi became so popular, he eventually hosted two other shows on the station, Masterpiece Theater and Laurel, Ghoulardi and Hardy. In 1966 he took the advice of his former partner Tom Conway and made the move to Los Angeles and greener pastures. Conway had made the move out west years earlier and done all right for himself, having changed his first name to Tim and joining the cast RetroFan

Fall 2018

of McHale’s Navy. While he never made it big as an actor, Anderson did become famous as the announcer for The Carol Burnett Show and then later as the voice of ABC throughout the Seventies and Eighties. Speaking of the West Coast, it took a decade for Los Angeles to find a host to replace Vampira. But in 1969 the City of Angels got a heckraiser named Seymour. Seymour showed low-budget horror and science-fiction films on his two shows, KDJ-TV’s Fright Night and KTLA’s Seymour’s Monster Rally. Seymour was really actor Larry Vincent, who had previously made guest appearances on I Dream of Jeannie and The Flying Nun. And speaking of low-budget turkeys, he even had a role in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant! Seymour was loved by his fans because he let them know up front his films were bombs. Seymour would also show up in the movies—which isn’t that uncommon a thing for a horror host to do—but he would pop in a little window in the corner of the screen and heckle the movie. Seymour had the honor of being named the very first Ghost Host at Knott’s Scary Farm Halloween Haunt in 1973. Seymour kept them laughing in Los Angeles until 1974 when his show ended due to his declining health. Larry Vincent passed away a short time later in 1975 of stomach cancer. Back in Chicago, WFLD’s Screaming Yellow Theater was about to take off when its announcer, Jerry G. Bishop, decided the show needed an on-air host. Bishop had done voiceovers for the show with a Bela Lugosi accent, but when his character, Svengoolie, made the scene, he did so as a green-haired hippie with a coffin that looked like it came from Woodstock. Svengoolie was famous for his bad jokes and puns, as well as ripping on the city of Berwyn and his use of rubber chickens. Svengoolie first went on the air in 1970 and stayed on till 1973, when the station was bought out and Svengoolie was replaced by the Ghoul, a horror host from Cleveland whose show was being syndicated by the new owners. Svengoolie might have remained just a sweet memory to citizens of the Windy City, but thanks to Rich Koz, a young man who came to Bishop’s attention after he began submitting jokes to his show, Svengoolie was destined to live again (more on that in just a bit)! Meanwhile, as the Seventies wore on, the denizens of the night found themselves being picked off one by one—not by angry villagers, but by a cultural phenomenon the likes of which no one had ever seen before. 25

Retro Television

(LEFT TO RIGHT) SNL’s Not Ready for Prime-Time Players buried lots of horror hosts in 1975. Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Monster Vision with Joe Bob Briggs defibrillated the horror-host concept. Rich Koz keeps the tradition alive today on MeTV’s Svengoolie. SNL © NBC. MST3K © Satellite of Love, LLC. Monster Vision © TNT. Svengoolie © Weigel Broadcasting Co.

Live from New York…

Late Saturday night was the usual golden time for horror hosts back in the day. The only competition might be another movie or television rerun. If you were up against an NBC affiliate, they might have optioned to air The Best of Johnny Carson, but that was just another repeat. Then, on October 11, 1975, the first of many nails went into the coffins of horror hosts around the country, and it was called Saturday Night Live. The sketch-comedy show, featuring the original Not Ready for Prime-Time Players, became an immediate hit, and suddenly all the local vampires, witches, and mad scientists were losing their key audience, which were children and teenagers. Fifty-foot women and saucermen just couldn’t compete against the Coneheads and Roseanne Roseannadanna. A few hosts tried to hang on by moving to 1:00 a.m. following Saturday Night Live. Others moved to Saturday afternoons or Friday nights. Yet slowly but surely, horror hosts began to disappear from the television landscape. And then there came a sensation even SNL could not eclipse.

Putting the Boob Back in the Boob Tube

In 1981 the producers of Fright Night, Seymour’s old show, decided the time was right to return to the airwaves. They decided to go a sexier route though and bring a woman in to host the show. After auditioning several prospects, they settled on a young showgirl and actress named Cassandra Peterson. Peterson was allowed to come up with her own character and she settled on a wisecracking, sexy gal who was part vampire, part valley girl, and always quick with the quips. Thus was born the most popular horror host since Zacherley—Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Her local show was an immediate success and the producers set their sights on Elvira taking over the airwaves in other parts of the country. She did just that when her show, Movie Macabre, went into syndication in 1983. Once again, folks were tuning in for a horror host, and there was little doubt they were not coming for the movies! [Editor’s note: More about the Mistress of the Dark follows this article.]

The Last Hurrah

Even though Elvira was riding high in the ratings throughout the Eighties, the last few remaining local horror hosts were about to have a number of bombs dropped on them. The first was the formation of the Fox Network. Many stations that had been independent UHF stations were signed up to be affiliates, and some horror hosts were dropped in an effort for their stations to look 26

more professional, or simply because they had to make room for the network shows they were committed to air. The second hit came in the late Eighties when first-run syndicated shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Friday the 13th began airing. With most of the advertising already sold, and halfhour and hour-long shows easier to schedule, the horror hosts just didn’t seem to be a wise investment anymore. The final blow came when television regulations regarding commercials were loosened up. The few remaining horror hosts met the one monster they couldn’t stand up to: infomercials. On the local level, almost all of the horror hosts were signing off for good. But new advents in technology meant new avenues to explore.

Changing Technology to the Rescue

While local horror hosts were falling out of favor, cable television introduced a few shows that kept this profession alive in the Nineties. The two most successful were Comedy Central’s (and later, the Sci-Fi Channel’s) Mystery Science Theater 3000 and TNT’s Monster Vision with Joe Bob Briggs. And just as cable had brought new horror hosts to the masses, the advent of digital television has given America a new host to rally around. Remember Jerry Bishop, that gent we mentioned that worked with Svengoolie back on his Chicago show? His name was Rich Koz, and in 1979 he brought bad puns and rubber chickens back to Chicago as the Son of Svengoolie. His first show ran until 1986 on WFLD. He was one of the hosts killed off because of the formation of Fox. In 1995, Koz returned to Chicago airwaves as Svengoolie and his show is still running on WCIU 26 to this day. Svengoolie is also seen every Saturday night on MeTV as part of the network’s Super Sci-Fi Saturday Night line-up. So thanks to Svengoolie, the art of horror hosting is alive and well. So long as there are bad movies to run and bad jokes to crack, we know he’ll be around for a long, long time. DAN JOHNSON is a comics writer whose work can be found in Cemetery Plots from Empire Comics Lab (empirecomicslab.com). His other notable comics work includes Herc and Thor for Antarctic Press and several books for Campfire Graphic Novels. He is also a gag writer for the Dennis the Menace comic strip. RetroFan

Fall 2018

Mistress of the Dark

PHOTO: Mark Voger.

by Mark Voger

RetroFan

Fall 2018

Horror movie nerds can be a lonely lot. Well, what do you expect when your best pickup line is: “Wanna come to my place and watch The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake?” Maybe that’s why Elvira—the horror hostess with, ahem, the mostest—has endured and flourished. With her ribald jokes, not to mention her va-va-voom décolletage, Elvira makes us feel a little less alone as we indulge our passion for fright flicks. The role of the horror host has traditionally been filled by local talent in a given television market. But actress Cassandra Peterson, who co-created and plays Elvira, established herself as the nation’s horror host. She did it with savvy branding… and pure hustle. It all began in the early Eighties, when Peterson, then a member of Los Angeles’ famous Groundlings improv-comedy group, landed a hosting gig on Movie Macabre for KHJ-TV in L.A. On the program, she presented films from The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant to The House That Dripped Blood to The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism. Not surprisingly, Elvira attracted much attention, and it wasn’t long before her appeal spilled—no pun intended—into the national consciousness. There was her subsequent syndicated series… her “ThrillerVideo” line on VHS (remember those?) and the “Elvira’s Movie Macabre” line on DVD… TV appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Arsenio Hall Show, Wrestlemania 2, Hulkamania 6, the reality show The Search for the Next Elvira, and even a Bob Hope special… her movies Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) and Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)… her comic book Elvira’s House of Mystery from DC Comics, home of Superman and Batman… her Coors Light endorsement (which faithfully placed life-sized Elvira cut-outs in taverns at Halloween time)… her countless convention appearances… two Elvira-themed pinball machines… and a return to comic books, first from Claypool Comics in 1993, and recently in a new series that launched in July 2018 from Dynamite Entertainment. Elvira’s costume is sexy-creepy in the tradition of Morticia Addams and Vampira (who once sued Peterson unsuccessfully), but with a sexy-trashy twist. When in character, Peterson wears Elvira’s trademark gravity-defying, trailer-park-friendly hair-do in jet black; Vegasshowgirl makeup (heavy on the eyeliner and rouge); black nails; a plunging black dress that could double as a shroud; sheer black stockings; and shiny black stilettos. Yep, black is her color. 27

Retro Interview: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

“I do look forward to it, but I look forward with a little bit of trepidation, because I’m always trying to be in ten places at once. My schedule gets really crazy. So it’s a mixed blessing. It’s great that I work this much, but I wish it were a little more equally spread out over the year. “But all year ’round, really, I’m working on the character, writing things, promoting things. It’s non-stop work.” Peterson contrasted her two big-screen forays. James Signorelli’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark was a big-studio job, while Sam Irvin’s Elvira’s Haunted Hills was an independently produced passion project. Of Mistress, she complained of having “a million different executives telling me, ‘Change this. Drop this.’ Testings with the audience. ‘Oh, no, you need to put teenagers in the movie.’ Those teenagers in my first movie weren’t originally there, until they tested the movie and decided that there needed to be teenagers in the script. So those were an ‘add-on’ at the last minute. “And just constantly changing scenes, taking out things—it was very depressing for me, having written the film. It was really difficult.” (BELOW) Artist Ernie Colón’s preliminary art for the cover of Marvel Comics’ 1988 adaptation of Mistress of the Dark. (RIGHT) The published cover, with painted art by Joe Jusko.

Poster for Elvira’s first movie, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988).

In fact, the costume has been so closely tied to Peterson’s livelihood, it became a matter of professional self-preservation to stay within it, the actress told me in 2002. “A while ago, the dress started getting a little more snug,” the native of Kansas, who was born in 1951, then said. “I started complaining to friends about it. They’d say, ‘Why don’t you just let it out?’ “But I knew that once I started letting that dress out, the dam would be broken and I’d become Roseanne Barr. So I just started to fit my body to the dress. “That takes a lot of working out, a lot of exercise, a lot of dieting. And every year, it takes more. It’s getting kinda tough to stay in it, you know? But I didn’t want to change it, so I decided to form my body to the dress rather than the other way around. I’m afraid if I did it the other way around, I wouldn’t have lasted all this time.” As you might guess, Halloween has always been the busy season for Peterson. “Every year, I start preparing for it earlier and earlier,” she said. “People think I work on Halloween and then hang up my dress and sleep for 11 months. 28

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Retro Interview: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

Not only that, the remuneration left much to be desired. “For our first film, we went the regular route with a distribution company and the big Hollywood production, and we ended up not seeing a penny,” Peterson groused. She aimed to correct this situation with Elvira’s Haunted Hills, which was filmed in a most appropriate place: Transylvania in Romania. “We knew we couldn’t afford to shoot something like this with our own money here in Hollywood, where we live,” she said. “The Transylvania area in particular is a little like going back 500 years. We were shooting in a village. At the beginning of the film, there’s this wonderful shot of all these peasants looking like they’re from the 1800s in these great costumes, herding flocks of geese, and carts going by with oxen, and men carrying sickles over their shoulder, coming back from reaping the wheat. And everyone says, ‘Oh, my God. How did you get all that production value, those costumes, those people?’ And we go, ‘That’s just the town. We jumped out the window, and there were the people.’ “But they were incredible craftsmen and hard-working people who really knew what they were doing.” Peterson said actor Richard Chamberlain—with whom she had worked in the Indiana Jones–like adventure Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)—had agreed to play a nobleman in her film. “Two weeks before we were to leave for Romania, Richard had to drop out, because he actually got a job that paid,” Peterson said with a laugh. But Chamberlain’s replacement certainly had horror-comedy cred: Richard O’Brien, the writer of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, who also played hunchbacked butler Riff Raff in the 1975 gender-bending romp. “He brought so much to the role. His persona and his aura really gave us a whole big boost,” Peterson said of O’Brien. Though this non-studio project gave Peterson total script control, the budget imposed plenty of restrictions. Said the actress: “I had written, ‘Four black stallions come thundering out of the fog pulling a coach.’ We ended up with two old brown nags, because that’s what they had there! ‘You don’t have any black horses?’ ‘Nope.’ ” RetroFan

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Poster for the Mistress’ swinging (as in pendulum) return to the big screen, 2001’s Elvira’s Haunted Hills. © Spirit Entertainment. Elvira TM Queen “B” Productions. Courtesy of Heritage.

Peterson also called for a black cat to be in the film. “Of course, it had to be a black cat, because every movie that Vincent Price ever starred in had a black cat,” said Peterson (who sometimes appeared with Price on television, and dedicated Haunted Hills to the horror icon). “They had no trained cat wrangler anywhere. I finally asked the prop people to go out and get the very best stuffed black cat they could get—meaning, a toy stuffed black cat. Which I stressed, just in case they decided to go out and find a black cat and stuff it.”

Instead, they brought back “a little cream-colored stuffed kangaroo,” according to Peterson. “But we had to work with it,” she said. “So we sprayed it black and just used its tail sticking out from a curtain.” The fact that Peterson was forced to make Haunted Hills herself was echoed, unintentionally, in a climactic scene in the film. “At the end of the movie, Elvira is waiting for the big, studly boyfriend to save her,” Peterson recalled. “And he obviously is not saving her, so she yells, ‘Do I have to 29

Retro Interview: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

Dy-no-mite! Elvira returned to comic books in July 2018 in a new series from Dynamite Publishing. Cover art by Joseph Michael Linsner. Elvira TM Queen “B” Productions.

do everything myself?’ And I was thinking, ‘Yeah. I guess you do.’” Peterson was kind enough to give me her Top Ten horror— or horrible—film picks. She hosted many of the movies chosen. Others are ironic choices (Stroker Ace, anyone?), and one appears to be an outright prank. Here they are, in Peterson’s order of ranking: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) is the Ed Wood-directed sci-fi stinker enhanced by footage of Dracula star Bela Lugosi, who had been dead for three years when the film was released. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) is a parody of so-badthey’re-terrible movies such as… Plan 9 from Outer Space. The Killer Shrews (1959) is a monster movie that uses dogs wearing fake fangs to play the titular killer shrews. Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958) is a film with such cheesy FX, you can actually see through the 50-foot woman. A giant inflatable hand is an unconvincing prop. Pigs Kill Everybody is a film I can’t seem to track down. It looks like Peterson was pulling my leg. Showgirls (1995) is, basically, a big-studio soft-porn film infamous for showing Saved by the Bell fans what they always wanted to see of Elizabeth Berkley. 30

Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the groundbreaking zombie film by George A. Romero that marked a new era in the horror genre. The Creeping Terror (1964) is a no-budget horror movie about a monster that looks more like a filthy old carpet. Stroker Ace (1983) has Burt Reynolds still milking the Smokey and the Bandit thing as a NASCAR racer. P.S.: Peterson is in the film! Night of the Ghouls (1958), Ed Wood’s follow-up to Bride of the Monster, was completed in 1958, more or less, but not released until 1984. It was worth the wait. Peterson said she never expected her Elvira character to morph into a lucrative, multi-faceted career. She was happy enough to land a steady-ish gig on her way to more important work. Did that not happen? You don’t think that entertaining thousands of lonely nerds is important? MARK VOGER is the author of Groovy: When Flower Power Bloomed in Pop Culture and Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America, 1957–1972, both for TwoMorrows Publishing.

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ANDY MANGELS' RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

The Groovie Goolies all jam in Horrible Hall in this rare piece of 1970 promotional art. (INSET) Filmation Studios co-founder and producer Lou Scheimer, c. 1970. © the respective copyright holder.

by Andy Mangels Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning. Since 1989, I have been writing columns for magazines in the U.S. and foreign countries, all examining the intersection of comic books and Hollywood, whether animation or live-action. Andy Mangels Backstage, Andy Mangels’ Reel Marvel, Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes, Andy Mangels Behind the Camera… nearly three decades of reporting on animation and live-action—in addition to writing many books and producing around 40 DVD sets—and I’m still enthusiastic. In this new RetroFan column, I will examine shows that thrilled us from yesteryear, exciting our imaginations and capturing our memories. Grab some milk and cereal, sit cross-legged leaning against the couch, and dig in to Retro Saturday Morning! “Everybody shout, come on now, sing out! It’s time for the Goolies get-together! We got jokes for everyone, with laughter, songs, and fun, so let’s go to the Goolies get-together!” So began the theme song for Groovie Goolies in 1970, and Saturday morning television was never quite the same. An mélange of monster movies, soft rock songs, fourth-wall-breaking RetroFan

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self-awareness, and counterculture humor, nothing quite like the Groovie Goolies had ever aired on television before. But what led to the international hit, and why did it burn so brightly… then disappear like a ghost?

Horrific Inspirations

In the realm of cinema horror, three monsters reigned supreme. Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man had been immortalized onscreen by Universal Studios in feature films in 1931—the Tod Browning-directed Dracula starring Bela Lugosi and the James Whale-directed Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff; and 1941— in The Wolf Man, directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney, Jr.—alongside other creatures and spooks such as the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, the Bride of Frankenstein, and more. Many of the creatures were based on either novels such as Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein or Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula, or they were based on European legends of lycanthropy, or whispers of Egyptian curses. 31

Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

(LEFT) Poster for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), the first film to unite the main Universal monsters. (RIGHT) LateSixties development art for “Monster Inn.” Many of the same elements would be used for the later Horrible Hall design.

The “creature features” were a huge hit for World War II-era and post-war audiences, who could experience fright and villains without the confrontation of real-life horrors. Sequels and spinoffs were created by Universal, and a “shared universe” was soon created. The first team-up out of the gate was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1942), followed by House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), which brought together into the same film Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, and the Hunchback (though most of the creatures barely crossed paths while active in their own separate plotlines)! The first proper gang film for the group was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which left out the Hunchback in exchange for a comedic monster romp played against two of filmdom’s most popular screen comedians. Although Universal moved away from the monster films, in England, Hammer Films upped the stakes with its own series of films utilizing the same characters, often starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, among others. Hammer’s horror films were far more graphic and sexualized than their American predecessors, a sign of both less-restrained European markets and changing morals in society and filmmaking. But while monsters overseas became more adult, in the U.S., they became relegated to the realm of youth. Due to a 1957 syndication package from Screen Gems of the old Universal features, many of the horror films were now airing on television, chopped up and edited, and often packaged and presented by local TV stations’ “horror hosts” such as Vampira and Zacherley, who would crack wise or add spooky intros for the films, as chronicled elsewhere in this issue. No longer relegated to theaters, the monsters were now enjoyed by kids, safe in their homes. In August 1962, Bobby “Boris” Pickett released a novelty song called “Monster Mash,” in which he mimicked the voices of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The song quickly shot up to #1 on the Billboard music charts. Monsters were now verging on being both kid-friendly and funny, instead of nightmare-inducing. 32

From September 1964 to May 1966, CBS aired the sitcom The Munsters, which featured a family with a Frankenstein-like father, a vampire wife and father-in-law, and a werewolf son. Concurrently with The Munsters, ABC aired a similar macabre sitcom called The Addams Family (1964–1966), though its characters were based on the morbidly funny humor of cartoonist Charles Addams rather than horror monster tropes. In March 1967, Embassy Pictures released Mad Monster Party, a stop-motion animated musical feature film from Rankin-Bass which featured its own version of almost every major movie creature as part of a “Worldwide Organization of Monsters.” With Aurora monster model kits being advertised to kids in comics and in the pages of the pun-filled newsstand magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland (1958–2017), horror was now friendly. Growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, future animator Lou Scheimer had always liked the Universal movie monsters, even though some of the movies came out after he was serving in the Army overseas. In the early Sixties, having worked for animation houses including Kling Studios, Walter Lantz, Ray Patton Productions, Warner Bros., and others, Scheimer founded Filmation Studios with fellow animator Hal Sutherland and disc-jockey-turned-producer Norm Prescott. Filmation was a scrappy young company that was changing the face of the nascent Saturday morning culture with popular animated superheroic television exploits for Superman, Aquaman, and Batman, as well as the musical adventures of The Archies, and film spin-offs Journey To the Center of the Earth and Fantastic Voyage. Scheimer recognized there was a built-in audience if he worked with licensed characters and shows and preexisting concepts… and he remembered his love for the movie monsters. RetroFan

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Monster Inn… is In

“I always wanted to do a show with the monsters Dracula, Frankenstein, and a werewolf as comedy characters,” said Scheimer in my interviews with him for the 2012 TwoMorrows book, Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation. “Every once in a while, they’d make fun of these guys in the live-action theatricals, but they were perfect comedy characters. And there was certainly no way we could do horror characters any other way for animation.” In 1968, Scheimer hired writers Jack Mendelsohn and Jim Mulligan to develop a comedy concept with the monsters. Mendelsohn had been a writer for EC Comics’ MAD and Panic, as well as a comic strip artist doing Jacky’s Diary (1959–1961) and ghosting art for other comic series, before moving on to write and direct animation for Krazy Kat, Beetle Bailey, George of the Jungle, ABC’s The Beatles cartoon, and the Yellow Submarine film (1968). Shortly after, he switched to the new live-action TV comedy sketch show, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. On that latter show, he met Jim Mulligan, who had co-written its pilot episode. At Filmation, Mendelsohn quickly began writing for Archie, while the pair began work developing a monstrous concept called Monster Inn, a name that sounded suspiciously similar to Laugh-In. “We thought we might introduce it in a future season of Archie,” said Scheimer. By the fall of 1968, Mendelsohn and Mulligan had turned in preliminary work on Monster Inn, which included a monstrously familiar cast: Dracula was a fun-loving, stay-out-late playboy; Wolfman was a surfing and cycling flower child/hippie; and Frankenstein was the harassed one of the group who was always

worrying. There was also Bella La Ghostly, a Vampira-like switchboard operator; Hagatha the hotel cook and witch; and Icky and Goo, a pair of mischievous baby gargoyles. “The villain of the story would have been Sir Sydney Sneaking-Slyly, who knew of a treasure hidden somewhere in the Monster Inn and was determined to find it,” said Scheimer. “The Inn would be constantly visited by other ghosts and monsters and would have doors that would open up to strange settings, including live footage of things like cannons firing and such. Even at that point we’d planned to have monster-themed musical segments with Wolfman on guitar, Frankenstein on drums, and Dracula at an organ. The first script also featured a quick Archie and Jughead cameo, as well as another by Batman and Robin!” In a 2015 interview for HorrorHound, Mendelsohn said of his co-writer that, “The truth is, I did most of the work. Jim Mulligan kind of took the money and ran. He was a nice guy, a creative guy, but he didn’t contribute much.” Mendelsohn’s claims are pretty easy to substantiate; when he provided me with a folder of development materials to use on the 2006 Groovie Goolies DVD set, the dozens of pages were packed with jokes, plots, premises, potential names, and puns that overflowed the margins, all written by Mendelsohn’s hand. In 1969, Fred Silverman, the head of Children’s Programming at CBS, wanted a Fall companion show for The Archie Show, and the decision was made to add another half-hour of Archie to the schedule, debuting it with Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, another Archie character with supernatural powers. The show, titled The Archie (LEFT TOP & BOTTOM) Filmation provided color presentation art for CBS to promote Groovie Goolies to television stations; some of the art was later used on licensed products. (RIGHT TOP) Groovie Goolies cocreator Jack Mendelsohn in 2006. (RIGHT BOTTOM) Some of Mendelsohn’s hand-written joke notes for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. © the respective copyright holder.

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Early character sketches of Frankie, Wolfie, and Drac playing instruments, and a tight tracking shot for Horrible Hall. © the respective copyright holder.

Comedy Hour, added joke segments similar to Laugh-In, which was a huge hit for rival network NBC. Behind the scenes, work proceeded on Monster Inn, but at some time in the development the name was changed to Rock ’n’ Gools, and the two gargoyles were changed to three kid-like characters named Ratso, Batso, and Gauntleroy. The Inn was also changed to Horrible Hall, and the concept of other ghoulish bands making appearances came in. Guest bands were given names like the Mummies and the Puppies, the Japanese Beatles, the Rolling Rocks, the Door Jammers, and the Snapping Turtles. Short sketch segments were also created, including “Dracula’s Ask-It Basket,” “Frankenstein’s Wild World of Sports,” “Hagatha’s Bed Time Story,” “Dracula’s Eerie History Lesson,” “The Mummy Wrap-up,” “Wolfman’s Wild World of Animals,” and “Bella’s Horror-Scope,” among others. “By January 1970, we had crystallized the concept into pretty much what it was going to be,” said Scheimer, “although at that point the title of the group was The Kookie Spookies. Dracula was generally known as 'Drac,' Frankenstein was called 'Frankie,' Wolfman was now 'Wolfie,' and we had added regular characters like the vaudevillian Mummy and a hand-in-a-glove known as Hoolahand. One of the musical groups that might have guested was the cleverly named Sinus and Carbunkle. And some of the short departments were now grouped together in a segment called 'The Weird Wall.' Bella’s car was a psychedelic vehicle known as the Bug, which could fly and hold any amount of occupants, like a circus clown car.” By March the title had been changed again to The Googlie Goolies and, finally, to The Groovie Goolies. More minor changes were made, such as changing Gauntleroy into Hauntleroy, but most of the developed ideas stayed. In a 2006 commentary track for the Groovie Goolies DVD set, Jack Mendelsohn recalled that monster movies “were what I was brought up on… I think every kid was influenced strongly, sometimes negatively. I remember the original Frankenstein movie scared me a lot. In Groovie Goolies, we went the opposite direction.” He noted that the monsters were “likable and almost cuddly, and pretty harmless. They were not that bright, and you couldn’t really be afraid of them.” 34

With The Archie Comedy Hour a hit—as was a 1969 CBS entry about ghosts and monsters called Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!— Silverman asked for another refresh of the concept, and commissioned from Filmation two hour-long shows for CBS’s Fall 1970 schedule: Archie’s Fun House and Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies. The decision was made to tie-in the Goolies cast to the world of Sabrina, as the teen witch had to use all sorts of explanations to help keep her friends at Riverdale High ignorant of the supernatural elements of her “black sheep cousins.”

Haunting Horrible Hall

Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies debuted on CBS on September 12, 1970, at 9:00 a.m., followed by Archie’s Fun House at 11:00 a.m. In the one-hour Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies, each Sabrina half-hour featured two stories with bridging joke segments; almost every storyline included scenes with her co-stars, the Groovie Goolies. The dialogue often reinforced the Goolies as Sabrina’s cousins, and the Goolies called Hilda by the sobriquet “Aunt Hilda” as well. Twenty-eight Sabrina stories were produced, resulting in 14 new half-hours. The Groovie Goolies segment was also a half-hour, but 16 episodes were produced, each featuring an over-arcing story, multiple gag segments, and two songs: one was a featured song with the main cast, and the other was a guest-of-the-week song with a guest group. “The tone was a lot like Laugh-In, with a lot of speedy gags, a laugh track, and very short stories, without much of a plot connecting it all. Whatever plot there was often connected to the songs,” said Scheimer. Most episodes originally had a laugh track added, though this was removed from later airings. Groovie Goolies was set at Horrible Hall, a haunted boarding house on Horrible Drive. The main Goolies cast was as follows: Count Dracula/Drac was a cranky vampire who could change into a bat; Hagatha was his short, portly 300-year-old wife who slaved in the kitchen over a cauldron; Frankie was the lovable Frankenstein monster with a kyphosis stoop; Wolfie was the hairy beatnik/hippie wolfman who loved skateboarding and surfing; the lithesome Bella La Ghostly was the vampy switchboard operator at Horrible Hall; the Mummy was a bandaged TV news announcer RetroFan

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who was easily flustered… and often unwound; Bone Apart (a.k.a. Bonapart) was a walking skeleton with a bicorn hat, who often fell to pieces; Ratso and Batso were two preteen practical-joking imps who loved to cause trouble; and Hauntleroy was Hagatha’s nephew, a child-sized coward in a porkpie hat. Less commonly-seen characters included: Dr. Jekyll-Hyde was a two-headed schizophrenic medical doctor; the piano-playing giant hand known as Ghoulihand also served as Drak’s aide-de-camp; and any question could possibly be answered by the movable Ask-it Casket. Puns abounded on the series. Hagatha’s sweeping implement was called Broomhilda, while the telephone was called “Tell-a-Bone,” and the Spookoo Clock had a vulture coming out of it instead of a songbird. The Lovesick Loveseat was a sofa with a crush that always tried to embrace Drac, and the Goolies travelled in a Gool Bus. Fortunes were read via a Horror-scope, and transportation between floors was accomplished via the skull-shaped Skelevator. Wolfie’s pet was Fido, a flying piranha, while Frankie’s pets were an overly affectionate pet sauropod dinosaur named Rover and a voracious thing-eating plant named Orville. Icky and Goo were gargoyles and the resident Horrible Hall pets. In each episode, the Goolies offer an abundance of goofy gags: in “Weird Window Time,” characters would pop out to make two-line rapid-fire jokes in the style of classic Laugh-In scenes; Hagatha would tell “Hagatha’s Bedtime Stories,” or give recipes “From the Witch’s Kitchen”; the Mummy would give spooky news in “The Mummy’s Wrap-Up”; the monsters would watch history remade while viewing “Home Movies”; Wolfie would give his twist on fairy tales in “Wolfie’s Theater”; Drac would teach monstrous science in “Dracula’s Schoolhouse”; and Frankie would don a cape and become the horrific superhero Super Ghoul. The voice cast for Groovie Goolies were all Filmation regulars, voice-directed by either Norm Prescott or Lou Scheimer. “We had a great bunch of voice actors for the series,” recalled Scheimer. “Howard Morris was Frankie and Wolfie, and he played them similar to Boris Karloff and popular DJ Wolfman Jack. He also did the Mummy as if it were Ed Wynn, plus Ghoulihand and the bratty little Hauntleroy. Jane Webb was Hagatha and Bella La Ghostly, and Larry D. Mann was Bone Apart, Batso, and a few others. We also used Larry Storch a lot in this as Drac, Ratso, and some others.

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(TOP AND CENTER) Drac and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Frankie meets the wrong end of a sword while skateboarding in these Groovie Goolies scenes. (BOTTOM) Character design reference sheets. Groovie Goolies © the respective copyright holder. Sabrina © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

I think he did 15 voices total.” Dallas McKennon and John Erwin would step in from time to time for guest spots.

Monsters of Rock

As noted, each episode ended with an original Groovie Goolies rock song presented in the form of a wildly animated music video. In the animated band, Drac played the organ, Frankie played the xylophone and drums, and Wolfie played a stringed instrument that resembled a lyre. The four “guest bands” that sang the guest songs were the Mummies and the Puppies (led by diminutive ukulele-playing Tiny Tomb and his mummified cyclopean wife, Missy, alongside Mama Casket and four literal puppies), the Spirits of ’76 (a trio of ghosts in tri-corner hats), the Rolling Headstones (Hudson Rock, Captain Marble, and General Granite), and the Bare Bones Band (three skeletons). Richard Delvy Productions was in charge of producing the music for the bands, which included 32 songs for the season (two per week) and the theme. Richard Delvy, Ed Fournier, and Dick Monda produced the songs. Vocals were credited to Bob Markland, Dave Mani, Ed Fournier, Dick Monda, Chris Sciarrotta, “and a host of other ghosts.” Larry Carlton played guitars, and percussion was by Ron Tutt, who had previously played with Elvis Presley. Under the pseudonym of “Daddy Dewdrop” in 1971, Monda had a huge hit with a redone version of one of the Goolies songs, “Chick-A-Boom.” Most of the songs were co-written by Sherry Gayden and Linda Martin, including the series theme song “Goolie Get-Together,” though a handful of songs were co-written by Janis Lee Gwin and Linda Martin. Copyrights show the songs registered on June 4 and 17, 1970. Background music was provided by Jeff Michael and Yvette Blais, with minor incidental music cues by Ray Ellis and David Jeffrey, and George Blais. What wasn’t revealed publicly until the publication of Creating the Filmation Generation was exactly who Filmation composers Yvette Blais and Jeff Michael were. In reality, “their” music was mostly composed by jazz legend Ray Ellis, former musical director for Billie Holiday. Ellis did background music for most Filmation series, but didn’t want to use his own name due to complications with royalties and various music publishing companies. Although Ellis had multiple pseudonyms, for Groovie Goolies, he used Yvette Blais, the maiden name of his wife. As for the other name in the credits, “Jeff Michael” was a mix of the first names of Filmation founder Norm Prescott’s two sons. Filmation controlled the publishing rights to the Groovie Goolies music under their company, Shermley Music, and Norm Prescott got a cut on all of the music due to his pseudonymous credit; it was a pretty standard deal for music rights producers. RCA bought the rights to the recorded music, however. “They wanted another blitz like The Archies and thought maybe they could be as successful as ‘Monster Mash’ from 1962, by Bobby Pickett,” said Scheimer. “They had a three-piece band set to tour the country playing fairs and concerts, while six groups of lookalikes were going to tour the country to promote the music at record stores, supermarkets, radio stations, etc.” The debut Groovie Goolies album was released the first week in September 1970, as well as the single, which featured “Save Your Good Lovin’ for Me” and “First Annual, Semi-Formal, Combination Celebration, Meet the Monster Population Party.” The album featured uncredited actors as the head trio, but it was actually Dick Monda, a.k.a. “Daddy Dewdrop” as Drac; songwriter Jeffrey Thomas as Frankie; and music producer Ed Fournier as Wolfie. A small image from the cartoon show was featured on the front cover, although Filmation, Lou Scheimer, Norm Prescott, and Hal Sutherland were mentioned on the back of the album, which also carried the company logo. Although the cover’s trio did not play any live gigs, they did appear in costume at L.A.’s Magic Castle, in costume, for one promotional appearance. Records of any tour dates of another band prior to summer 1972 cannot be found, but a live band of the Groovie Goolies played for two weeks at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe that summer and were booked for the Michigan State Fair starting August 27th for two-and-a-half weeks (alongside John (TOP TO BOTTOM) Voice actors Howie Davidson, the Platters, and other acts). Rob Morris and Larry Storch in Filmation and Wes Dawn, who had done costumes photos, Larry Mann in the recording and make-up for the Mission: Impossible TV studio, and John Erwin from an episode series, handled the on-stage look of the live of Rawhide. Goolies. 36

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Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

(TOP) The 1970 RCA Groovie Goolies album, the cover art for an unproduced album of Filmation theme songs, and singer Dick Monda. (BOTTOM) More of Mendelsohn’s hand-written notes for band names, and early Filmation color presentation art for some of the bands, before designs were changed. Groovie Goolies © the respective copyright holder. Shazam © DC Comics. Tarzan © ERB, Inc. Archie and Sabrina © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Isis © Classic Media. Other characters © their respective copyright holders.

A planned series of “spoken word” cassette tapes for The Archies and Groovie Goolies was planned by Filmation. Since they did not contain music, Filmation would own all rights to them. Sadly, the project never came to fruition. A later album of Filmation’s TV Themes was also planned, which would have included the Goolies themselves, but it never made it past the cover treatment stage. TV star Ted Knight—also a Filmation voice alum—did record and release the album “Hi Guys” in 1975. The record (and cassette tape and 8-track) contained 13 novelty tunes such as “May the Bird of Paradise Fly up Your Nose,” “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” and the Groovie Goolies hit “Chick-A-Boom.” “To say Ted sang would be an overstatement,” said Scheimer, “but it’s apropos that the background vocals were credited to ‘Ted Knight and the Poops.’ ”

Loonies and Goolies Get Together

As expected, Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies was a solid hit in the ratings for the 1970–1971 season, but CBS was ready to switch-up its schedule for Fall 1971. Groovie Goolies was split off from Sabrina and moved to Sundays at 9:30 a.m., beginning September 12, 1971. Neither the Goolies nor Sabrina had any new episodes that season, nor ever again on CBS. That did not mean, however, the end of the Goolies. After all, any good monster can rise from the grave! For Fall 1972, ABC announced a new hour-long series titled Saturday Morning at the Movies. It was one of the first moves of Joseph Taritero, moving from ABC’s advertising department over to become “Director of Children’s Feature Films” under Michael Eisner. Each of the films was to be produced by various studios. RetroFan

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Filmation was given the third slot for a strange project called “Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies.” “That was the weirdest project for us and really sprang out of that deal we had with Warner Bros.,” said Scheimer. “We had the rights to use some of their characters, so we did this special in which the Warner Brothers characters came out to Hollywood and wanted to meet the Groovie Goolies. We used a lot of the main Warner characters, except Bugs Bunny and the little mouse guy, Speedy Gonzales. And I think it’s the only time we used that wonderful voice actor, Mel Blanc, although he may have been ill then. FAST FACTS

Primary Voice Cast hh Larry Storch: Drac, Ratso hh Howard Morris: Frankie, Wolfie, Mummy, Ghoulihand, Hauntleroy hh Jane Webb: Hagatha, Bella La Ghostly, Broomhilda, Sabrina Spellman, Aunt Hilda, Aunt Zelda hh Larry D. Mann: Bone Apart, Batso hh John Erwin: Rover, Hexter hh Dallas McKennon: Salem

Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

SONGS FROM GROOVIE GOOLIES As noted in the main article, two songs were featured in each episode. The writers’ surnames are in parenthesis. As aired, each song was 2:50 long. Those marked with a * were featured in full-length on the 1970 Groovie Goolies album, but some are shorter on the album and some are longer! #0 #1a #1b #2a #2b

#3a #3b #4a #4b #5a #5b #6a #6b #7a #7b #8a #8b #9a #9b #10a #10b

“Groove Goolies Theme” (Gayden/Martin) * “Monster Cookbook” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “When I Grow Up” – Performed by the Mum- mies and the Puppies (Gayden/Martin) “One, Two, Three” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) * “First Annual, Semi-Formal, Combination Celebration, Meet the Monster Population Party (Monster Party)” – Performed by the Bare Bones Band (Gayden/Martin) * “Cling Clang” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) * “Lights Out” – Performed by the Rolling Headstones (Gayden/Martin) “Goolie Garden” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) * “Monsters on Parade” – Performed by the Spirits of ’76 (Gayden/Martin) “Monster Trio (Frightening Frankie)” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gwin/ Martin) “Super Ghoul” – Performed by the Bare Bones Band (Gwin/Martin) “Feed the Ghost Some Garlic” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “Midnight” – Performed by the Rolling Headstones (Gwin/Martin) “Frankie” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) * “Be Kind to Monsters Week” – Performed by the Spirits of ’76 (Gwin/Martin) “What's in the Bag?” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “When the Moon Is Full” – Performed by the Mummies and the Puppies (Gayden/Martin) “Goolie Picnic” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “Little Texas Goolie” – Performed by the Spirits of ’76 (Gayden/Martin) “Noises” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “Where You Going Little Ghoul?” – Performed by the Mummies and the Puppies (Gayden/ Martin)

#11a #11b #12a #12b #13a #13b #14a #14b #15a #15b #16a #16b

“Gool School” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gwin/Martin) “Bumble Goolie” – Performed by the Bare Bones Band (Gayden/Martin) * “Save Your Good Lovin’ for Me” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) * “Chic-A-Boom (a.k.a. “Chick-A-Boom”)” – Performed by the Rolling Headstones (Gwin/ Martin) “Darlin’ Darlin’” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “Kings and Queens” – Performed by the Bare Bones Band (Gayden/Martin) “Shadows” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gwin/Martin) “Lovely Night for Scaring” – Performed by the Mummies and the Puppies (Gayden/Martin) “Witches Brew” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “Creeper Crawler” – Performed by the Rolling Headstones (Gwin/Martin) “Goolie Swing” – Performed by the Groovie Goolies (Gayden/Martin) “Listen for the Bells” (a.k.a. “Goolie Get Together”) – Performed by the Spirits of ’76 (Gayden/Martin)

Note: An additional two non-animated songs—“We Go So Good Together” (Gayden/Martin) and “Spend Some Time Together” (Gayden/Martin)—are on the Groovie Goolies album.

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Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

Cel art featuring both Filmation and Warner characters from Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies. Groovie Goolies © the respective copyright holder. Looney Tunes characters © Warner Bros.

He had a terrible accident, and that may be the time his son did some stuff for us, imitating his dad.” Bugs Bunny was not banned solely from Filmation use; he had not appeared in any new project since the closing of Warner Bros.’ animation unit in 1964, and did not appear again until 1976. The script was written by Filmation regulars Len Janson and Chuck Menville, with direction by company co-founder Hal Sutherland. The story began with Daffy Duck in Hollywood, making a movie about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, in which he is going to star, alongside Porky Pig, Petunia Pig, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, Tweety, Wile E. Coyote, Foghorn Leghorn, and Pepe LePew. The Goolies watch an interview with Daffy on TV, when suddenly it is interrupted by the Phantom of the Flickers, who vows to destroy all of Daffy’s films, past, present, and future! The Goolies travel to Hollywood to help the Looney Tunes characters defeat the Phantom, but mistaken identities and the villain’s masks convince Daffy that the Goolies are working against him. Eventually, the Phantom is revealed as Drac’s longlost uncle, “Claude Chaney” (a nod to horror icons Lon Chaney and Claude Rains), and order is restored. In addition to the animated story mixing the Warner and Filmation stars, the special included a live-action segment with the Goolies as well, in which they went through “Mad Mirror Land” into the real world, chasing after the Phantom (now disguised as Hauntleroy), who has stolen Daffy’s film and hidden it in a guitar case. “We filmed it in a kind of stop-motion called ‘pixelation,’ so they had kind of a cartoon feel,” Scheimer said. “That even enabled us to have Drac appear to fly by flapping his cape without using wires to hold him up.” The live sequence was filmed in Westlake Village near Thousand Oaks, directed by Robert P. Chenault. The four men portraying the RetroFan

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live-action Goolies were familiar, even if some had swapped roles from their album cover: Richard Monda was still Drac; songwriter Jeffrey Thomas was now Wolfie; music producer Ed Fournier was now Frankie; and musician Emory Lee Gordy, Jr. was Hauntleroy. “They did a great job portraying their animated counterparts, and, if we had pursued any live Goolies show, they would have been a lock for it,” said Scheimer. “Overall, it was really a strange project.” The Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies episode of The Saturday Superstar Movie aired on ABC at 8:30 a.m., on December 16th. It was never rerun on network television, and a later syndicated version and European video releases excised the live-action scenes. The complete videos survive today on the Internet thanks to a re-edited syndicated video of the sequences.

Goolies Never Cel Out, They Just Fade

In late October 1975, when Filmation’s Uncle Croc’s Block infamously flamed into oblivion as an hour-long series, reruns of Groovie Goolies got put into the second slot. ABC cancelled the reruns of Groovie Goolies on February 14th, 1976. Filmation had plans to reintroduce Groovie Goolies in 1977 in a new network show, rumored to be titled “Super Fiends,” but nothing ever came of it. However, NBC had ordered a series called The New Archie/Sabrina Hour, which featured one 12-minute Sabrina story per show (onscreen, the

Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

The 1970 Filmation Christmas Card featured the Goolies trio puppeteering Filmation co-founders Hal Sutherland, Lou Scheimer, and Norm Prescott! © the respective copyright holder.

The final Goolies episode featured a walk-on by several Filmation staffers and animators: Bill Nunes, animator (red shirt); Ramon “Monchy” Martinez, supplies (big guy, white shirt); Joe Mazzucca (little guy, red jacket); (green shirt: unknown); Herb Hazelton, layout (orange jacket and ’stache); (yellow shirt: unknown); and Don Christensen, art director (white shirt & tie). © the respective copyright holder.

show was titled SuperWitch, but internally, at Filmation, the series Meet the Groovie Goolies movie! The syndicated series launched in was called “The New Sabrina”). Thirteen SuperWitch shorts were September 1978. Filmation produced new opening credits, and produced, at least one of which featured the Goolies, and Frankie new “bumpers” to introduce the cartoons. appeared in the closing credits. The New Archie/Sabrina Hour deIn 1978, Filmation announced plans for several theatrical projbuted on September 10th, 1977, at 9:30 a.m. The Goolies’ appearects for past series, including Fat Albert, Groovie Goolies, and The ances on NBC in this series make them some of the few animated Archies in animated form, but the projects never materialized. characters to appear on all three major television networks, from The final canonical appearance of the Groovie Goolies from the same production studio! Filmation came in the most unexpected of ways. In 1975, Filmation In mid-September 1977, Metromedia Producers Corp. made had created a live-action comedy series for CBS called The Ghost a deal with Filmation to syndicate Busters. In it, Larry Storch (one of the FAST FACTS Groovie Goolies and Friends, a packGoolies voices) played Spencer, his age that included 104 half-hours of F Troop co-star Forrest Tucker played Filmation-controlled shows: Groovie Kong, and Bob Burns wore a gorilla Goolies (16 half-hours), The Adventures suit to play Tracy. The trio busted hh No. of seasons: One of Waldo Kitty (13 half-hours, reghosts and monsters weekly, with named now as “The New Adventures more than a few similarities to hh No. of episodes: 16 of Waldo Kitty” due to a 1975 lawsuit), Groovie Goolies along the way. hh Original run: September 12, 1970– Lassie’s Rescue Rangers (17 half-hours), In 1986, after winning a lawsuit September 4, 1971 (CBS) The New Adventures of Gilligan (24 against Columbia who misapproprihalf-hours), My Favorite Martians (16 ated the Ghostbusters name for their hh Reruns: Fall 1971–Fall 1972 (CBS), half-hours), and a segment featuring feature film, Filmation revived their October 1975–Spring 1976 (ABC) M-U-S-H, Wacky and Packy, and Fraidy original concept as Ghostbusters, hh Guest-starred in: Sabrina (1970, Cat (18 shorts culled from the failed featuring the sons of Spenser and CBS, 14 episodes) Filmation series Uncle Croc’s Block). Kong, alongside Tracy the gorilla. One episode featured a never-aired The Ghostbusters series ran in synhh Guest-starred in: The New Sabrina/ King Arthur pilot, and a special Goolies dication for 65 original episodes. SuperWitch (1977, NBC) episode called the “The Haunted In the show, the Skelevator was hh TV film: The Saturday Superstar Heist.” This “new” episode was acturevived, and in the 36th episode, Movie: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet ally a small bit of new footage (about “Shades of Dracula,” the vampire the Groovie Goolies (December 16, Hauntleroy stealing Wolfie’s guitar) was more than a little reminiscent 1972, ABC) combined with the edited live footage of Drac from Groovie Goolies. The from the Daffy Duck and Porky Pig 50th episode, “The Girl Who Cried

Groovie Goolies

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Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

(LEFT) Color presentation art for Fright Camp, and (RIGHT) design art for The Goolies (both c. 1984). © the respective copyright holder.

Vampire,” took it a step further, using direct designs and animation from the Goolies!

The Remakes That Almost Were

As this article for RetroFan was being completed, a previously unknown dossier of Goolies history surfaced. eBay seller Tom Gibson had bought the contents of a storage unit at auction, and discovered that it contained presentation pieces and art for over a dozen potential Filmation projects, most of which never made it to the animation table. He sold one set to Mark Vanis, who graciously shared the materials with this author. They reveal that a surprisingly large amount of work was done on two different concepts to revive the Groovie Goolies… as next-generation toddlers! Initially called “Night Camp,” the first project was renamed at some point to “Fright Camp.” The opening description reads: Deep in the hills, not far from where you live, lies an area that even the Sierra Club would like to see developed, burned down, or strip mined: The Great Putrid Swamp. Smack in the middle of this mucky, sloshy, smelly piece of prime real estate stands FRIGHT CAMP. FRIGHT CAMP is one of the most exclusive kiddie camps there is. The little ones who attend there come from some of the most distinguished families in TRANSUBURBIA! I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They’re all names you’ll find listed in the Boo Book… Frankenstein… Dracula… Wolfman… The Mummy… As the series pitch continued, it soon became clear that the series would star “The Junior Goolies,” the offspring of the Seventies monsters: green-skinned Pranky/Prankenstein (note the “P” not an “F”) is both super-strong and super-mischievous; Bella La Ghostly is the brainy witch who leads the others around her; Count RetroFan

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Kidula is a vampire who is also a spoiled bat; Willbee Wolf is the ultra-cool werewolf who finds that music soothes his savage beast; Mummy’s Boy is a sensitive poet who cries so much that his bandages are moist; Rattles is a hat-wearing skeleton who isn’t very bright; Spot is a baby brontosaurus and the camp’s pet/ mascot; the Invisible Boy is on his way to becoming a proper mad scientist; and other monsters, including Ratso and Bratso, Boo Boy, Baby Snaggletooth, Harrington Headstone, Dr. Hiccup and Baby Burp, Baby Big Foot, cyclopean Eye-Ris, the Not-Quite-YetAbominable Snowman, and more. The two humans at Fright Camp, who often have to corral their monstrous charges, are scoutmaster-like Sonny Harrison, and his girlfriend, the beautiful Jennifer West. The show was planned for three segments: an 11-minute Fright Camp story (either at the camp or on a field trip to the Petrified Forest, Snarlsbad Caverns, Shriek’s Peak, Screech Beach, or the Madder Horn); a three-minute “Fright Camp Anything Ghosts” short with jokes and skits; and a six-and-a-half-minute “Fright Campfire Tales,” wherein the junior Goolies or other night creatures would tell stories. In plots suggested, spooky puns and parodies abounded, including a “Tupperscare party,” “a Gool Light Special at the Monster Mart,” the National Gooliegraphic Society, Briar Patch Dolls, and opportunities to win a prize in a “creepstakes.” Guest bands would play on M.T.V. (Monster Television) music segments, including the Rolling Tombstones or the Cool Goolie Boogie Band. Included among the Fright Camp materials are almost a dozen large color presentation boards which seem to show a second, different show being developed. In what appears to be a project called “The Goolies,” all of the adult characters we know and love are toddler/child versions of themselves. In these, the werewolf child is called “Wee Wolfie,” and the fetching witch girl is “Trixie,” while a 41

Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

female ghost named “Blythe Spirit” and the portly “Haggatha” also appear. The Goolies are shown interacting more with humans in the normal world, or enjoying time at Horrible Hall, including telling jokes at the Horrible Hall Wall of windows. A few illustrations even show the Goolies interacting with aliens and pirates. Filmation’s duck vampire Quacula (from their 1979 series, The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle) shows up in one piece, perhaps implying that the character might become a part of the prospective show. When shown the Fright Camp and The Goolies material, a large group of ex-Filmation employees had no memory of the projects at all, and were unable to identify who had worked on them. According to some of the notes, the projects were likely developed around 1984, and one page of the proposals appeals directly to Lou Scheimer himself. This would have been the period of time when Filmation was not getting any network show orders, and so created the new-every-weekday animation syndication market, beginning with 1983’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. An immediate comparison to Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies may spring to mind, but that series didn’t debut on CBS until September 1984, meaning that the Filmation development was probably concurrent, rather than derivative. DC Comics had unsuccessfully tried to license pint-sized versions of their heroes as “Super Jrs.” in 1982 and beyond, but the later proliferation of kiddie versions— Baby Looney Tunes, The Flinstones Kids, Tom & Jerry Kids, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, and others in a wave of “babification” of cartoons— was still years away. It would appear then that the heavilydeveloped-but-never-seen Fright Camp/The Goolies material may have been just ahead of its time!

Still Groovie After All These Years

Over the nearly four decades since its debut, a number of Groovie Goolies licensed items have been released. One of the earliest was Post Alpha-Bits cereal in 1970, which featured a free Goolies poster on the back of a box, and a set of stickers inside (predating General Mills’ Count Chockula and Franken Berry cereals!). Phoenix Candy Co. released a series of comic and animation-related boxed candy in 1971, including Groovie Goolies (one side of the box featured Drac, the other side, Wolfie). That same year, Whitman released a coloring book and a Magic Slate, and Fairchild released three puzzles, each featuring original network presentation art by Filmation: “Wolfie’s Weird World of Sports,” “Flickies,” and “Hagatha’s Bedtime Story.” In 1973, Ben Cooper released six Halloween costumes (all of which came with a rubber “Squeaky the Bat”). Retailer Woolworths offered a set of PVC figurines from Chemtoy Corporation in 1974, both carded and loose. The most rare collectibles for a Goolies fan would likely be the Filmation Christmas cards for 1970 and 1971, both of which featured Goolies art! In the fall and winter of 1979, Filmation began offering numbered and hand-painted sericels through Starlog and its sister magazine, Fangoria. These included images from Groovie Goolies, The Archies, and other Filmation hits such as Star Trek, Batman, and Fat Albert. In the U.S., Funtime Kid Video released two VHS 42

(TOP) Color presentation art for Fright Camp and (BOTTOM) The Goolies (both c. 1984). © the respective copyright holder.

tapes, while multiple foreign editions also exist (under names like “Croque Monstre,” “Los Monsters,” “La Familia Monsters,” “Die Lustige Monster Show,” “Muntere Monster,” and “Muntra Monstre”). Ironically, the name had to be changed for British audiences because “Goolies” is the slang term for testicles; the U.K. had some releases as “Groovie Ghouls.” The influence of Groovie Goolies can be traced to a number of later animated series and feature films, including: NBC’s liveaction Saturday morning show The Monster Squad (1976) and an unrelated feature film also called The Monster Squad (1987); HannaBarbera’s CBS series Drak Pack (1980); Hanna-Barbera’s NBC series Gravedale High (1990); Universal’s syndicated series Monster Force (1994); the Hotel Transylvania animated film and its sequel (2012, 2015); and even the toy line and animated specials for Mattel’s Monster High (2010). The complete Groovie Goolies series was released by BCI Eclipse on DVD on October 24, 2006 as Groovie Goolies: The Saturday RetroFan

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Andy Mangels' Retro Saturday Morning

Licensed materials featuring the Groovie Goolies include costumes from 1973, cereal appearances, a coloring book from 1970, and the 2006 DVD set. Groovie Goolies © the respective copyright holder.

Mourning Collection. The three-disc set was loaded with extras, including an original documentary by Hollywood voiceover actor and Goolies superfan Wally Wingert—with Lost actor Daniel Roebuck, rocker Alice Cooper, Famous Monsters publisher Forrest J Ackerman, Lou Scheimer, Jack Mendelsohn, Fred Silverman, and others—and two commentary tracks. Due to edited elements available from the licensor, some episodes did not include the original laugh track. Later, Genius Products released the entire 1970–1972 Sabrina series on DVD on April 29, 2008. The set includes all early episodes that feature the Goolies crossing over. Presently, the only Groovie Goolies material that has not been released on DVD format are: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies (unlikely to ever be rereleased); the Superwitch/New Sabrina season; and the new Goolies intros and materials from the syndicated Groovie Goolies and Friends package. Thanks to the DVDs and the Internet, the Goolies remain popular. In 2009, online site Crackle broadcast re-edited four-tosix-minute “minisodes” of Groovie Goolies, alongside series such as Diff’rent Strokes, Fantasy Island, and Charlie’s Angels minisodes. In RetroFan

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2010, Amok Time released a trio of 12-inch “Monstarz” maquettes of Drak, Frankie, and Wolfie. In 2015, rocker Rob Zombie offered Frankie and Wolfie guitar pics on his national tour. In 2017, LB Customs & Hot Toy Cars released a Halloween limited edition Goolies milk truck toy. Multiple bands have covered the Goolies theme song, and one long-running punk band even called themselves “Groovie Ghoulies” on nine albums, from 1983–2007. Fans of the series even have a special name for themselves: “Goolians.” And in a recent homage, the CW series Riverdale named its evil biker gang “The Goolies” in its 2017–2018 second season. In a commentary for the 2006 DVDs, Scheimer said he felt that some of the Goolies’ enduring popularity came from the fact that “it’s different than any other show done for Saturday morning. In the first place, it could have played at night. It did play for nighttime audiences. The speed and the pacing and the characters… they’re really funny characters, based on characters that had not really been made fun of before.” Co-creator Jack Mendelsohn looked back fondly on the Goolies in a commentary for the DVD set, saying, “As so many writing assignments start, it’s just a job… but then, it’s like a dating service. You fall in love with them sometimes. And this was a show I really loved. I really liked the energy of it.” Little more than a year-and-a-half prior to his passing (in October 2013), Lou Scheimer talked to me about the legacy of Filmation and the shows they produced, including Groovie Goolies. “When you do these shows, you never think about that lasting effect. You think, ‘Oh, I did a good show, and I made sure it had reasons for existing’… My feeling was that we were making the stuff for kids. And, if you do it for kids, you should lead those kids. Rather than finding a new reason for a character to get bonked on the head week after week after week, we tried to find things that were part of the character and characterization.” As for the fans and the rediscovery of Filmation’s animated legacy through the DVD releases and the internet, Scheimer added, “It’s been thrilling to me to see that we have had a group memory with the audience, and that the magic of Filmation has become alive and awake again. It seems extraordinary that people find our shows so interesting even now, and so meaningful to themselves that they want their children see the material.” Unless otherwise credited, the quotes from Lou Scheimer are from the autobiography he wrote with Andy Mangels, for TwoMorrows Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation. Artwork and photos are courtesy the collection of Andy Mangels, Mark Vanis, and Scott Awley. ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today best-selling author and co-author of 20 books, including the TwoMorrows book Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, as well as Star Trek and Star Wars tomes, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, and a lot of comic books. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced Special Features for over 40 DVD releases, including the Groovie Goolies collection. He recently wrote the Wonder Woman ’77 Meets the Bionic Woman series for Dynamite and DC Comics. His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com and www. WonderWomanMuseum.com 43

AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR…

by Michael Eury & Scott Saavedra

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

Dinosaur Land That Time Ignored!

Prehistoric monsters add the perfect touch to that family getaway… we wonder if young Michael Crichton or Steven Spielberg visited here. Dinosaur Land ad courtesy of Scott Shaw!

by Scott Shaw! San Diego, California, was an enjoyable place for a young Oddball (like me) to grow up in the late Fifties and early Sixties. It was a U.S. Navy town and I was a Navy brat obsessed with cartoons, dinosaurs, comic books, monsters, and the weird side of natural history. Fortunately for kids like me, we had Balboa Park, with its world-famous San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Museum of Man, and dozens of art museums, arboretums, and other cool hideaways, mostly with free admission. But as much as I loved them all, there RetroFan

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was no local landmark I’d rather visit than the San Diego Museum of Natural History. Why? Dinosaurs, of course. Actually, half a dinosaur, and not even a real fossil, either; it was only a plaster casting of the skeleton of a duck-billed Corythosaurus embedded in a very big wall at the end of one of the museum’s halls, but that was good enough for me. There wasn’t much else in the way of paleontology: a few beautiful—small, but beautiful—bronze dinosaur statues based 45

The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

Brochure to the short-lived amusement park. From the collection of Scott Shaw! (INSET) Also from Scott, a rare photo of a lucky kid’s Jurassic lark.

on artwork by Charles R. Knight; a taxidermy-style replica of a Smilodon (that’s a “saber-toothed tiger” to you); and a few fossil fragments of Smilodon and dire wolf skulls from the La Brea Tar Pits, the legendary “Death Trap of the Ages” in downtown Los Angeles. Since then, the San Diego Museum of Natural History has grown in size and sophistication, even boasting a spectacular timeline mural by noted paleo-wildlife artist William Stout. I should point out that, in those days, dinosaurs weren’t generally considered to be cool and popular with kids like they are these days. Sure, back then, every boy loved mega-monster movie matinees, but it was due more to hurling Good-and-Plentys at each other than genuine scientific interest. And I think that all of those colorful plastic dinosaurs dangling in toy displays in the supermarkets of America were bought by the same little weirdos (like me) who bought every single issue of Dell’s Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, DC’s Star Spangled War Stories featuring “The War That Time Forgot,” and Charlton’s Gorgo, not to mention the Pyramid paperback reissue of The Lost World —tying in with the Irwin Allen movie—and copies of Oliver Butterworth’s The Enormous Egg and Roy Chapman Andrews’ All About Dinosaurs. But a lot of us were amateur paleontologists, memorizing the names, sizes, and geologic era of every dinosaur we could remember. 46

But as all geeks eventually learn, the Real World rarely shares our passion for such ephemera. Girls giggled derisively when I corrected “Parasaurolophus” and other mispronunciations of creature names. I got beaten up for naming our four-square team “The Triceratops.” When my teachers screened “A World is Born”—the “educational” edit of the “Rite of Spring” sequence of Disney’s Fantasia (1940)—I’d have to hide my face from my classmates so they wouldn’t see that the sight of dying cartoon dinosaurs always made me cry. I was even called “Dinosaur Boy,” which was intended as an insult but was what I considered a compliment. At least dinosaurs became a bit more acceptable in September 1960, when ABC premiered a very popular new “adult’ cartoon show about cavemen and dinosaurs called The Flintstones. (But believe me, that’s another story.) The teasing and bullying never deterred my fascination with all things extinct. (Hanna-Barbera Productions’ The Flintstones, RetroFan

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The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

These and other examples of early Sixties dino-pop culture drove young Master Shaw! wild. The pen-andink illustration is by artist Louis Darling, from Oliver Butterworth’s book, The Enormous Egg.

Star Spangled War Stories/The War That Time Forgot © DC Comics. Gorgo © King Brothers Productions, Ltd. Other properties © their respective copyright holders.

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The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

You know this must’ve turned some heads on the highway! One of Dinosaur Land’s attractions in transit, in a Sixties photograph courtesy of Jimmy Dorantes (www.jimmydorantes.com). Dorantes has produced an engaging short documentary about Dinosaur Land which can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1phPZ3-Bhl.

combining cartoons and prehistory, kept me going.) Then, toward the end of the school year in 1962, my father called my attention to an ad appearing in the San Diego Evening Tribune: Of course, its “DON’T FEED THE DINOSAURS!!” disclaimer was what sealed the deal to this 11-year-old dino-maniac. Who the hell wants to picnic, swim, or relax when you’re on the same piece of land as gigantic replicas of the coolest creatures ever to tread the earth? “RELAX”?!? This tidbit of news had me writhing in frustrated anticipation for most of the summer until I learned that this new lost world would be called “Dinosaur Land” and it would be located in Alpine, about 30 winding miles east, past La Mesa and El Cajon and through the Cuyamaca Mountains, which are covered by the Cleveland National Forest. Hey, dinosaurs were practically lurking in my back yard! It was finally announced that Dinosaur Land would open in a few weeks, on Saturday, August 5, 1962. I mounted the same sort of take-no-prisoners campaign to convince my parents that it was essential that I be among those ersatz “terrible lizards” on the very first day. Being an obsessive and annoying only child, I got my wish, and it wasn’t long before my father drove my mother and me out to Alpine. Mom kept commenting about how pretty the forest and landscape were, but all I was looking for was a dinosaur lurking amid the timber. When we finally arrived and parked in a dusty dirt lot, I was a bit disheartened. Dinosaur Land had no spectacular facade like Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm or even the world famous San Diego Zoo (sorry, but if you grow up in San Diego, it’s always “world famous”), just a sign and a little wooden ticket booth next to a wrought iron gate. But once we started walking down a path, my 48

Meet Dinosaur Boy: young Scott Shaw! at Dinosaur Land. Bet you’re jealous!

doubts proved unfounded. I was face-to-face with a huge fiberglass Stegosaurus. I felt like King Kong’s Carl Denham for a moment! There was also a Triceratops, a Brontosaurus, a Dimetrodon, and a few more imposing statues, ten in all, built by a man named William Swan. Few photos exist, but my memory tells me that they were much better done than the average roadside dinos. In addition to the inanimate giants, there was a trout pond, a scruffy old male lion sleeping in a circus wagon, kiddie rides, a muddy swimming pool, and a run-down diner/concession stand that was decorated to resemble a cave. (At least, I think that was the intention. Either that or a tar pit.) And, like the (w.f.) San Diego Zoo, there were spectacular Indian Blue Peacocks roaming everywhere. Their eerie cries added atmosphere; the noises sounded exactly like I imagined a hungry Pterodactyl would squawk. RetroFan

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The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

Dinosaur Land’s publicity promised such forthcoming attractions as a volcano-themed roller coaster, water rides, and “walkaround character suit” dinosaurs. But sadly, none of those ever materialized. In fact, our visit to the park on Opening Day was also our last one. The place simply wasn’t around that long. Unfortunately, whoever owned Dinosaur Land never saw the profits they were expecting. Travelers stopped in Alpine for food and gasoline, not for dinosaurs (the fools!). Sometime in 1964, Dinosaur Land became a thing of the past. Or did it? In the wake of the closure, some of the fiberglass dinosaurs were removed to an unknown location. However, a few were left behind. Between vandals and harsh weather, the remaining dinosculpts were severely damaged. Eventually, the land was sold and a mobile home trailer park sprung up where Dinosaur Land used to be. Life went on in Alpine. Fortunately, “The Lost World of Prehistoria” left behind one of its denizens, “Bob the Dinosaur,” a statue originally built in 1963. Two Alpine locals, Adrian and Effrum Kruso, reconstructed Bob, whose exact species remains vague at best. During the holiday season, the residents of the trailer park even decorate Bob with strings of lights.

If you’re ever in Alpine, California, use the directions below to see the last dinosaur from Dinosaur Land over 50 years ago. …And please, say “hello” to Bob from me. For 47 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW! has written and drawn underground comix, mainstream comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, TV cartoons, toys, advertising, and video games. He has worked on such characters as Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew (which he co-created with Roy Thomas), Sonic the Hedgehog, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the Futurama gang, the Muppet Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids, and yes, even Annoying Orange. His career has garnered him four Emmy Awards, an Eisner Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is also known for his “Oddball Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the craziest comic books ever published” and for his regular participation in “Quick Draw!” with Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also one of the teenagers who co-created what is currently known as Comic-Con International: San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan event. He can be reached at shawcartoons.com.

When in Alpine, visit Bob the Dinosaur. Photo by and courtesy of Jimmy Dorantes.

Directions to Bob the Dinosaur:

East of San Diego, Tavern Road exit, East on Alpine Blvd, on your left just after the stop sign in the middle of town (and after the Alpine Inn and the Woman’s Club). Drive into the mobile home park, a driveway for a house, into a small wooded area. You should see Bob as soon as you turn in. He’s on private property, so please ask permission…

RetroFan

Fall 2018

COMICS MAGAZINES FROM TWOMORROWS BACK ISSUE

BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through a variety of recurring (and rotating) departments, including Pro2Pro interviews (between two top creators), “Greatest Stories Never Told”, retrospective articles, and more. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

BACK ISSUE #106

ALTER EGO

ALTER EGO, the greatest ‘zine of the ‘60s, is all-new, focusing on Golden and Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews and unseen art. Each issue includes an FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) section, Mr. Monster & more. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

ALTER EGO #154

COMIC BOOK CREATOR

COMIC BOOK CREATOR is the new voice of the comics medium, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Edited by JON B. COOKE.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #18

DRAW!

DRAW! is the professional “How-To” magazine on cartooning and animation. Each issue features in-depth interviews and step-by-step demonstrations from top comics professionals. Some issues contain figure-drawing instruction nudity; Mature Readers Only. Edited by MIKE MANLEY.

DRAW #35

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through interviews with Kirby and his contemporaries, feature articles, and rare & unseen Kirby artwork, showcased in dynamic full-color! Edited by JOHN MORROW.

KIRBY COLLECTOR #74

ALLEN BELLMAN (1940s Timely artist) interviewed by DR. MICHAEL J. VASSALLO, with art by SHORES, BURGOS, BRODSKY, SEKOWSKY, EVERETT, & JAFFEE. Plus Marvel’s ’70s heroines: LINDA FITE & PATY COCKRUM on The Cat, CAROLE SEULING on Shanna the She-Devil, & ROY THOMAS on Night Nurse—with art by SEVERIN, FRADON, ANDRU, and more! With FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Career-spanning discussion with STEVE “THE DUDE” RUDE, as he shares his reallife psychological struggles, the challenges of freelance subsistence, and his creative aspirations. Also: The jungle art of NEAL ADAMS, MARY FLEENER on her forthcoming graphic novel Billie the Bee and her comix career, RICH BUCKLER interview Part Three, Golden Age artist FRANK BORTH, HEMBECK and more!

Fantasy/sci-fi illustrator DONATO GIANCOLA (Game of Thrones) demos his artistic process, GEORGE PRATT (Enemy Ace: War Idyll, Batman: Harvest Breed) discusses his work as comic book artist, illustrator, fine artist, and teacher, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS, JERRY ORDWAY’S regular column, and MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp.” Mature Readers Only.

FUTUREPAST! Kirby’s “World That Was” from Caveman days to the Wild West, and his “World That’s Here” of Jack’s visions of the future that became reality! TWO COVERS: Bullseye inked by BILL WRAY, and Jack’s unseen Tiger 21 concept art! Plus: interview with ROY THOMAS about Jack, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER moderating the biggest Kirby Tribute Panel of all time, pencil art galleries, and more!

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RETRO TOYS

Barbie’s British Rival The Rise and Fall of a Supertoy by Elizabeth & Ian Millsted The Rise

Fashion dolls were popular in the Sixties and Seventies, but while pre-teen girls in the U.S.A. were likely to be playing with, and collecting, Barbie dolls, the same age group in Britain at that time were more likely to be spending their time and money on Sindy. In 1968 and 1970, Sindy was the bestselling toy in the United Kingdom. The authors of this article were both children living and growing up in England through the Seventies, and to both of them the name and brand of Sindy was the one that came instantly to mind when thinking of the types of dolls that girls would buy or have bought for them. In September 1963, Sindy was launched into the British toys market by Pedigree Toys Ltd. with the advertising slogan, “the doll you love to dress.” It was an opportune time, and the manufacturers did a lot of the right things to establish a successful product. This was the time when British fashion designers were becoming household names to all social classes, not just the privileged few. Pedigree Toys made the astute move of having the initial line of clothes for the doll designed by Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin. Foale

Sindy © Pedigree Dolls and Toys Ltd.

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and Tuffin had graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1961 and then established themselves in business in Carnaby Street, London. In 1962 their designs had been on the front cover of Vogue, with photography by David Bailey. They also did design work for JC Penney. That first range of clothes included outfits with names such as pony club, country walk, skating girl, lunch date, and shopping-in-the-rain. That last one probably gives a clue to Sindy being a British doll. However, Sindy is not quite as genuinely a British doll as many remember. In fact, her initial design was based on an American doll, Tammy, produced by the Ideal Toy Company in America from 1962 until 1966. Tammy lost out to Barbie in the domestic market, but under her new name of “Sindy” she thrived in Britain for a couple of highly successful decades. Pedigree had done their research on what British girls wanted. They had actually been of fered the U.K. license for Barbie by Mattel, but had conducted market research and found that their target audience did not, at that time, like the look of Barbie. Sindy had a more realistic figure than Barbie with a face that appeared sof ter and rounder. Another key feature in the initial success of Sindy was the supporting range of friends and accessories. As well as Sindy there were companion dolls Paul (from 1965), little sister Patch (1966), and friends Vicki, Mitzi, Poppet, and Betsy. Horses for the Sindy range were especially popular. More importantly, the range of accessories was extensive and fun and could be bought on their own. A child with limited money did not have to buy a new doll each time they wanted to have Sindy in a new outfit. Indeed, by the end of the Sixties, around 70% of all turnover in the Sindy range was from accessories. Nor was Sindy limited to one hair color—blonde, auburn, or black were available. A further innovation were the tokens on each box which could be cut out and sent off, once enough had been collected, for exclusive products. While this might have been anathema to hardcore collectors, young girls eagerly collected the heart-shaped tokens from each box or package by cutting them out. When a full set was complete they could be sent off for Sindy’s friend, June, who would arrive through the mail. Elizabeth remembers being “very excited” when her June arrived. She still has her.

PHOTO: Bethan Millsted.

Retro Toys

The Millsted family’s Sindy is quite the equestrian. Sindy © Pedigree Dolls and Toys Ltd.

Sindy benefited from technological advances during these peak years in popularity. Beginning in 1968 she gained rooted eyelashes, and in the next few years she became fully poseable and fully jointed. The 1975 Active Sindy was the bestselling version of the doll ever. With Sindy being so popular in the Seventies, she often made appearances on the twice-weekly BBC children’s television craft and hobby program Blue Peter, which was also at the peak of its popularity at that time, being watched by several million viewers. The presenters could often be seen making entire new rooms for Sindy. At the time the BBC, which is not funded by advertising, had a very strict policy of not showing or referring to any brand names,

IT ALL STARTED WITH BARBIE One-time Mattel Inc. president Ruth Handler (1916–2002) created Barbie—named after her daughter Barbara—and introduced what would become the world’s most famous dress-up doll at Toy Fair in New York City on March 9, 1959. Shortly thereafter, an aggressive television marketing campaign skyrocketed Barbie to success. Barbie employed what toymakers once called the “razor/razor blade” concept: Sell a child a “razor” (in this case, the host toy, Barbie) and he or she will be compelled to buy “razor blades” (clothing and accessories, each sold separately). Barbie’s success inspired a host of imitators, including Sindy, and was not relegated solely to the girls’ toy market: Hasbro’s G.I. Joe, a generic soldier that could be disguised as various military men, and Ideal’s Captain Action, a nondescript superhero that could masquerade as popular licensed heroes, soon followed on Barbie’s (high) heels.

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Retro Toys

which meant that although everyone knew they were making extra accessories for Sindy, she was never named. So, even for children who had very little money, Sindy offered imaginative opportunities courtesy of a few cardboard boxes, sticky-back plastic, and some paint.

The Fall

So, what went wrong? How did Sindy fall from her position of ascendancy in the U.K. toy market? Well, for a start, increasingly there has been a move to a global market for toys rather than distinct national markets. Mattel had tried launching Barbie in the U.K. a couple of times without success, and finally made a third successful attempt in the early Eighties. From this point on, Sindy and Barbie were competing for the British doll market in a way that Sindy had not experienced before. While Pedigree Toys retained ownership of Sindy, the company licensed various rights to other manufacturers from time to time. In 1978, Marx Toys tried to introduce Sindy into the American market, but it proved unsuccessful and the company went into receivership in 1980. In 1986, Pedigree sold its rights in Sindy to Hasbro. Hasbro was a principal rival to Mattel and already had toy brands such as G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Transformers, and others. A rival to Barbie would allow them to compete all the more… at least, that was the theory.

The point at which Hasbro took on the licence was also one where Sindy was already starting to decline in sales and popularity in the home market due to the competition in the U.K. from Barbie, and from an increasing range of other products competing for the attentions of the target market. Hasbro injected a bigger marketing budget, but also initiated a redesign of the doll to make it more similar to Barbie. This proved to be a mistake for two reasons. Firstly, it alienated some of the people who had been buying and collecting Sindy as she was and liked her just fine like that. Secondly, in 1989 Mattel sued Hasbro due to that similarity. The case rumbled on for years with court rulings falling in different directions depending on the country or territory. For example, while Hasbro won the ruling in Spain, Mattel won in France. Ultimately Hasbro agreed to alter Sindy’s face once more. Sindy was also losing out in the sales battle. In 1994 Sindy still had 7% of the U.K. doll market compared to 16% for Barbie. Just two years later, Barbie had achieved a whopping 30% while Sindy also gained but only to 8%. Hasbro withdrew the advertising budget for Sindy and retailers started to delist the doll. In 1998 the rights to the doll were returned to Pedigree, but by then too much damage had already been done. The next company to license the rights for Sindy was Vivid Imaginations, from 1999 onwards. It relaunched the doll to look younger, initially about 15 years old, and later redesigned her again as age 12 to 14. In 2006 an exclusive deal was made with

PHOTO: Bethan Millsted.

(LEFT) After a busy afternoon of horseback riding, this Sindy is resting up before she takes a relaxing shower. (ABOVE) Examples of Sindy merchandise. Note that the Scenesetter set (in the yellow box) is part of the U.S.-distributed Sindy product line from Marx. Sindy © Pedigree Dolls and Toys Ltd.

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Retro Toys

SINDY IS A FAMILY AFFAIR ELIZABETH MILLSTED: “Sindy was never the doll everybody aspired to own or look like; she was simply the friend, albeit a doll, that most girls did have. She didn’t live an impossible life of glamour but lived more like us. She had a cozy house with furniture, drove a car (okay, it was a beach buggy), and loved animals. She grew up with us, which may be why so many women of my age still own their Sindy dolls. One of my friends still begrudges her mother having given away her Sindy.” IAN MILLSTED: “I have four sisters. Two are older than me and two are younger. Only one was really into playing with fashion dolls, but for her it was only ever Sindy. It wasn’t just her, though. Although my other sisters didn’t really play with dolls like this, I do remember them talking to their friends about dolls, and once girls graduated from the larger nursery-type dolls, the doll with the name recognition was Sindy.” ELIZABETH AND IAN: “Our nine-year-old daughter, Bethan, has enjoyed discovering Sindy. She also has some Barbie dolls and, while she likes Barbie in other media, e.g., the Barbie movies, when playing with dolls it is Sindy she instinctively goes for.”

PHOTO: Bethan Millsted.

BETHAN MILLSTED: “Sindy is a fab doll and she is the best friend ever. She’s also got a nice range of clothes and accessories—for example, a camping set, pony, and loads more. She was born to be the most creative and fun doll of the age. Lots of young girls loved Sindy and a few of us still have that love of her today.”

The doll you love to dress’ popularity spawned numerous Sindy Annuals, hardcovers containing a mix of wardrobe changes for the doll line, costume projects, puzzles and jokes, and comics stories starring Sindy and friends. Sindy © Pedigree Dolls and Toys Ltd.

Woolworths as key retailers for Sindy, but the British company bearing the Woolworths name, having split from the U.S. parent company in 1982, ceased trading in early 2009.

Rise again?

Tanner Dolls launched a niche, high-end version of Sindy for the specialist adult collector market in 2013. These were linked into the appearance of Sindy conventions, which have been held annually for the last few years in the U.K. From 2016 Sindy has been available to a wider, mass-market audience again via U.K. retail giant Tesco. The doll looks sufficiently different from the one that first appeared in 1963 in that it would be largely unrecognizable to the collectors and children of the Sixties and Seventies. Sindy is now larger and more child-like in appearance. The option of dressing her in different outfits is still there, but she is closer to being a nursery doll that a girl will look after than being a fashion doll that will have adventures. However, as of writing this in late November 2017, the Tesco website, in the run-up to the all-important Christmas retail season, is showing that a lot of the Sindy range is out of stock. It looks like people are buying her again. Sindy was included in a set of stamps issued in 2017 by the Royal Mail in the U.K. to celebrate classic British children’s toys. She was in company with the likes of Meccano, Fuzzy-Felt, and Space Hoppers. There still seems to be a lot of love out there for Sindy, and we suspect that, in one form or another, she will continue to be made, sold, played with, and collected for some time to come. ELIZABETH AND IAN MILLSTED are both writers and teachers. Elizabeth teaches music while Ian seems to teach a different subject each year. They both live in Bristol, England, with their daughter Bethan. Bethan Millsted took many of the product photographs accompanying this article.

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RETRO FAD

Mood Rings by Michael Eury The swingers of the Seventies were in touch with their feelings… nothing more than feelings (if you don’t believe me, ask Morris Albert). Americans were indulging themselves during what was branded the “Me Decade.” Many were exploring the connection between Mind, Body, and Spirit in the emerging New Age movement, which employed healing crystals. And so, as dictated by the crafty tradition of capitalism, clever entrepreneurs exploited this yen for emotional expression and interest in wellness stones. What followed was a product that ensured that young lovers in polyester bellbottoms who “dared to wear” the “most amazing man-made jewelry ever created” could now bare their passions on their digits (of their hands, you randy thing). This “scientifically developed” phenomenon promised to “sense your deepest feeling” and allowed you to show your true love or one-night stand what you secretly felt… with a corresponding color. Were you seeing red? Feeling blue? Curiously yellow? Only your mood ring knew for sure! You might remember mood rings as a kitschy plastic novelty, cheaply produced and hawked for five bucks (“while supplies last!”) on a steamy TV commercial from boob-tube marketers K-Tel, or sold in tabletop boxes cluttering five-and-dime and chain stores. But you might be surprised to discover that mood rings were originally a higher-end item. Legend has it that the genesis of the mood ring shifted as mercurially as the rings themselves. Jewelry designer Marvin Wernick is credited for the initial idea, inspired by a doctor who measured a young patient’s temperature by sticking a heat-registering (thermotropic) tape across the child’s forehead. Why not fill artificial stones with thermotropic liquid crystal and mount them into temperature-tracking rings? Wernick is said to have thought. Unfortunately, what he failed to think was, Why don’t I patent this idea? Instead, a 33-year-old Big Apple ad man named Joshua Reynolds, of the R. J. Reynolds tobacco clan, did just that. In 1975 Reynolds marketed mood rings, billed as “portable biofeedback aids,” to Bonwit Teller & Co., a now-defunct Manhattan-based luxury department store. They initially sold at a price of $45 (silver) or $250 (gold). The jewelry flew

off the shelves to the tune of a million dollars of sales in just one quarter. Celebs loved them (purportedly Barbra Streisand and Sophia Loren were among their admirers) and so did imitators, in the U.S.A. and across the globe. Inexpensive knock-offs rapidly flooded the market, their TV commercials interrupting kids’ afternoon cartoon reruns and invading the ad pages of cheesy magazines. By slipping on a mood ring, the advertisements claimed, changes in emotions (actually, your body temperature) would alter its stone’s hue: green meant you were calm and cool, blue revealed you were relaxed, amber showed you were uptight, violet signaled you were happy or “turned on,” etc. Before long mood rings were no longer relegated to the fingers of swingers. Teenage girls, whose emotions were often worn on their sleeves, now twinkled them on their hands, as did teen boys wanting to prove they weren’t male chauvinist pigs. But almost as quickly as it began, in under two years the fashion frenzy known as mood rings was no longer The Next Big Thing. The wave of imitators (and spin-offs, including mood necklaces, mood belts, and mood underwear) created wa-a-a-a-ay too much of a not-so-good-thing, and Joshua Reynolds broke off his engagement with his mood ring company as it went bankrupt. (Shed no tears for Mr. Reynolds, however—he would later strike gold with the Thighmaster, the fitness device that formed a three’s-company triangle between the adductors of pitchwoman Suzanne Somers.) So, did mood-ring wearers actually open a window into their innermost sentiments (packaged within the latest in pizzazz-y fashions)? Or were they just a bunch of gullible suckers? Were the rings’ color vacillations legitimate responses to emotional changes? Or were their shifts in shade triggered instead by external temperatures? Some might argue that you have a better chance at creating a sledgehammer of glowing emerald energy from a toy Green Lantern power ring than accurately monitoring your feelings through a mood ring. But if you were open to believing in such things as a mood ring’s intuition… well, a little emotion forecasting certainly wasn’t the worst thing you could have experimented with in the Seventies. Next issue’s RetroFad: Afros!

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RETRO COLLECTIBLES

Buck Rogers © 1976 Robert C. Dille. Captain America, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Sub-Mariner, and Thor TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. ElectraWoman and DynaGirl © 1977 Sid & Marty Krofft Productions, Inc. Flash Gordon TM & © King Features Syndicate. Shazam! and Superman TM & © DC Comics. Isis © Classic Media.

by Robert V. Conte When inventor William B. Gruber created the first ViewMaster in 1938, it is likely he did not foresee that his patented, stereoscopic viewer paired with round, interchangeable reels would become an 80-year-old iconic brand. In fact, the standard View-Master viewer (although ever evolving) and its compatible reels (each containing seven, three-dimensional pictures) remain among the most consistently manufac-

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tured products since their debut at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing, New York City! The United States had been in the midst of its worst economic depression in history. Gruber (with partner Harry J. Graves—president of Sawyers Photographic Services) originally intended View-Master to be the scenic gateway to the world—permitting the average person to

Retro Collectibles

“visit” far-off, exotic places and see numerous delights Earth had to offer. The Grand Canyon, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Honolulu, Hawaii, were among hundreds of reels to choose from. Families could share these incredible, full-color Kodachrome images with each other, their friends, classmates, and co-workers. For decades, travel agencies used View-Master viewers and reels to promote tourism—and it worked! Another icon first appeared in 1938—Superman! The Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics #1 and took the world by storm. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, Superman was the first “superhero” and quickly grew to become a multimillion-dollar enterprise including comic books, Krypto Ray Guns, radio programs, and cartoons. Within a few short years, hundreds of other costume-wearing crimefighters graced the four-color pages of comic books published by a plethora of companies. Sawyer’s, Inc. was first responsible for bringing View-Master inside American homes nationwide. After producing hundreds of different scenic titles, the company realized that alternate subjects could also be marketed and profitable—especially to children. By the Fifties, Sawyer’s had expanded into new territories such as Cartoons, Religion, Sports, and Special Subjects. In addition to its successful single-reel program, the company experimented with selling three, specific-themed View-Master reels inside paper envelopes. This product repackaging, some titles including an illustrated booklet, proved to be incredibly successful. The format remained this way for decades! In the mid-Fifties, television shows like Lassie and Timmy and The Mickey Mouse Club were successfully adapted for View-Master. For the first time, images from these programs were depicted

Here he comes to save the day— Mighty Mouse (B526), the first View-Master superhero packet, seen in its original 1958 incarnation (TOP LEFT) and later versions. Mighty Mouse TM & © CBS Consumer Products.

Scarce print ad announcing the then-forthcoming Batman (1966) View-Master packet in Montgomery Ward’s mail-order catalog. From the collection of Robert V. Conte. Batman TM & © DC Comics.

in full-color—whether or not shows were seen this way; most Americans owned black-and-white television sets. Other programs like Tom Corbett: Space Cadet were freely adapted by hired sculpture artists, who created unique interpretations of the characters, spaceships, and sets. This technique was sometimes preferred to having a cameraman on set during production of a television show. This allowed View-Master to take advantage of the full effect of its vibrant, three-dimensional imagery. Another growing View-Master category proved to be its Stories and Adventures Series (later branded Showtime) including The Lone Ranger in “Mystery Rustler” (962-A/B/C) and Walt Disney’s Zorro (B469), both preceding the Superhero genre. Kids seeing their favorite action heroes in “eye-popping, three dimensional color” was an incredible option too powerful to pass on during that time. It was not uncommon for children to trade their bubble-gum cards, comic books, and toys in exchange for ViewMaster reels! Another popular live-action program from that decade, The Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves as Clark Kent/ Superman, would have been a natural fit for the growing line of View-Master packets. Fans often wondered why reels featuring this incarnation of the Son of Krypton were never released? Reportedly, it almost happened… According to the late Noel Neill (with whom I spoke at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con)—the first actress ever to play Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane on film (and later on television after Phyllis Coates portrayed the character during the first season and for the feature film, Superman and the Mole Men)—a View-Master cameraman had been on set during an episode from one of the last two seasons. However, Reeves’ tragic suicide (later theorized to be a homicide or an accident) forced the show’s cancellation. His untimely death was considered taboo in the merchandising world of the day, and new products based on the program were deemed inappropriate and abandoned. (Rumor has it these images were archived at the View-Master factory in Portland, Oregon, until it closed in 2001. If true, where are they now?) RetroFan

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Retro Collectibles

The 1966 Batman View-Master (B492) was the gift that kept on giving for the company, its photo slides being repurposed for these and other viewer products, including the Good Guys Gift Pak set, shown here in its first (at right) and second incarnations. (Note: The Double-Vue cartridge shown featured the Batman “The Evil Penguin” animated feature, not the TV show’s Catwoman episode.)

The First Superhero View-Master Packets

Some View-Master collectors cite 1958’s Mighty Mouse (B526) as Sawyer’s first entry into the “Superhero” genre. The Terrytoons’ “funny animal” character is a parody of DC Comics’ Superman and Fawcett Publications’ Captain Marvel (eventually owned by DC, as well), pitting him against the likes of Powerful Puss. This packet, originally released during CBS Television’s original airing of the Mighty Mouse Playhouse on Saturday mornings from 1955–1967, was a consistent seller for almost 30 years and has several distinct packaging revisions and a few different ten-page booklet designs. Arguably, 1963’s Flash Gordon in “The Battle for Mongo” (B583) could be considered View-Master’s second title in the genre. Based on the comic strip created by Alex Raymond in 1934, this space adventure pits Flash, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov against their new adversary from the planet Mongo, Ming the Merciless. Ming forces Dale to marry him but Flash saves her just in the nick of time! (Coincidentally, the plot of this three-reel packet is similar to that of the 1980 film starring Sam Jones as Flash and Max von Sydow as Ming!) This incredible packet, including a ten-page booklet, was ahead of its time in taking comic art printed in newspapers and recoloring it to resemble animation cels. However, sales were not exceptional and the title was discontinued for almost two decades. Flash Gordon was brought back to life in the early Seventies, with redesigned packaging, when GAF went through the Sawyer’s vaults and found the negatives. Under GAF’s “new look,” the packet sold better! The third and perhaps the definitive superhero packet released—and the first featuring a live-action character—was Batman (B492) in 1966. Adapted from the 20th Century Fox/ Greenway Productions/ABC television series starring Adam West as the Caped Crusader and Burt Ward as Robin, the Boy Wonder, Batmania had swept the country as Beatlemania had just two years before. Batman merchandise was everywhere and this packet was a home run for Sawyer’s. Episodes 19 and 20—“The Purr-fect RetroFan

Fall 2018

Crime” and “Better Luck Next Time”—guest-starred actress Julie Newmar as the series’ first Catwoman. A little-known fact is that when episode 19 originally aired on March 16, 1966, ABC pre-empted it due to an emergency regarding the NASA spacecraft Gemini 8. Fortunately all astronauts involved, including Neil Armstrong and David Scott, landed safely. However, Bat-fans were upset to have missed much of the episode, and expressed their discontent with thousands of letters and phone calls to ABC affiliates nationwide. In those days, months would pass before an episode of a television show would air again. Some speculate this benefitted sales of the Batman View-Master packet as, for television viewers who just couldn’t wait that long to watch “The Purrfect Crime” again, it was the next best way to learn what had happened to the Dynamic Duo before the stunning climax. Sawyer’s also produced a set of identical Batman slides for its companion 3-D viewer, Tru-Vue—a predecessor to, and once competitor of, View-Master until it was purchased by Sawyer’s in 1951. Sales of that device failed in comparison to its younger sibling and, ultimately, the entire line of viewers and titles were discontinued by the late Sixties. View-Master’s first Batman three-reel set, which included an official 16-page “Batbooklet,” was one of the most successful in its history, and remained in print until the late Eighties. The next View-Master superhero title was The Green Hornet in “Programmed for Death.” (B488) Also produced by the same studios that brought Batman to television, this new series starred

HOLY SIDEBAR, BATMAN! IT’S THE ORIGINAL TEXT FROM THE 1966 BATMAN VIEW-MASTER PACKET! “From the outside, Wayne Manor looks like any other mansion—but inside it live a most unusual pair, Bruce Wayne and his 15-year-old ward, Dick Grayson. When crime stalks rampant in Gotham City, these two become the Caped Crusaders, Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder! Their Batmobile, hidden in a secret cave beneath the house, roars into action, whisking them through the streets of the city to strike terror into the hearts of criminals! “Their adversary this time is the Catwoman, who has gotten her claws on a rare treasure—a golden cat, stolen from the art museum. “The adventure leads Batman to a life-or-death choice behind two closed doors… one has Robin hanging, helpless, over a den of hungry tigers… but, in the end, an old book yields Batman a clue to the Catwoman’s REAL crime… and the Dynamic Duo speed to the strangest rendezvous of all!” 59

Retro Collectibles

The short-lived Green Hornet TV series spawned this highly collectible View-Master packet (B488). (You’ll learn more about Hollywood’s version of the Green Hornet in RetroFan #4.) Green Hornet TM & © The Green Hornet, Inc.

Van Williams as Britt Reid/Green Hornet and martial-arts master Bruce Lee as Kato. Unfortunately, this television show did not have the same charm as Batman and lasted only one season. Alas, Sawyer’s manufactured the title once and it was never re-released. Today, these three-reel packets, including a 16-page booklet with spot-green ink, are considered scarce and highly collectible, primarily due to Lee’s cult status in pop culture after his mysterious death in 1973.

in orange, and “United States Travel” in red, for example. This made all View-Master products more appealing to American children at retail. Worldwide, however, the design aesthetic remained virtually the same from the Sawyer’s era. The first superhero View-Master packet to benefit from the “new look” was 1970’s Superman Meets Computer Crook (B584). While some collectors believe this three-reel packet is loosely based on The New Adventures of Superman (the Filmation animated series that aired Saturday mornings on CBS from 1966–1969), the packet features an original concept of superb, color line art imposed over real backgrounds. The villain, Mikro, looks identical to the Man of Steel’s arch nemesis, Lex Luthor—reportedly the result of GAF not licensing the name. This title would remain in print for over 15 years. GAF experimented with printing the illustrated booklets inside various packets. The Superman Meets Computer Crook insert was first printed in full color, then later only in cyan-and-black ink. In the case of Mighty Mouse, the first Sawyer’s book was completely black-andwhite, then GAF redesigned it in full color, then in cyan-and-black ink. Batman remained black-and-white throughout its entire run in its packet-envelope format. The next super-packet was 1975’s Shazam! (B550), featuring the original Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr., and their evil arch nemesis with the same superpowers, Black Adam! The Marvel Family had been reintroduced to comic-book audiences after being dormant for almost 20 years, followed by a live-action television show that started shortly before this packet’s release. [Editor’s note: The Saturday morning Shazam! TV show will be spotlighted in RetroFan #4.] Interestingly, Shazam! was the first title in this genre to be created completely from artwork, and featured word balloons as “spoken” by the characters. It is also the first superhero title to utilize an actual logo on each reel!

A New Look for View-Master

In October 1966, Sawyer’s, Inc. was purchased by General Aniline and Film (GAF). By the end of the Sawyer’s era, View-Master products were primarily sold through camera stores, department stores, and mail-order catalogs. But another retail avenue was slowly and steadily growing in the nationwide market place: the toy store. Chains like Child World, Lionel’s Play World, and Toys ’R Us were opening more locations and wanted to sell View-Master products geared toward children. Sales of View-Master scenic reels were on the decline while cartoons, fairy tales, and television shows continued to rise. GAF listened to its sales reps, retailers, and, ultimately, their direct-to-customer database. The result? Major change… First, GAF hired an ad agency to create print-and-television campaigns targeted to children, hiring famed actor Henry Fonda and a young Jodie Foster to introduce View-Master to a new generation. Second, the company changed the colors of the last Sawyer’s Model G viewer from dull all beige to red-and-white with a blue lever. Third, as an experiment in the United States, the company streamlined the design and packaging its entire line of current and backlist reels to look cohesive with color coding per subject: “Cartoon Favorites” was marked in a magenta banner, “Showtime” 60

While most collectors focus upon the reels themselves, View-Master packets’ illustrated booklets provided an additional layer of story appreciation. Batman and Superman TM & © DC Comics. Green Hornet TM & © The Green Hornet, Inc. Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Retro Collectibles

In 1976, GAF introduced the Good Guys Gift Pak—a round canister including a standard View-Master viewer and a collectible plastic container with eight reels including condensed, two-reel versions of the aforementioned Batman, Shazam!, and Superman packets. Collectors seek this particular package (there are two versions—the original being twice as tall as its later counterpart) because there are two exclusive reels: Aquaman in “The Menace of the Land Beasts” and Wonder Woman in “Peril Over New York.” To date, this would be the only time these two heroes appeared in their own View-Master reel.

Mighty Marvel View-Masters

By 1977, GAF believed it had enough DC Comics titles in print. The company experimented with superhero-related titles like Filmation’s live-action Isis (T100) and Sid and Marty Kroft’s ElectraWoman and DynaGirl (H3), but sales were lackluster. Fortunately, customer letters and feedback from sales reps indicated the superhero market was growing more than ever, particularly with DC Comics’ top competitor, Marvel Comics Group, whose comic sales were outshining much of the DC line. Before long, a deal was reached and a new chapter in View-Master history was about to unfold… By the end of 1977, GAF had come into its own with ViewMaster. The company’s Pictorial Products division had expanded the line in entertainment-related subjects while downsizing its low-performing Scenic Reels category to its core. Both the “ViewMaster” and “GAF” logos were modernized—the former into a 3-D-like motif and the latter from a lower-case typeface to all bold caps. GAF’s newly redesigned Model L, a bulky orange viewer with a metal knob (later replaced by a plastic lever), would become one of the most popular ever produced.

ATTENTION, WEBHEADS! IT’S THE ORIGINAL TEXT FROM THE 1977 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VIEW-MASTER PACKET! “Welcome, true believers! Learn now of the most dastardly scheme yet devised to destroy our superpal, SPIDER-MAN! “Bruno Arlington, master criminal and man of a thousand faces, has disguised himself as our web-slinging buddy. Then Bruno has stolen millions of dollars' worth of paintings, while SPIDEY has gotten the blame! “Before the end of the caper, Spidey and Bruno, both dressed as SPIDER-MAN, fight to the finish. Police stand helplessly by. Who is the real SPIDER-MAN? Will wrongs be righted? Justice done? “Your VIEW-MASTER story and the stereo reels will put YOU in the middle of the action! “Get your web-shooters ready, gang. It’s time for SPIDER-MAN!”

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Sample slides from superhero View-Master sets.

Although sales of existing superhero-themed titles waned, customers demanded a new, wider selection of the genre. GAF responded by reaching an agreement with Cadence Industries, then-owner of Marvel Comics Group, to produce View-Master products from its universe of characters including the Amazing Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and the Mighty Thor. During this time, Superhero Enterprises—a direct-toconsumer mail-order company founded by former Marvel employee Ivan Snyder—ventured into comic-book distribution and retail under the name Heroes World. The company offered unprecedented access to apparel, toys, and other merchandise via ads in virtually every publication by Marvel and DC. It also had its own comic-book-sized catalog (produced by the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art) and sold items in its stores throughout New York and New Jersey. All Marvel-based View-Master products were available through what would later be known as the comic-book direct market. This was a win-win for GAF; Superhero Enterprises purchased these items on a non-returnable basis and sold View-Master products in its shops for years. (Yours truly worked for Heroes World at that time!) By the late Seventies, superheroes published by Marvel Comics Group had a tremendous presence on television. The Marvel Super Heroes, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four cartoons from the Sixties were in heavy syndication; a live-action SpiderMan segment appeared in “Spidey Super Stories” on Children’s 61

Television Workshop’s The Electric Company and later on his own weekly primetime program; and the Incredible Hulk starred in his own live-action TV show. Made-for-television movies including Doctor Strange and two Captain America films only helped propel popularity of characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, and Steve Ditko. View-Master’s Marvel sales hit a milestone for GAF and, for the first time ever, it produced two superhero packets featuring one character—Spider-Man! From 1977 through 1980, GAF produced the following ViewMaster titles under its license with Marvel:

View-Master also released the Marvel All-Star Gift Pak, featuring a standard Model G viewer (using unsold warehouse stock as Model L was already on the market) and seven reels inside a canister including edited versions of Captain America, Doctor Strange, Hulk, Spider-Man, and Sub-Mariner. There are two versions of this set: one has a purple background and plastic top and the other green—capitalizing on the success of The Incredible Hulk television show. There was also a Spider-Man Gift Pack for GAF’s Talking View-Master Viewer (see sidebar).

ʞʞ Amazing Spider-Man in “Double Identity” (H11) ʞʞ The Mighty Thor in “The Wrath of Odin” (H39) ʞʞ Captain America in “Where Walks the Sleeper” (H43) ʞʞ Iron Man in “The Spell of the Black Widow” (H44) ʞʞ Doctor Strange (K22) ʞʞ The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Versus Doctor Octopus (K31) ʞʞ Fantastic Four (K36) ʞʞ The Incredible Hulk (J26) ʞʞ The Sub-Mariner (J27) ʞʞ Spider-Woman in “The Enforcer Strikes” (L7)

GAF’s success with its various superhero-themed titles encouraged the company to move ahead with perhaps the biggest investment ever in the genre: 1978’s Superman: The Movie. Supported with a targeted advertising and marketing campaign including television commercials, POP displays, promotional buttons, ad slicks, and newspaper articles, Superman: The Movie (J78), starring Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/ Superman, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, and Marlon Brando as Jor-El, was the most anticipated View-Master title in the Seventies. Reportedly, sales of the packet did not exceed expenses in promoting it, but was looked as a “loss leader”—meaning it helped increase general interest and sales from a new generation of View-Master collectors (see sidebar).

Hollywood Heroes Come to View-Master

TALKING VIEW-MASTERS Introduced in 1969, GAF released the first Talking ViewMaster, combining virtually clear audio disks attached to standard reels in order to give users a new audio-visual experience with the slogan, “Pictures That Talk!” Although the standard version was revised at least twice with a deluxe, lighted viewer and a projector to follow, the “talking” technology was limited to poor sound quality, blurriness of images due to the recording imperfections seen on disks during playback, and the extreme fragility of the equipment. Talking View-Master superhero titles produced, each containing three reels, a booklet, and order form inside a plastic slipcase, fitting into a four-color box, include: ʞʞ Captain America (T43) ʞʞ Flash Gordon (TB583) ʞʞ The Incredible Hulk (TJ26) ʞʞ Mighty Mouse (AVB526) ʞʞ Spider-Man (TH11) ʞʞ Spider-Man No. 2 (TK31) ʞʞ Superman (AVB584) ʞʞ Superman Spanish Edition (AVB584-SP) There were also two superhero Talking View-Master sets. The first was the Spider-Man Gift Pak containing “Double Identity” and edited versions of the Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor reels. The second was the Super Friends Gift Pak, including two of

the three Superman Meets Computer Crook reels, an Aquaman reel, and three Super Friends reels (formerly entitled Super Heroes). These are believed to be the only reels using the “Super Friends” brand to capitalize on the success of the ABC television show. The second Talking View-Master was released in 1984. Dubbed the Electronic Talking View-Master, it used standard reels enclosed in a plastic sheet with a separate recorded disc. The sound quality and presentation far exceeded its predecessor, but in a world where videocassette players and video games had become the forefront of home entertainment, the device was a failure and discontinued. The only superhero title available for this viewer is Batman in “The Joker’s Wild.” Two more Talking View-Master viewers were released: 1997’s Talking View-Master 3-D utilized cartridges incompatible elsewhere and only featured The Adventures of Batman & Robin (animated) as its superhero offering. In 2005, Mattel/Fisher-Price introduced the Talking View-Master SFX Viewer and Super Sounds Projector with the WB animated Justice League (H8567) available as a three-reel card pack. The incredible engineering on the latter devices allowed the user to remove each reel from its plastic sound cartridge for full compatibility with all standard viewers. Sadly, all talking View-Master products were discontinued by 2009, with little hope of being resurrected.

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With exception of a few titles including Buck Rogers in “Battle on the Moon (J1), its television counterpart Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (L15), and the “Superheroes of Rock ’n’ Roll,” KISS (K-71), GAF only produced superhero reels based on DC and Marvel properties. Its next three-reel packet, Super Heroes (K53), featured Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Wonder Twins— Zan and Jayna! There is some confusion with this particular title: the same reels were renamed Super Friends (per the ABC Saturday morning cartoon of the same name) inside a Talking View-Master Gift Pak and then Super Powers (the brand name used to promote Kenner’s action figures and other DC Comics merchandise throughout the Eighties) in another Gift Pak packaged with a two-dimensional View-Master projector. Of the three, the Super Friends-marked reels appear to be the scarcest. Some View-Master enthusiasts, and certainly many comic-book fans, claim the best superhero packet ever produced by GAF was Batman in “The Joker’s Wild” (L31). Unlike its 1966 predecessor, this new 1981 packet adapted an actual comic book: Batman #251 (Sept. 1973), written by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Neal Adams. The Clown Prince of Crime escapes from an insane asylum and challenges the Darknight Detective to numerous tricks before he is returned to prison. The artwork shown in this title is superb; GAF artists were respectful in keeping Adams’ style while using a color palette that enhanced his work as not seen before due to limitations of four-color newsprint.

The last superhero packet produced by GAF was Superman II (L46), also in 1981. Featuring virtually the same cast as its predecessor, Superman fights General Zod who, with his two accomplices Ursa and Non, escape the Phantom Zone and travel to Earth seeking revenge for being banished from Krypton. The enclosed booklet was a “Fun and Games” package with crosswords and other brain-teasers relating to the Last Son of Krypton.

A Blistering Change for View-Master Packets

Although GAF had taken View-Master into a new direction with myriad product offerings and experiments with new methods of advertising, design, and manufacturing, the company realized pictorial products were not as profitable as hoped. The Talking View-Master line, its Double-Vue Movie Viewer, and new Show Beam investments were becoming money pits. It was time to sell View-Master once again. Fortunately, in 1981, View-Master was purchased from GAF by an investment group that believed the brand, its licenses, and its products could reach new financial prosperity if retooled to accommodate the ever-changing retail market. The company was renamed View-Master International Group (VMI) and it quickly initiated several changes: First, VMI introduced a packaging technology in the United States that GAF implemented for View-Master in Europe just a few years before. The new format, dubbed the “blister-pack,” eliminated the booklets, direct-mail order forms, and paper envelopes that had been available for generations. Now each three-reel title would be contained in a plastic tray sealed on printed cardboard and a more detailed description of the story would appear on the back. The cards had a die-cut hole on the top so they could be racked on peg-board shelves inside store aisles as opposed to retailers being obligated to use valuable floor space on View-Master displays in years past. Next, VMI discontinued all “non-essential” backlist and deep discounted remaining GAF inventory by stapling packets to printed cards similar to the new blister-packs, so both styles could be racked together. Lastly, VMI cancelled the entire Talking ViewMaster product line and replaced all canister gift paks with a rectangular-boxed, three-reel gift set containing a Model L viewer and one three-reel title. Late-Seventies catalog ad for various ViewMaster Gift Paks, including Spider-Man (misspelled “Spiderman” on canister). From the Robert V. Conte collection.

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nefarious purposes. But Superman comes to the rescue and, as usual, saves the day! In 1989, when the monumental Batman film starring Jack Nicholson as the Joker and Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/ Batman made unprecedented film history, View-Master collectors were naturally disappointed to learn that Tyco did not license rights to produce View-Master reels adapting it. Reportedly, there was an unresolved licensing dispute regarding the first Batman packet from 1966. Additionally, the 1989 film was considered “too dark” by Tyco executives who insisted all View-Master products be age appropriate for children age three and up. The licensing fee that Warner Bros. wanted to charge for the new film was deemed too high as well. Fortunately, a solution was reached and the sequel, Batman Returns, was released in 1992 as a threereel card and gif t set.

THE RAREST SUPERHERO VIEW-MASTER ITEMS EVER! You’ll believe a man can fly—in View-Master 3-D! Actor Christopher Reeve’s first three Superman movies were immortalized in ViewMaster products. Superman TM & © DC Comics. Superman: The Movie © Warner Bros.

Many of the aforementioned superhero titles were reformatted (and renumbered) for the new three-reel card packaging including: ʞʞ Batman in “The Joker’s Wild” (1003) ʞʞ The Amazing Spider-Man vs. Doctor Octopus (1004) ** (revised package art) ʞʞ Superman Meets Computer Crook (1007) ** (revised package art) ʞʞ The Incredible Hulk (1021) ʞʞ The Sub-Mariner (1022) ʞʞ Doctor Strange (1025) ʞʞ The Fantastic Four (1026) ʞʞ Spider-Woman (1030) ʞʞ Super Heroes (1051) ʞʞ Batman (1966 TV Show) (4011) ʞʞ Buck Rogers (cartoon) (4032) ʞʞ Superman II (4035) The only all-new superhero three-reel card produced by VMI during this time was 1983’s Superman III (4044). Sales of the title weakened in comparison to the adaptations of the previous two films featuring the Man of Steel and, subsequently, Superman III was available only for a short time. By 1984, VMI became View-Master Ideal Group, then was acquired by Tyco in 1989. The last View-Master packet in the Eighties featuring a Marvel character was the adaptation of the live-action movie Howard the Duck. The film is considered one of the worst movies ever made… and sales of this now-scarce three-reel card paralleled accordingly! As for DC Comics, there was an all-new animated Superman (1064) packet in 1988 that replaced the Computer Crook story from 1970. This time, aliens attack Earth in an attempt to take over the Washington Monument and an Egyptian Sphinx for their own 64

There are two View-Master products featuring superheroes that are hard-to-find, valuable collectibles. Do you have them? Superman: The Movie Reel Gift Set: Many Man of Steel fans know the original theatrical release of Superman: The Movie was heavily edited from its original running time. Warner Bros.’ decision caused challenges for GAF. Scenes that were adapted for View-Master reels were completely missing from the final film. GAF originally envisioned Superman: The Movie to be two separate, three-reel packets. Instead, the company opted to release all the reels already manufactured as a gift package inside a red container. The item was only available to stores like Toys ’R Us and Lionel’s Play World in late 1978. This theneight-year-old boy (who received the set inside his Christmas stocking that year) was quite excited to see extra images not in the film. Many Superman collectors don’t even know about its existence… until now! The Hulk Viewer Set: The European arm of GAF, in conjunction with Marvel, created the company’s first-ever View-Master “face viewer” in 1980. A limited-edition gift set, reportedly only available in the United Kingdom, features a plastic Hulk mask with elastic headband—similar to the Halloween and play costumes manufactured by Ben Cooper, Inc. in the day [featured elsewhere in this issue!—ed.]. The mask was packaged with a Model J viewer (unavailable in the United States) and the Incredible Hulk three-reel packet. This item was promoted in Marvel Comics Weekly newspaper in Great Britain and is extremely scarce.

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Superhero View-Masters of the Nineties and Beyond Throughout the Nineties, all-new three-reel card sets featuring superheroes (and parodies thereof) are listed below—with somewhat inconsistent catalog numbers: ʞʞ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (animated) (1073) ʞʞ Hammerman (rapper MC Hammer as an animated superhero) (1081) ʞʞ X-Men in “Captive Hearts” (1085) ʞʞ Batman: The Animated Series (vs. the Joker) (1086) (re-released with different packaging in 2004) ʞʞ Spider-Man in “The Night of the Lizard” (1087) ʞʞ The Adventures of Batman & Robin (vs. Mr. Freeze) (1088) ʞʞ X-Men in “Deadly Reunions” (1097) ʞʞ Batman & Robin (1997 movie) (4069) ʞʞ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (1990 movie) (4109) ʞʞ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: “The Secret of the Ooze” (1991 movie) (4114) ʞʞ The Rocketeer (4115) ʞʞ Batman Returns (4137) ʞʞ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: “Back in Time” (1993 movie) (4149) ʞʞ Batman Forever (4160) ʞʞ Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers #1: “Welcome to Venus Island” (4201) ʞʞ Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers #2: “The Power Sealer” (4203) ʞʞ Power Rangers in “Lost Galaxy” (8717) Several of these titles were not only sold as three-reel cards, they were also packaged with standard viewers, 4X binocular viewers, projectors, and more. Two cool specific sets include Batman: The Animated Series Gift Set (including a three-reel card, standard viewer and Super Show projector) and the Batman Forever Limited Edition Gift Set featuring a black Model L attached to an actual Batman mask resembling that shown in the 1995 film starring Val Kilmer as the Caped Crusader. Below lists the last standard View-Master three-reel cards ever produced featuring DC Comics characters. They are among the first titles to feature full-color, circular labels added to the reels to broaden appeal for children: ʞʞ Batman Begins (2005 movie) (H7335) ʞʞ Krypto the Superdog (2005 animated TV series) (H3453) ʞʞ Teen Titans (2005 animated TV series) (H0704) ʞʞ Justice League (2005 animated TV series) (G5759) ʞʞ Superman Returns (2006 movie) (P6768)

View-Master Today

Today, View-Master lives on through two distinctly different channels. The first is View-Master Classic, produced by Mattel licensee Basic Fun. Boasting “a fresh new look” with “larger and brighter images,” the company’s only superhero offerings are Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in “Rise of the Turtles” and Ultimate Spider-Man in “Not a Toy.” Available products include “Turtle”- and RetroFan

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VIEW-MASTER DOUBLE-VUE AUTOMATIC MOVIE VIEWER GAF wanted to branch out the View-Master brand and, in 1978, introduced its “Double-View” Movie Viewer (also called “GAF Cinemaster” in other countries). Intending to upscale the classic handheld Fisher-Price Movie Viewer that showed silent, 8mm films inside plastic cartridges using a manual crank, GAF’s automatic, battery-operated device had two separate, 45-second movies per cartridge. You could watch one program, then flip the cassette to watch the second without having to rewind them. The viewer was initially packaged with a Superman/Road Runner cartridge. Available superhero titles include: ʞʞ A mazing Spider-Man in “To Catch a Spider” / Thor in “Thor Meets Gray Gargoyle” ʞʞ Mighty Mouse in “Beauty on the Beach” / Heckle and Jeckle in “Wild Life” ʞʞ KISS in “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” / “Concert Highlights” ʞʞ Superman in “Wicked Warlock” / Batman in “The Evil Penguin” ʞʞ The Incredible Hulk in “Rampage” / Captain America in “Fights the Sleeper” ʞʞ The Sub-Mariner in “Underwater Terror” / The Fabulous Fantastic Four in “A Monster Among Us” (features Herbie the Robot instead of the Human Torch!)

VIEW-MASTER REEL COLLECTORS BEWARE! Sometime in the mid-to-late Seventies, GAF decided to save time and money by discontinuing the use of archival Kodachrome film in the manufacture of its View-Master reels. Over time, their color deteriorated, leaving only a reddish hue. Titles produced before and after then are fine, but unfortunately, some subjects were only released within this period including, but not limited to, Superman: The Movie, Superman II, Iron Man, and The Mighty Thor. Collectors should note that most packets with “GAF” in capital letters on the upper-left-hand of the packet envelopes are subject to this problem. Reels packaged with the first, lowercase “gaf” logo are generally safe and, fortunately, View-Master International returned to using archival film in the 1980s.

(LEFT) A DC Comics original art ad slick illustrated by Dick Giordano for Post cereals’ Super Heroes promotion, c. 1979–1980. From the Robert V. Conte collection. (RIGHT & BELOW RIGHT) This popular 1973 comic book by writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams was adapted into this 1981 View-Master set. TM & © DC Comics.

“Spidey”-faced viewers with a teaser reel, a three-reel blister pack, and gift sets with reels and a custom storage case. Collectors have been vocally disappointed about the absence of Marvel film adaptations and the complete absence of DC Comics characters altogether in this current product offering. As of April 2018, Basic Fun has not announced plans to release new superhero titles. The second is the Virtual Reality View-Master. This new device is incompatible with the standard viewer and requires a smartphone to function. Among the dozen or so titles initially offered include Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, of course, its bestselling superhero of all time, Batman, in his Animated Series incarnation. Both titles are also available with specially packaged versions of the viewer. However, in less than two years after its debut, the ViewMaster Virtual Viewer and most of its titles have been deep discounted and sold off to clearance stores. It appears this current incarnation has been deemed less than a success. But why? Usually, “retro” properties stand the test of time because previous generations—once exposed to and pleasantly inspired by various brands and icons—pass their remembrances of joy onto their children and grandchildren, hoping they will share the same excitement. However, with the advances in 3-D technology and all kinds of offerings and smartphone accessories and apps immediately available to all, the future of View-Master is uncertain. View-Master has endured for 80 years. While Superman continues to soar to new heights with his recent appearance in the 1,000th issue of Action Comics and the new live-action television show Krypton, perhaps View-Master’s survival is contingent on change—to find a new “superpower” in which it may survive. No matter what incarnation a View-Master viewer takes in years to come, one category appears certain to continue—Superheroes! ROBERT V. CONTE is a pop-culture historian who has written, edited, packaged, and brokered over 2,500 projects. Armed with his vast memorabilia collection, he utilizes his expertise on officially licensed products, including Godzilla, KISS, and Sesame Street. Conte’s projects include Art of Atari (Dynamite Entertainment), Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series (Abrams ComicArts), and his autobiographical memoir, My KISS Story. www.robertvconte.com 66

VIEW-MASTER SHOW BEAM PROJECTOR GAF introduced its flashlight-styled View-Master Show Beam Projector in 1980. Instead of threedimensional reels, two-dimensional cartridges containing 30 separate images were used to operate the hand-held, portable device. An early version of the item was packaged with an Amazing Spider-Man cartridge. Several superherothemed titles, containing different imagery than View-Master reels featuring the same characters, include Batman, Incredible Hulk, KISS, Mighty Mouse, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Super Friends (later Super Powers), and Superman. The Double-Vue Viewer was discontinued before GAF sold View-Master in 1981. Show Beam’s popularity, however, was maintained well into the Nineties before Tyco decided it best to concentrate specifically on View-Master reel-based projectors including its standard Super Show and Super Sounds Talking projectors.

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RETRO TRAVEL

Tou l a n i F The by Michael Solof

My name is Michael Solof, and for the past five years I’ve been the Collections and Exhibits Manager at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (GEM) in Baltimore, Maryland. Geppi’s Museum is a place where you can experience pop culture as never before. Located in the historic Camden Station, GEM houses a collection of over 6,000 artifacts and is a tribute to the characters, toys, and collectibles of our past and present. It’s a place where guests can rub elbows with the characters that have shaped pop culture and our lives. But how did such a deep and varied collection come to be?

From a Collection to a Museum

Back in the Seventies, Steve Geppi—the owner of just about everything on display at the museum— was working as a postal worker. On weekends, he liked to spend his time at comic-book conventions, and eventually began buying and selling books himself. Like so many of us, his mom had thrown out his comic collection when he was younger, so he had a lot of lost time to catch up on! Soon, he was making more money selling comics than he was working for the post office, so he quit his job and opened up the first of many comic-book shops. His next big step was to get out of selling comics and instead get into dis(FAR LEFT) Geppi's Entertainment Museum, April 30, 2013. Photo by "Jim, the Photographer," via Flickr. (LEFT) Beam aboard this tour of Geppi’s Entertainment Museum with its Collections and Exhibits Manager, Michael Solof (seated). Steve Geppi, owner of most of the museum’s collection, is on screen in the background.

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[Editor’s note: Perhaps this department header should be retitled “The Best Laid Plans…” this issue. On Wednesday, May 30, 2018—the very day I was finalizing this article for the designer to begin layouts—I received a Scoop e-newsletter from Diamond Comic Distributors with the unexpected announcement that its president and CEO, Stephen A. Geppi, had made a multimillion-dollar donation of over 3,000 items from his collection of comic books, original comic art, movie posters, photographs, and other pop-culture collectibles to the Library of Congress. Since 2006, Geppi’s phenomenal collection has been housed in Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, Maryland—the subject of this very article, guest-written by the museum’s Collections and Exhibits Manager Michael Solof— but surprisingly with this bombshell, the museum’s doors have closed as of Sunday, June 3, 2018. This startling twist of events occurred too close to press time to cancel or dramatically alter this article. As a result, what was intended to be a tourism feature enticing reader attendance to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum is now a warm-hearted time-traveling trip in the Wayback Machine. But that’s what the museum was always about—preserving memories and history through the lens of pop culture (not unlike the mission statement of RetroFan magazine). While Mr. Geppi’s collection can no longer be seen in the manner described and depicted here, consider yourself fortunate to take this final, intimate tour of Baltimore’s beloved showplace of Americana— and plan to follow select items from this celebrated collection to their new home in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.] 67

Retro Travel

(TOP) GEM’s comic-book library. All images in this article are courtesy of Geppi’s Entertainment Museum. (LEFT) From the Fabulous Fifties, the Bob-A-Loop toy, as seen in its GEM display.

tribution. This led to the founding of Diamond Comic Distributors, now the largest comic distributor in the world. But like so many of us collectors know, all of this buying led to a new problem: storage. Geppi needed a place to both preserve the wonderful artifacts he was amassing, but he also wanted to share his love of comics and pop culture with the world. Plus, it just made sense to base his collection in the city that he was born and raised in and continued to love throughout his life. That’s how Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, the world’s best showcase for comics and pop culture, came to open on September 6, 2006. I love my job and I’m always thrilled to give tours of the Museum to show it off. There’s a lot to be amazed by here at GEM! We always suggest visitors start off in our Comic Library. As you can see… it’s stunning! And yes, that is an Action Comics #1 as well as a Detective Comics #27 on display in our Prestige Case, front and center, as 68

you walk into the room. The Library traces the history of comic books from the late 1800s all the way through today, and it showcases about 1,000 comics. Hidden gems throughout the room include Pep Comics #22 (the first appearance of Archie), MAD’s first magazine-sized issue, plus the first appearances of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and many more. We also have more modern classics for viewing, such as the first issues of Watchmen, Ultimate Spider-Man, Sandman, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Plaques on the walls tell the story of the entire history of comics through all of its ages, with stops along the way including pulp magazines, Big Little Books, plus highlights of EC and Atlas Comics’ expansive collections. We’re very proud to be able to have a constantly rotating Artist Spotlight section within the Library, where guests can view original comic art up close. Here, you can study in detail the amazing pencils, inks, colors, and watercolors of both classic and RetroFan

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modern artists. Our Artist Spotlights have included the original works of such artists as Kelley Jones, Sal Buscema, Jim Aparo, Shawn Martinbrough, Frank Cho, Mike Hawthorne, and J. G. Jones—just to name a few.

A Time Machine

GEM is located on the second floor of the Camden Street Station, an historic train station built in 1856 and located just a few feet away from the Baltimore Orioles’ home turf, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Both Abraham Lincoln and Babe Ruth passed through our halls during its long and famous history! It goes to show that we have so many unique features to the museum that go beyond just the artifacts. Visiting GEM is like entering a time machine. When the elevator doors open and you enter our lobby, you’re instantly transported back to the days of your childhood. While a more standard museum might have a single row of artwork hanging in their halls, our hallways are packed almost floor-to-ceiling with movie posters, comic-strip art, advertisements, and pop-culture memorabilia from days gone by. In a traditional museum, you might see a beautiful piece of artwork by an artist like Monet or Van Gogh and go, “Wow, I’ve never seen that up close before—that’s neat,” but traveling through GEM is a completely different experience. We like to describe the effect of the GEM experience as “Memory Bubbles.” You’ll turn a corner, or peek in a display case, and see a toy or game or record… and something inside your brain just pops, flooding your senses with nostalgic, personal memories. The phrase “I used to have that as a kid” is heard a lot around here! And that’s always followed up by a wonderful story from that person’s childhood, and the personal memories that are attached to it. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. But we don’t just specialize in broad-based American popculture artifacts at Geppi’s. We also have an entire room called the “Baltimore Heroes Room,” dedicated just to the pop culture of Charm City. There, you will find things you may have never known about Baltimore. For example, did you know that we’re the Umbrella Capital of the World? “Born in Baltimore, raised around the world” is our slogan. The square-bottomed ice cream cone was invented here. We even have a memorial to our very own Baltimore Batman, Leonard B. Robinson. Lenny was known for visiting local hospitals in his custom black Lamborghini “Batmobile,” all while spreading hope in the battles against illness that many of these children were facing. Then there’s local toys like the Bob-ALoop, a solid one-pound chunk of wood with a tiny hole in one end, and the other attached to a string and stick. The goal of the game was to swing the wood block up so that it would drop down onto the tiny round end of the stick. But the swinging chunk of solid wood led to so many hospital trips for broken bones and concussions that they eventually stopped making the “toy.” (The key word being “eventually.”) Our timeline through pop-culture history begins right after this room, in our Early 1900s room. There, you’ll meet the most popular character of his day, the Yellow Kid. His image appeared on everything from hardware supplies to cigarette brands to whiskey bottles! This Kid got around! His adventures were so famous that he also has the distinction of being labeled the very

first newspaper comic strip. The Yellow Kid was so popular due to how immigrants were flooding into America at the time, and they easily related to him. Amazingly, Richard Alcott, the character’s creator, struck gold again when he created another character the masses loved: Buster Brown. As you walk into our next room, you’ll pass our beautiful spiral staircase, where we happen to have another new exhibit: “The Star Wars and Comic Art of Tim and Greg Hildebrandt.” They’re most famous for their classic Seventies’ Lord of the Rings book and calendar illustrations, as well as the touchstone poster from the original Star Wars film.

The Mid-Twentieth Century

Our next room covers the period from 1928 to 1945, and features hundreds of tiny toys and prizes that you could get by joining fan clubs for characters like Dick Tracy or Captain Midnight. There’s also things you could get by cutting out the back of a cereal box or—gasp!—small advertisements on the rear of your cherished comic books. During the Forties, over 90 million people spent their evenings either going to the movies or listening to their radios for the news, sports, and entertainment of the day. It was a unique time in history because it was also one of the first times that mainstream comics crossed over into the “real world.” Suddenly the newsstands were full of images of superheroes fighting the enemies of WWII such as Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini. Batman and Robin, Superman and Jimmy Olsen… heck, even Donald Duck got in on the action! It was an amazing period for pop-culture crossovers.

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We’ve nicknamed this room the Disney Room, as it focuses heavily on wonderful toys, games, movie posters, and more from the early years of Walt Disney’s career. We not only have on display the very first soundtrack album ever made, for 1938’s Snow White, but if you’re super-lucky, we will occasionally pull out of the vaults the first storyboard drawings Walt ever did of Mickey Mouse for the short film Plane Crazy. Remember when I said that 90 million people were going to the movies or listening to the radio in the Forties? Well, that would soon change as the Fifties rolled in, as about 40 million of those people began to find another place for their nightly entertainment… their couches! The era of television had begun! This is the room that I usually start to see those memory bubbles start exploding all over the place! It’s our Fifties room, the era of Elvis, Howdy Doody, Lassie, and The Mickey Mouse Club. Those tiny black-and-white TV sets you see in the picture on the next page may not look like much now, but back then, if your family was lucky enough to own one… you were the hit of the neighborhood! At the time, a set like those above could cost about $300.00. That’s equivalent to about $3,000.00 today! But boy, oh boy, the things you could see on there! One of the major benefits of TV was that you didn’t have to just imagine what Elvis’ gyrating hips looked like or what hole Timmy fell into on this week’s episode of Lassie (and that kid sure did fall into a lot of holes)!

I often find people of all ages just stopping and staring at our televisions, which run wonderful old clips of classic shows like The Three Stooges shorts, Hopalong Cassidy, and I Love Lucy. In the time we’ve been here, I’ve probably seen the clip of Lucy “enjoying” the taste of Vitametavegamin thousands of times. Although Lucy says it tastes “just like candy,” the priceless look on her face sure says otherwise! I still laugh every time I see it!

he Swinging Sixties and Seventies, T and Beyond

A familiar, yet ominous sight greets you as you enter the next room at GEM. You’ve entered the Sixties, a period of revolution! Massive changes were occurring throughout pop culture during the Sixties. The Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion were just beginning their incredible assault on the music scene. America answered back with the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees. Plus, we started producing our own forms of iconic music, like the incredible rhythm and blues sounds pouring forth from Motown and Stax records. You didn’t even have to be alive at the time to feel the lasting impression on pop culture this decade had. The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, Moose and Squirrel… er, Rocky and Bullwinkle, were all shows that first earned their pop-culture street cred in the Sixties. Such was the charisma and influence of President John F.

Disney at war! (LEFT) Cover to the sheet music for 1942’s der Fuehrer’s Face. (ABOVE) Storyboards for Plane Crazy. © Disney. 70

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Kennedy that he personally changed the landscape of pop culture during this decade and beyond with a simple, three-word answer to the unassuming question of “What are you currently reading?” His answer, “Bond, James Bond” led to an explosion of spy and Cold War books, magazines, movies, and TV series appearing almost overnight. Whereas the possibility of war was constantly lurking in everyday shadows, new forms of peace were being conceived in space as Star Trek began its indelible run in 1966. That show imagined the future of mankind as one of peaceful (well… semi-peaceful) exploration, led by a brave, diverse, multicultural, and multiracial crew. One of those Memory Bubbles pops for me every time I see our display for the Star Trek Jet Disc Rapid-Fire Tracer Gun. My mom was right… I did almost put out someone’s eye with that thing… almost daily! So much fun! Our next room contains some of our favorite artifacts from the Seventies and Eighties. Star Wars is the main focus of this room. Some of the coolest things you’ll find in this room are the posters from those films, including the incredibly rare Revenge of the Jedi poster! We currently have a display of some of the most rare original-trilogy Star Wars toys from the collection of Russell Branton, many worth $100,000 or more! You can even buy some of those if you’d like, because they happen to be for sale in auctions taking place throughout the year at our sister company, Hake’s (www. hakes.com). Start saving those pennies! Also on display here are rarities such as the first Transformers toy, early G.I. Joe action figures (don’t call them dolls!), the first McDonald’s Happy Meal box, autographed albums by the first season cast of Saturday Night Live, M. C. Hammer Gold Lamé-outfitted dolls (we have an ongoing debate as to whether it’s okay to call this one an action figure), plus Rainbow Brite, Cabbage Patch, and Care Bear dolls. And, of course, we have the most popular and bestselling (over six million!) poster in history: Farrah Fawcett. Chances are either you or someone you know had (or still has—fess up!) this poster hanging somewhere in their garage or basement! One of the things we’re most proud of in the museum is our Special Exhibits Room. Within the last five years we’ve had the pleasure to work with some of the finest artist and collectors in order to create fantastic exhibits on many different subjects. The list is pretty astounding, and it includes “The Art of Steve Epting and the Winter Soldier,” “Will Eisner’s The Spirit,” “Milestone’s History of African Americans in Pop Culture,” “The Comic Art of Amanda Conner,” “The Alice In Wonderland collection of Matt Crandall,” and “Batman: Through the Decades.” At this writing in April 2018, our current exhibit features an in-depth look into the archives of Diamond Select Toys.

My Favorite Things

I do a lot of different things under the guise of Collections and Exhibits Manager, but I always seem to be asked the same question by visitors: What are my favorite items? That question’s tough because the museum holds so many incredible items. But while I’m giving tours, I always find myself drawn to three items in particular. The first, I mentioned earlier, which is the Bob-A-Loop, but the other two happen to both be kept in the Seventies room. I’ve always been a horror fan, and we have one of the best horror toys ever made (or, should I say recalled?)— the Talking Freddy Kruger doll. When word got out that this was being produced by Matchbox, complaints from the American RetroFan

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(TOP) Enter the Fifties Room! In addition to the front-and-center Howdy Doody and Lucy, look around and you’ll find Famous Monsters of Filmland #1, Superman, Li’l Abner, and other faves. (MIDDLE) Batman welcomes you to the Sixties exhibit, where you’ll also find such notables as 007, the Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bozo the Clown, Big Loo, and the Flintstones. (BOTTOM) The museum’s Star Trek Jet Disc Rapid-Fire Tracer Gun. It is illogical to put one’s eye out with this toy. Star Trek © CBS Studios Inc. 71

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(TOP) Ye ed had this Farrah poster in his dorm room. How about you? (LEFT AND ABOVE) Solof’s faves: GEM’s Talking Freddy Krueger and Big Bird Egg Beater.

Family Association quickly shut down initial production… but not before 40,000 of them hit toy store shelves. What did the AFA find so offensive? Well, let’s see… maybe it was the fact that it was a children’s toy based on the character of a child serial killer… or maybe it was the fact that the toy had a smile that just screams out (excuse the pun), “I really love my job!” But I’m thinking the thing that pushed it over the edge was the wonderful phrases that the doll was programmed with, which ranged from “Pleasant dreams” to “Hi, I’m Freddy… let’s be friends!” Uh… no thanks!! Finally, my other favorite toy, which is only slightly less horrible, believe it or not, is a Muppet toy, the Big Bird Egg Beater. While cute at first glance, it takes on a much more sinister presence when the fact sinks in that the purpose of this supposedly harmless cooking accessory is to help Big Bird scramble up his kids down on Sesame Street. “Sunny Day” indeed. 72

In closing, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, I really love my job—almost as much as I like sharing all of the wonderful art and artifacts with the people passing through our doors. I personally hope you choose to visit Geppi’s Entertainment Museum the next time you’re in Baltimore and happen to be looking for something extraordinary to do for about an hour. We have so many hidden gems throughout the museum that it’s impossible for folks to not find something here that either they or their parents owned as kids. Every day I hear someone say, “I had that!” And every day I get to see people, even if it’s only for a few minutes, escape into fun and pleasant remembrances of their childhood memories and just smile! I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful that makes me feel.

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SUPER COLLECTOR

A Hunger for Yesterday Collecting Metal Lunch Boxes by Terry Collins Of Pop Bottles and Sears and Roebuck

I didn’t have much money as a kid. Scratch that: I didn’t have any money as a kid. While my family wasn’t destitute, the budget was lean and most of the time limited to the necessities. I’m sure that if my father hadn’t kept up the monthly payments on our Sears credit card, my yearly visits from Santa would’ve consisted of a single “cool” gift from the local Eckerd’s Drug Store and clothing galore instead of the invitation to choose up to $50 worth of Sears Wish Book for the Christmas Holiday Season awesomeness. No Sears Wish Book for the Christmas Holiday Season? No Batman, Lone Ranger, Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek, Dallas Cowboys, or Atari 2600 Home Entertainment System. So, for me, the concept of a weekly allowance was a fiction. Other than parental purchases and the generosity of relatives on holidays, most of my spending cash came via the gathering and selling of the now-extinct method of currency known as “pop bottles.” For younger readers not Southern born, a “pop bottle” is a glass soda bottle returned to the grocery store for a nickel, or later, a dime deposit. When one purchased a soft drink, an extra (TOP) You’re never too old to enjoy having lunch out of your Flintstones lunch box. Super Collector Terry Collins, in the East Surry High School (NC) cafeteria, and a 1962 Flintstones lunch box, the first lunch-box release for The Flintstones.

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premium was added to the cost for the container. Return the glass container and the premium was refunded. Yes, back in my day in the Seventies, Pepsi and Coke bottles were sterilized and reused again and again and again. Think of it as primitive recycling, which I’m still of the opinion was better for the environment. I was always on the lookout for stray bottles. Finding one was discovering discarded money. One summer, after participating in a walkathon for charity, those who reached the end of the 15-mile route were given a pack of Lance ToastChee crackers and a soda. Most people left the glass bottles abandoned along the hillside. I was instantly transported into the form of a present-day California Gold Miner of 1849. With a hearty mental cry of “Thar’s gold in them thar hills,” I went bottle gathering, filling the trunk of the family Bonneville when they picked me up after the walk. Editor’s note: Are As this story, and the others that you a Super Collector? support my opening sentence, relate… I Want to share your didn’t have much in the way of currency collection with as a kid. The reason for this explanation RetroFan readers? If is the root of why I am a collector. Instead so, contact the editor of having the luxury of breaking a toy, at euryman@gmail. ruining a comic book, or bashing a lunch com—and include a box over Ivan Edward’s bowl-cut-adorned few photos from your noggin, I was forced by circumstance to collection with your take care of my possessions. So, I hung query. 73

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onto anything and everything I found of interest, and trust me, there was a lot I was interested in keeping. And what has interested me since Day One is the color, the fantasy, the excitement, and the worlds of pop culture.

Collectors are Born, not Made

Over the past five decades, my house has been littered with the pop-culture debris that makes adults with the hearts of children salivate. They gaze upon these items that hold the keys to their past lives and always say in whispered delight, “I had one of those.” When I began collecting, anything I termed “cool” was ripe for the harvesting. Once space became an issue, I now try to add to my collection with only the most special items to reclaim and possess. As a boy, it was comic books, and while I owned assorted issues dating back to the age of four years old, my hardcore collecting tendencies clicked at the ripe age of five, with a copy of Dennis the Menace #127 my parents purchased for me in the local hospital gift shop. The reason for the visit to the hospital is lost in the mists of time (what I call my aging brain), but the desire to find more of these comics of all genres spread like a four-color virus. Before, I kept things because I knew there would be no replacing them. Now, I was infected with collecting, and happily the disease wasn’t fatal. Comics spread into Peanuts paperbacks with an edition of Good Ol’ Snoopy, which led into books in general. In turn, board games and toys and the 1973 set of Looney Tunes promotional drinking glasses, purchased full of cold Pepsi Cola at my local Hardee’s, demanded to be preserved and enjoyed. By junior high, my bedroom was filled with the detritus of my life, and all of the memories each and every item contained. I’ll confess to slowing down my collecting fever in high school due to the discovery of girls, writing, local community theater, and a driver’s license, but once switched on, the gene never goes dormant. Collectors never stop—they just go through periods of slowing down. With maturity, and a paycheck, I added items I’d lost over the span of time. Missing things, such as my Tom and Jerry game, had vanished thanks to my beloved grandmother, who repaired many a broken action figure or worn book spine, but was also the anti-hoarder and a believer in passing down items held in closets and not currently being used. The quest for the enchanted objects I’d owned or lusted after as a kid began in earnest while I was in college… leading my wife to lament that if I focused on a single character or television series or better yet, one kind of collectible, I could open my own museum devoted to a single concept. My response was always, Why specialize when you could open a gallery featuring all of the greats? However… the closest I ever came to a direct focus on a single kind of collectible was the humble lunch box. 74

Lunch: The Most Important Meal of the Day

When I say I collect lunch boxes, I’m talking about ones made of metal. I’m not going to go into vinyl lunch boxes, which someone once accurately termed as “a cardboard box covered in a piece of shower curtain,” nor will I be discussing plastic boxes, which no one ever liked—including the children who were stuck lugging them around. Yes, I have examples of both in my collection, but to this day, I weep that we never got a proper metal lunch box featuring the vinyl-only offerings of Captain Kangaroo or The Monkees. As a kid, I avoided those poorly designed examples, and demanded metal. So, my boxes both then and now are made of steel with every available surface from top to bottom covered in illustrations. Full-color paintings. Action scenes and portraits of the characters a kid loved. Not the infamous “Red Plaid” that poor Beaver Cleaver was forced to carry by staid Ward and traditional June, nor the gray or solid black “lunch bucket” of workingman’s fame (dome shaped, thermos bottle of coffee in the top, ham sandwich and apple in the bottom). No, I’m speaking of the boxes that, during their heyday, were marketed to children with all of the brightly colored metal lithography technology could muster. What we think of as the now classic lunch box didn’t spring forth without some growing pains. In fact, what brought the collectible box into being was Western star William Boyd, better known as “Hopalong Cassidy.” His lunch box was primitive by what came a few years later. It was simply a solid red or blue metal box with a “Hoppy” decal affixed to the front by manufacturer Aladdin to jumpstart moribund sales. To their delight, and according to industry sources, sales went on to exceed 600,000 units. Roy Rogers, the singing king of merchandisable Western heroes, took note, but when he approached Aladdin, he was told they already had a cowboy. Roy was no dummy. He went to Aladdin’s competitor King-Seeley Thermos and offered up his likeness and all aspects of the Roy Rogers Ranch. Thermos took him up on the offer, but went with a fullcolor lithographed front and back panel of a painting of Roy instead of a decal. This custom artwork left Hoppy in the dust. Soon, an entire line of Roy Rogers boxes appeared on a yearly basis (including one devoted to his trusty steed, Trigger the Wonder Horse). For over a decade from the midFifties well into the Sixties, it was the Golden Age of the Western, with Gene Autry and Gunsmoke and Bonanza and other cowboythemed lunch boxes continuing to appear yearly. Thus, the span of the collectible metal lunchbox (stretching roughly from 1953 to 1983) began… and for several generations of children who grew up into adulthood, a portal of yesterday could be reclaimed to the past.

Confessions of a Picky Eater

As a child, I was cursed with the affliction of being a picky eater. In most ways, I still am, but as a kid, you are at the whims of the adults around you. My parents were patient and indulged me (in hindsight, perhaps too patient, but that’s another story). However, when presented with the soon-to-be confronted mysteries of the Flat Rock Elementary School’s lunchroom cuisine in the first grade, well, the notion of what I would eat for lunch was terrifying to my six-year-old brain and made my already-limited palate shrivel up. A solution was proposed. I would carry my lunch to school. A RetroFan

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(TOP LEFT) Says our Super Collector, “Due to space limitations and my own sense of creating fun displays, I often mix lunch boxes with other collectibles. This one, featuring Hanna-Barbera classics, includes The Flintstones (1971) in name only since it was also sold under the Pebbles and Bamm Bamm title, and Yogi Bear from 1974. Thermos bottles are from The Flintstones (1964), the 1963 Yogi Bear and Friends, and Pebbles and Bamm Bamm (1971, Vinyl Edition).” (TOP RIGHT) A small part of Collins’ Looney Tunes collection, complete with the wonderfully designed Looney Tunes TV Set (1959) lunch box and the 1970 box focused on The Road Runner. (RIGHT) College flashback (in the days when stereo speakers were the size of a dorm refrigerator): Terry’s burgeoning collection, featuring a mix of old and new boxes. The G.I. Joe (1982) and Mr. Merlin (1981) boxes are old store stock discovered at Big Lots, hence they still have the Thermos Brand stickers on the front. The prize on this page is the 1959 Gunsmoke, found in immaculate condition by Collins in a tiny antique store in Virginia.

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daily brown bag containing a sandwich, chips, a cookie, or a banana, with chocolate milk to drink courtesy of the steel industrial cooler in the lunch line of the cafeteria. However, a sack was so… lame. No, I lusted after what I’d seen in the aisles of my local stores. So, thus began an annual ritual I would follow for six years. Preparations for each grade would launch in late summer, two weeks or so before the first day of classes, with the accompanying of my maternal grandfather to Roses Department Store. Each new year, Pa treated me to that most valuable of all the back-to-school supplies available, allowing me to choose a new lunchbox from the cornucopia spilling out at a kid’s eye-level. There were so many possibilities. Miniature metal television sets of vibrantly painted scenes from the finest Saturday morning offerings, or primetime shows with children’s appeal. Cartoon and comic strips. Celebrities and sports. Music and more. Sometimes, these metal treasures were placed on seasonal shelves, while other times were housed in tall, decorated, cardboard displays. Either way, the array was undeniable, and the choice needed to be just right. 1973. Year One was simple. An elegant, yet simply drawn and colored Peanuts by Schulz lunchbox in red trim with Charlie Brown on the front, and yellow Snoopy thermos bottle inside. Decades later, I would learn this box was, in fact, not illustrated by the legendary Charles M. Schulz, but by merchandising artist extraordinaire Nick LoBianco, who not only designed and/or painted the majority of the King-Seeley Thermos lunch boxes in the Sixties and well into the Seventies, but was also master of the style of Schulz. His studio handled the plethora of Peanuts merchandising of the Sixties and is still involved with the Schulz empire to the current day. However, the genius of the lunch-box market dictated the purchase of a new box each school year, for no matter how hard you tried to take care of the durable metal containers, they always finished the year battered, scratched, and frequently adorned with markers and stickers. Back to school meant new pencils, notebooks, folders, erasers… and yes, a shiny new box. But what to choose for second grade and 1974…? Answer? An evergreen classic, and a lunch box that would not be out of style in any elementary school across the country today: Scooby-Doo. In fact, manufacturers are still making Scooby lunch containers today, even though they are made of other materials and feature style-guide artwork instead of custom designs. I look at this box today with adult eyes, and what I see is some rather shaky artwork, but the memories are golden. Third grade? I picked up Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, a personal choice due to it being one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoon shows. The front panel alone was a masterpiece of composition, fitting the entire Junkyard Band of Mushmouth, Dumb Donald, Rudy, Weird Harold, Bucky, Russell, Bill, and Fat Albert himself into a fun musical tableau. Choice number four? Emergency! In hindsight, an odd choice from my usual tastes of cartoon boxes, but a logical one. The paramedics and firemen of Squad 51 were enormously popular with kids in the late Seventies, and the box itself was dynamic and beautifully painted in tones of yellow and red befitting a series set in a firehouse. The show was so popular, Aladdin also designed another version as a dome-shaped lunch box with all-new artwork to return to the well of the young fans for the show. Fifth grade and 1976 brought us the Marvel Comics Super Heroes, which embraced the entire Marvel line-up… giving a kid a shiny back-to-school special featuring Spider-Man, the Hulk, the main members of the Avengers with Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye, and the Fantastic Four on a single lunch box. As a lifelong comics fan, I loved this lunch box, and wore it out to the degree there was nothing left to save. I was happy decades later to replace it with a mint-condition 76

(TOP) One half of Collins’ lunch box “wall,” a true mix of genres and characters from over the decades, with other collectibles dropped in. This was a remodeled tool shed that was refurbished to serve as Terry’s office and a place for his ever-growing collection. (BOTTOM) The other side of the “wall.” Query from our Super Collector: “Who carried a Hee Haw (1970) lunch box to school?”

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example, as showroom-floor new as the one my grandfather purchased for me. Then came sixth grade. My final year at Flat Rock Elementary and my final year of toting a lunch box to school. The box of choice was an obvious one for my age group and the zeitgeist of the Seventies: Star Wars. A 1977 sleekly illustrated black beauty with star fields providing the backdrop for a X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter battle on the front, and a group scene of Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2D2, and C3P0 in a landspeeder being interrogated by a group of Stormtroopers on the back. A new school beckoned, and with a new start, I finally decided the time had arrived to put away my childish things, and eat the hot lunch provided by the Gentry Middle School cafeteria.

Why Celebrate at Noon?

Even for the kid who likes school, there are two times during the day where the rote pattern of learning is interrupted by freedom: recess and lunch. How can adults of an age today not remember the lunch box without feelings of joy? You escaped the trumpet “wah wah wah” sound of the voice of your teacher for 30 minutes of uninterrupted conversation with your friends, talking about subjects you were interested in sharing, and laughing over sandwiches and your favorite shows. Lunch was a silly time, but also a bonding one, and the lunch-box choice you made helped establish your schoolhouse street cred from day one. A boy with a vibrant purple delight such as The Osmonds might not have made the best choice, even if he did secretly enjoy their music. During the span I was in elementary school, the top boxes I recall were in the line of Evel Knievel or other heroic and action types carried by guys. I’m sure there were some fellows who weren’t in on the choosing of their lunch boxes, and they ended up with a cartoon box such as Inch High Private High—a concept so weak, even King-Seeley Thermos ended up pairing it with a second series also as short-lived: a Hanna-Barbera Scooby-Doo retread with the not-so-clever name of Goober and the Ghost Chasers. If you were a girl and carried a Holly Hobbie, well, that sent a totally different message than a friend who proudly brandished one featuring The Bionic Woman. Did any boys ever carry a lunch box featuring The Waltons? Or a Little House on the Prairie (although I dug that show as a kid, so maybe I would have). Or perhaps gender roles were abandoned completely, and a Yogi Bear or Woody Woodpecker box was the choice.

Did Somebody Say… Lunch?

(TOP) “Christmas is always fun at the Collins house,” our Super Collector says. “At times, I wonder, why bother with putting up a tree at all? Answer: My wife Ginny (pictured), who insists on a tree every season.” (MIDDLE & BOTTOM) The one that started it all—Terry’s personal lunch box from first grade, the 1973 Peanuts by Schulz, front and back views.

RetroFan

Fall 2018

Time passes. Junior High flows into High School flows into High Point University, and the collecting bug, while subdued, is still prevalent. In particular, a desire of more innocent times strolls across my memories. The joys of flea markets and toy shows fall into my life, and of all the wonderful items from the past that beckon, that humble tin box known as the lunch box calls out to me. Some of the first used ones I reacquire are from a now deceased dealer I come to know as Eddie, who had a collectibles store in Lexington, North Carolina. Soon, I find this is a great time to begin collecting. Old store stock can still be found, including a find I make in a small pharmacy near High Point, North Carolina… where mint-with-original-paperwork-and-tags examples of the high-kicking days of 1974 with a one-two roundhouse kick of Kung Fu featuring David Carradine and the Scatman Crothers-voiced Hong Kong Phooey from Hanna-Barbera. A year or two afterwards, an old salvage shop in Thomasville, North Carolina, has a few new boxes from the early Eighties placed on the shelf. Seeing me come in weekly as budget allows, I become friendly with the owners, and eventually they give me permission to plunder through cases of old stock housed overhead on the second floor, where I find a cache of 77

Super Collector

Spy boxes! (LEFT) If Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin look slightly crazed, it might be due to master humorist and character artist Jack Davis creating the graphics on this yellow-rimmed beauty for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1966). Providing support from below is James Bond Secret Agent 007 (also from 1966). (RIGHT) The Bond box, whose artwork was inspired by the film Thunderball (1965).

premium condition boxes circa 1981… still in the Aladdin school bus cardboard display! Annie, Sesame Street, The Fall Guy, The Dukes of Hazzard, and many more are added to the collection via this amazing find. A moment of regret here: I wish I had asked for the display, which is certainly worth more than the boxes it housed and would be a showpiece of a collection, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. In my hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina, Lowes Foods changes location, and unearthed from a nook or cranny of a back stockroom comes a 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture lunchbox in beautiful condition, and at the price it would have cost when the movie premiered. I still remember how overjoyed I was at discovering such a find in the mid-Nineties inside a grocery store. I literally skipped down the aisle to show it to my wife. The classic rumor for the eventual demise of the massmarketed character metal lunch box refers to an incident in Florida where concerned parents brought about concerns over children using their lunchtime luggage as weapons. From what I’ve read and researched over the decades, this is strictly apocryphal and never happened. The real answer is, economics and changing trends. The rite of passage I shared with my grandfather each year was no longer in evidence. Sales were down, and the elaborate metal creations were becoming more expensive to make. In the end, the last lunch box to come off the line in 1985 was a terrible piece of dreck featuring Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo character. The effort put into this box was about the same as those first ones with Hopalong Cassidy. And so it goes… Older boxes often come at a higher cost, even when purchased at below market value. However, I have no regrets at cash spent on such examples as The Looney Tunes TV Set; The Man From U.N.C.L.E.; The Wild, Wild West; and other personal favorites in my 78

collection. Budget is a good thing, and keeps me grounded. Really, the money isn’t the issue so much as the hunt and the discovery. In today’s Internet-fueled world, almost any object can be possessed at the click of a button. I find I still go to the flea markets, the antique malls, and the toy shows when hunting lunch boxes. Lurking on eBay just isn’t as much fun, and besides, I don’t want to own every lunch box ever made. I just want the ones I enjoy.

Lost Lunches

For every classic masterpiece produced during the heyday of the painted metal lunchbox era, there are what I like to call missed opportunities and bad predictions. As a lover of these beauties since childhood, I often pondered why certain shows got a box, while others did not. I’ve long fantasized on what they might look like, and how nice it would be to travel into an alternate dimension and find a box that should have been waiting for me.

A PERSONAL AND BIASED TOP TEN OF THE COOLEST METAL LUNCH BOXES 1. Star Trek (1968) 2. The Jetsons (1963) 3. Marvel Comics Super Heroes (1976) 4. Batman (1966) 5. Disney School Bus (1960s) 6. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1966) 7. The Munsters (1965)

8. Gunsmoke (1959) 9. The Flintstones (1962) 10. The Beatles (1965)

RetroFan

Fall 2018

Super Collector Marshal Matt Dillon and Deputy Chester Goode keep the peace on this 1959 Gunsmoke box. Our Super Collector points out the clever addition by the designer to the rim to give artwork a hand-tooled leather appearance. This box also has a rare variant edition where “Marshal” was misspelled “Marshall,” later corrected by Aladdin.

More often than not, Aladdin, King-Seeley Thermos, and their ilk had to make educated guesses as to what the popular television shows and films would be in the coming year. For every smart and profitable choice such as The Beverly Hillbillies, you might get stuck with trying to sell kids on It’s About Time, an one-season-long obscure time-travel comedy where astronauts end up trapped in the Stone Age. This guessing game continued up until the final days of the metal lunch box, with dead-on-arrival classics such as Doctor Dolittle, Apple’s Way, and Mr. Merlin being immortalized in tin, while the following seven should-have-been classics—admittedly all from the Golden Age of the American character lunch box of the 1960s—were missing in action: Gilligan’s Island: There would be no Homer Simpson and his trademark cry of “D’oh!” without Alan Hale, Jr.’s Skipper’s long-suffering cries of pain after Gilligan once again managed to drop something heavy on the larger man’s foot. A three-season liveaction comedy that appealed to all ages, a box with the group of cartoon-like castaways would have been a natural. The Andy Griffith Show: A top-rated family comedy series with tones of pathos and wisdom, but popular with all ages thanks to the antics of comedy legend Don Knotts as Barney Fife, along with other colorful denizens of Mayberry such as Floyd the Barber, Otis Campbell, and the cousins Pyle, Gomer and Goober. The front panel would have to feature Barney and Andy in action… perhaps chasing after a cow-riding Otis as seen in the episode “The Rehabilitation of Otis.” Or dealing with yet another window-breaking spree by mountain man Ernest T. Bass. The iconic settings alone are endless: the interior of the Mayberry Courthouse, Andy Taylor’s front porch, Myers Lake, and, of course, the “two chairs, no waiting” gathering place of Floyd’s Barber Shop. Bewitched: This long-running fantasy series featured a sexy and intelligent Elizabeth Montgomery as witch Samantha RetroFan

Fall 2018

Stephens, living in suburbia with cranky husband Darrin, who stupidly insisted she keep her magical powers a secret. A box that would have appealed to boy and girls alike, with endless ways to illustrate some of the scenes from the series, using a crack supporting gang of characters such as Endora and Uncle Arthur. Mission: Impossible: Unlike the larger-than-life affairs of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin from The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the adventures of the Impossible Missions Force on Mission: Impossible played things straight. What Mission: Impossible had going for it was a killer logo and opening sequence, gadgets galore, life masks to assume the guise of foes across the world, and the rock-solid presence of Peter Graves as leader Jim Phelps. Some might argue that the series was aimed more at adults, but tell that to a generation of children who grew up thrilling to the IMF’s exploits. Jonny Quest: In my opinion, the number-one “lost” box of the Sixties and probably at the top of animated shows that begged to be immortalized in metal. The opening credits alone featured enough slam-bang action, exotic locales, supervillains, evil technology, and pulp thrills to create an entire series of lunch boxes in this legendary Doug Wildey-designed masterpiece. Space Ghost: If Jonny Quest is at the top of missing boxes based on an animated series, a close second would be Alex Toth’s Space Ghost for Hanna-Barbera. Picture a lunch box in the deepest of blues adorned with the spectral-white hero, accompanied by the bright hues of sidekicks Jan and Jace. The flip panel gives you the Phantom Cruiser in a dramatic space-action scene. Add classic foes such as Brak, Zorak, and Moltar to the top, bottom, and sides, and you have a box that would be coveted as much today as it would have upon release. Green Acres: I would pay top dollar for a lunch box with wonder pig Arnold Ziffel sending Oliver Douglas into spasms of frustration, set in the ramshackle dump of a farmhouse the transplanted city slicker shared with Lisa Douglas. The flipside would have to feature Mr. Haney attempting to sell his latest piece of ridiculousness to an incredulous Mr. Douglas. So many floating heads of characters to adorn the top, sides, and bottom as well! Mr. Haney! Mr. Drucker! Mr. Kimball! (Lots of Misters on this show). Alf and Ralph—the Monroe Brothers! Eb the Handyman! Ah, talk about a fun box that would have been… TERRY COLLINS has written comic books, coloring books, children’s books, chapter books, graphic novels, pulp-fiction epics, and much, much more. Best known for penning the now-out-of-print biography on legendary North Carolina actor Andy Griffith, he currently teaches A.P. English and Writing at East Surry High School. For more information on current and past projects, as well as his meanderings on pop culture in general, please visit his website at www. PopCultureDebris.com 79

by Scott Saavedra

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