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Held Over! A new blog showcasing vintage movie print advertisements

Posted in 80s, advertising, movies, pop culture with tags advertising, Held Over, movies, pop culture on December 20, 2010 by Paxton

I’ve been planning this for a year or so, and now I can finally get it out there. I’m starting a new blog called Held Over! As you can see from the banner above, it will showcase old movie advertisements. Many of the ads will be from newspapers (hence the Held Over! catchphrase), but I’ll also include other print media like magazines and comic books. I’ve been stockpiling movie adverts since the mid 80s, and I finally am getting my s**t together and starting to share them online.

Don’t worry, I’ll continue posting movie anniversary articles on this blog. The new blog will mainly showcase the scanned movie ads as well as a little commentary (historical context, relevance, interesting trivia, etc) from me. I’ll even aggregate some of the scans on the new blog into articles on this blog. When I do that, you’ll see the above banner and the article will be tagged with Held Over.

So, where did this come from? Well, when I was growing up I loved going to the movies. I loved them so much, that I would cut out advertisements for my favorite movies from newspapers and magazines. I also spent a good amount of my time in college at the Auburn University library combing through old newspapers on micro phish looking at movie advertisement sections. Well, I was also looking up old 80s NBA box scores featuring Larry Bird and John Stockton, not just movie adverts. Wow, could that confession have sounded any dorkier? No, probably not.

Anyway, throughout the 80s and early 90s, newspapers contained a wealth of awesome movie ads in their movie sections. Movie sections could take up two or three full pages advertising what movies are currently playing.

For instance, here’s a movie section from the day I was born, May 9, 1974. Click it to see it bigger on Flickr.

Nearly two full pages are taken up with movies of the day. And there are some good ones like The Sting, Blazing Saddles and The Exorcist. There are also some stinkers like Zardoz and Great Gatsby. Hmm, actually, I just this moment noticed there are three movies playing starring Robert Redford; The Candidate, The Sting and The Great Gatsby. You don’t see that too often these days.

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Even more awesomely vintage advertisements

Posted in advertising, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman with tags advertising, Batman, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman on September 1, 2010 by Paxton

Earlier this year I looked at several awesomely vintage comic book advertisements (such as the infamous Cube Lube) as well as a bunch of vintage and weird movie posters. Old vintage ads and posters are awesome and hilarious and they seemed to be pretty popular with readers. So I thought I’d take a look at some more vintage advertisements from my Flickr photostream.

Click the images to make them BIGGER.

The Super Hero Time Machine (1977) – Why they didn’t just call these “watches” I have no idea. Great looking ad, though. Interesting that it’s all DC characters except for the one Spider-Man watch.

Chuck Norris and Right Guard (1993) – Walker Texas Ranger roundhouse kicks underarm odor into submission, one armpit at a time.

Chuck Norris Action Jeans – “Won’t bind your legs” when you’re high kicking the sh*t out of some punk’s face. (Via Branded in the 80s)

Right Guard Lime Deodorant (’70s) – This is weird. Lime deodorant? I didn’t know it, but there still exists a Gillette Lemon-Lime Shaving Cream. What’s next? Is Kool-Aid releasing a deodorant flavored drink?

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10 Ridiculous and awesome vintage movie posters

Posted in advertising, movies, pop culture with tags advertising, movies, pop culture on July 21, 2010 by Paxton

The movie poster can either be the best thing or the worst thing about a movie. If the movie studios are careful, they can sell the movie on poster alone. What usually happens though is the studios want to put the most recognizable faces on the poster and what we end up with is a horribly composed Photoshop creation of like 3-5 faces over some action scene in the movie. Utter crapola.

However, sometimes movie studios get a wild hair and create some ridiculous movie poster that has to be seen to be believed. The actual movie couldn’t possibly live up to the greatness of the poster, but you want to see the movie to find out.

Here are some of those posters. You can click any of the images to see them BIGGER.

Ape (1976) – Giant gorilla + Giant shark + Giant snake = F**king AWESOME. Obviously this movie was trying to cash in on the ’70s remake of King Kong with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange (note the Not to be Confused With… disclaimer), but I don’t remember that Kong fighting a shark. Or stepping on and crushing a cruise ship while strangling a giant snake. Maybe that’s why the King Kong remake sucked. Replace Jessica Lange with a giant shark and you would have me at hello.

(Via Lost Video Archive)
Too Late for Tears (1949) – “WHERE’S MY DINNER?!” *SMACK* “WHY ARE YOU CRYING?!” *SMACK* “I HAVE NO TIME FOR YOUR TEARS!” *SMACK* Wow. Just…wow.

(Via Wrong Side of the Art)
Champion of Death (1975) – Okay, you have a movie starring the awesome Sonny Chiba called Champion of Death. What goes on the poster? Chiba karate chopping a giant bull right between the eyes. Wha-?! This movie was also called Karate Bullfighter, which is pretty awesome and brings some much needed sense into the poster design, however, when you know that this movie is about a famous sensei who founded a popular style of Japanese karate and has nothing to do with bullfighting, we are right back into Crazytown.

(Via Wrong Side of the Art)
The Devil’s Partner (1961) -It’s always fun to speculate what these movies are about based on the poster. Here you have a naked chick riding a centaur (!) through a cemetery while being watched by an invisible devil. Yeah, I don’t really care what the movie is about, I just want to see that insanity and have it wash over me like warm sunshine.

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10 Awesomely vintage comic book ads

Posted in advertising, comic books, pop culture, Rubik's Cube with tags advertising, comic books, pop culture, Rubik's Cube on April 20, 2010 by Paxton

I collected comic books from about fourth grade through high school. And even into college a bit. So I’ve got a pretty big collection of comics in my garage right now. I had dipped into the collection the last few months to look for any comics having to do with werewolves as that will be this year’s Halloween theme. While I had some of my favorite issues out, I started scanning the covers and putting them up on my Flickr Photostream. I also started scanning some of the advertisements found within the comic books. Many times, these are even more memorable than the comic book itself. Many of the toy and video game ads are awesome, but you also see many other ads that showed up for decades within many different comics. Many of them are pretty crazy awesome, if you know what I mean.

Here are some of my favorite comic book ads that I’ve come across in my collection. Click any of the images to make them BIGGER.

Charles Atlas – One of the most famous comic book ads in existence.This ad introduced the “98 pound weakling”, named Mac, who birthed the cliche of having sand kicked into his face by a bully. It’s a classic ad that also got a sequel where a new “weakling”, Jack, is bullied at a school dance instead of a beach.

Sea Monkeys – Another ad that EVERYONE on Earth knows about because it was just that popular. Sea Monkeys. On the left you see your normal Sea Monkeys ad from 1972. On the right, however, you can see a 1978 ad for Super Sea Monkeys. These aren’t your average, every day Sea Monkeys, these bitches are SUPER. They grow twice as fast (and probably die twice as fast, too). I bet the inventor of the Sea Monkeys is right now livin’ the good life in Tahiti drinking umbrella drinks and partying with butt-naked freaks.

Cube Lube – This ad is like a flaming hot supernova of AWESOME. Cube. Lube. “We’ve got what it takes to really move your cube!!!” I’m speechless.

Spalding Street Ball ad – Originating in the ’70s, this ad could be found in comics all the way into the mid ’80s. One of my favorite ads that’s on the back of at least 75% of my comic book collection. I also love the artwork. Probably because it’s drawn by Mad Magazine superstar Jack Davis. Check out Davis’ awesome Back to the Future cover for Mad Magazine #260. I don’t want to burst Mr Barry’s bubble, but there is NO WAY that jump shot was a 30 footer. It doesn’t even look like it’s a 3-point shot. He’s lucky if it’s a 20 footer. A 30 footer would be from almost half court.

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Cola Wars: Awesome Vintage Pepsi commercials

Posted in 80s, advertising, commercials, Michael Jackson, Pepsi, pop culture, soda, TV with tags advertising, commercials, Michael Jackson, nostalgia, Pepsi, pop culture, soda, TV on February 25, 2010 by Paxton

Pepsi and The Hoff

Shawn Robare over at Branded in the ’80s is reviewing his trip to the World of Coke in Atlanta and it got me thinking about the Cola Wars of the ’80s. More specifically, soda commercials I loved during the Cola Wars.

I love the battle between Coke and Pepsi during the end of the last century. So much awesome merchandising and memorabilia come out of that time period it’s mind boggling. Both Coke and Pepsi unleashed on our consciousness oodles of celebrities, pop songs, commercials and advertising that sculpted our current pop culture consciousness and is still remembered today.

Let’s take a look back at some of Pepsi’s best soda commercials.

Just this past weekend I watched Michael Jackson’s This Is It on Blu-Ray and loved it. The man new how to perform and he had SO MANY good songs. In the ’80s Michael was a pretty big spokesman for Pepsi and made several commercials (one in which he famously caught on fire). For me, one of the best, if not THE best, Pepsi commercial ever made was Jackson Street (clip above), which premiered on the 1983 Motown 25 TV Special. I still get goosebumps when I watch it. This commercial featured an unbelievably catchy jingle-version of Billie Jean. It also starred a young Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). See another Pepsi commercial MJ made called The Chase.

Ray Charles’ “Uh-Huh” commercials were all over the place in the early ’90s. They had 6 or 7 versions of them including Ray in a courtroom and playing his twin brother, Irv. My favorite version came in 1993 which showed other celebrities (Charo, Tiny Tim, Bo Jackson, Jerry Lewis) auditioning for Ray’s singing part.

Around the time Michael Jackson was a Pepsi spokesman, another Michael (J. Fox) was also signed on. Fox starred in several commercials, mainly for Diet Pepsi, that are considered classics. The commercial above is one of his first featuring him in the library trying to be quiet while buying a Pepsi from a vending machine. See another Pepsi classic called My New Neighbor here in which Fox tries desperately to find his hot, new neighbor a Diet Pepsi.