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Looking at some movie branded food stuffs

Posted in advertising, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags advertising, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, movies, pop culture, Transformers, Twilight on May 12, 2011 by Paxton

If you read this blog you know I love both movies and promotional food stuffs like new soda flavors and candies. I love it even more when they are combined.

Here are some candies, pastries, etc that were re-branded to promote a movie. I’m going to exclude the Star Wars saga from this article because, honestly, I could do a series of articles on Star Wars and food branding. Images are from my own Flickr stream unless otherwise noted. See all images BIGGER by clicking on them.

King Kong Hostess pastries – Back in 2005, Hostess did a big promotion for Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. They added banana to several of their products. In the pics you can see Banana Twinkies as well as Banana Walnut mini muffins. Interestingly enough, Twinkies’ original flavor was, in fact, banana.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hulk Sour Lime Life-Savers – A Hulk branded Sour Lime flavor promoting the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie. I don’t actually remember these at all, I just saw the wrapper pop up on my buddy Jason Liebig’s Flickr stream. Jason states that it may have been a Canadian only product. I like this much better than I liked Ang Lee’s movie, and I haven’t even tried these.

Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies – From 1991. This was sort of a dual promotion. The packaging used artwork from the cartoon, but it was released around the time of the second live-action movie. You can even see a movie promotion on the packaging. Matt from X-Entertainment did a great write up of this product. The pies were green and filled with vanilla pudding. There were four package designs each featuring a different Ninja Turtle.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hostess Hulk Cakes – From 2008 to promote the Incredible Hulk reboot with Edward Norton. These were a Scary Cakes promotion for Halloween that featured green frosting and sprinkles on top. Hostess also added the Hulk to their regular cup cakes, donuts and Twinkies products, but left the actual cakes unchanged. There was also an Incredible Hulk branded Air Heads candy.

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14 vintage ads for video games based on movies

Posted in Activision, advertising, Atari, Back to the Future, Batman, movies, Star Wars, video games with tags advertising, Back to the Future, Batman, Cavalcade Arcade, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Wars, video games, vintage on February 21, 2011 by Paxton

I love movies. I love video games. So, obviously, I love video games based on movies. Well, I love the idea of video games based on movies. And this type of corporate synergy has been going on for years. Ever since the enormous popularity of the Atari 2600, both video game companies and Hollywood have tried to capitalize on popular movie brands to boost sales. And it makes for awesome pop culture ephemera.

So here are 14 awesomely vintage ads for video games based on popular movie franchises.

ET (Atari 2600 – 1982) – This is it. The game that felled the house of Atari. Yes, I owned this game and hated every second I played it. I know a lot of people now retroactively say they enjoyed it, but I HATED it. You can only fall into an empty pit so many times before you throw the controller through the TV screen. Surprisingly, this game was designed by the same guy that did Yars’ Revenge, the highest selling original Atari game (and one of my all time favorites). Talk about Jekyll and Hyde. Seanbaby rated ET #1 on his list of 20 worst video games OF ALL TIME.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari 2600 – 1982) – Around the same time ET was released, Atari also released this game based on the first Indiana Jones movie. And it’s starring YOU!

Total Recall (NES – 1990) – Video game based on the popular Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Total Recall. Seanbaby rated this game #15 on his list of 20 worst video games OF ALL TIME.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure (NES – 1991) – Bill & Ted. It is amazing this movie was as popular as it was. I mean, the movie spawned a sequel, a cereal, a cartoon show and a live action show at Universal Studios. And Keanu is even talking about making another one. Most excellent. I never played this game but I loved the first movie.

Rambo (NES – 1988) – A side scrolling shoot ’em up adventure game that very closely resembled the Zelda sequel, The Adventures of Link.

(via oldmanwinters)
Star Wars Arcade (Atari – 1983) – The original vector based Star Wars game by Atari was extremely popular with fans. So, of course Atari was going to port it to their home consoles. Here’s an ad for the Atari port of the Star Wars arcade game for the 2600 and 5200.

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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.