Book Look! Mail Order Mysteries by Kirk Demarais

I've been a fan of Kirk Demarais' blog, Secret Fun Blog, for years, so when I heard about his newest book, Mail Order Mysteries, I got more excited than a kid waiting by the mailbox for his secret decoder pin. (And as a former professional magician and somewhat reformed prankster, I've been dying to find a copy of his book, Life of the Party, but to no avail.)

Mail Order Mysteries is the kind of book that hits me like a freight train of nostalgia on so many personal levels. It's a a brilliant tome dedicated to those classic mail order comic book ads that tempted us with thrills, chills and solutions to life's ills.

As a kid, it was pretty common practice for me to read through the comic first, then go back and pore over all of those brightly colored pages packed to the gills with tiny ads offering up a multitude of trinkets and novelties. I would carefully look over each ad, mentally picking out the things I was going to buy someday, only to never actually order anything, usually due to my allowance getting sucked up by in-store purchases of trading cards, candy, toys and, of course, more comic books. But that didn't change the fact that I was sorely tempted by life-size submarines or mystical medallions that warded off vampires.

Although I never ordered anything from a comic book ad, there were a couple of moments in my life when I would have a brush with one of these bizarre items, such as the time I visited my first prank store the summer after 5th grade, promptly plunking down my bottle and can return money on a pair of X-Ray Spex, a Whoopie Cushion and a Switchblade Comb (I love the classics), only to almost kill myself on my bike because I tried to where the Spex on the ride home. There was also a time in 3rd grade, when a classmate brought his "foot locker" full of 100 toy soldiers to school, riddled with disappointment over their diminutive size and flat appearance. I, on the other hand, thought they were beyond cool and wasted no time in forking over my Little Debbie Nutty Bar in trade for them.

 

As you can see from my pics, this book is simply bursting with full color photos of all of the classic mail order pieces of merchandise. The presentation helped scratch two different itches for me; I got to take a walk down memory lane, being thrust back in time with every turned page and every new ad, and I finally got to see the items that I had always wondered about, in all their chintzy glory.

The book covers everything, and is broken up into categories such as superpowers, war, horror, top secret spy stuff and trickery to name just a few.

Of course, no collection of mail order comic book ephemera would be complete without a mention of those classic pets in a pouch, those adorable freeze-dried friends, the Sea Monkeys.

If any of you out there are like me (and I know for a fact, many of you are), I strongly suggest you get this book. It's a finely crafted ode to a bygone day, when mysteries were but a few stamps away and catalog humbuggery was practically an American institution.

So do what you have to to get your hands on it. Even if you have to mail order it.

Book Look: The Hanna-Barbera Treasury

The very first cartoons that I remember ever seeing were Hanna-Barbera cartoons. In fact, I have to say the the very first cartoon that I remember sitting down to watch was Wacky Race. Later, I would become a dyed-in-the-wool fan of sun classic HB fare as The Superfriends, Space Ghost, Herculoids and at the very top of the list, Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

Later, I would eventually morph into a full-blown cartoon fanatic, delving deep into cartoon collectibles and various other pieces of production ephemera, like animation cels, style sheets and background art.

With that in mind, this book, The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, was practically made for cartoon-loving geeks like me.

This is basically one of those usual treasury-style books, which are often light on the text, big on the pictures and come with lots of little inserts of reproduction pieces.

Now, I'm not going to go into a long-winded history of  Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, because if you're the type of person to read this blog, you already know who these guys are, but on the off chance that you don't know about these legendary animators, I can pretty much guarantee that you've seen their work; Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, the list goes on and on.

Like I mentioned before, this is one of those big coffee-table books that's simply jam-packed with massive, colorful pictures, which is my favorite thing to plunk down on the couch with on a lazy weekend afternoon, poring through the history of a game-changing animation studio.

One of my favorite things to geek out on is old-school storyboards, like this one seen below from Frankenstein Jr....

A couple of pages were dedicated to the voice talents of days gone by, such as voice-acting legends Daws Butler (Scooby Doo, among countless others) and Mel Blanc (who made a name for himself by performing just about every single Warner Bros. voice, like Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, before moving on to the Hanna-Barbera studios)...

Now for some of the goodies! The reproduction inserts in these types of books get my collector mojo buzzing. Even though the pieces included in these books are not originals, they're very often reproduced with enough care to detail that I can at least pretend for a moment that I'm holding a piece of animation history.

Each flat reproduction comes sealed inside these little translucent envelopes...

And this book has everything! From the Huckleberry Hound collector's cards above, to the reproduction animation cels like this Ruff 'n Reddy one seen below...

Other gems found within (especially from a one-time aspiring cartoonist's point of view) are these shots of original development sketches showing what Yogi bear could have looked like...

Vintage activity book repro pages...

Australian "gum cards"...

Promo animation cels...

Some shots of a vintage line of collectible Flintstone figurines (note the blurb: Painted by Hand by Artists)...

 Flintstones card game...

Jetsons storyboards and background sketches...

Masks...

But the book isn't all silly animals wearing bow ties. The latter part of the book is devoted to some of HB's "adventure" cartoons, including good ol' Johnny Quest...

And a personal favorite of mine, Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace Ghooooooooooooooooost!

Birdman gets some love, but it's hard to see this character without thinking of the bastardization of the character from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim cartoon.

I'm seriously considering framing these Space Ghost cards...

And of course, no Hanna-Barbera book would be complete without a good long look at that cowardly Great Dane and his gang of mystery solving teens from one of my all-time favorite cartoons, Scooby Doo, Where Are You?...

I have always loved this cartoon, and remember running home from the bus stops in the afternoon to make sure I never missed a second of this classic. I even loved the later Scooby Doo Movies cartoon, where the Mystery Inc. gang were teamed up with such shining stars of Hollywood like Sonny & Cher and the Harlem Globetrotters. But by the time the '80s kicked in, Scooby's cartoons just got too corny for my taste, especially with the addition of that insipid Scrappy Doo. But the original cartoon will always have a place in my heart.

The only downside to this book is that it only covers the animation studio's efforts through the 1970s, and even then, just the major stars, which left out so many of my favorite cartoons from Hanna-Barbera such as The Smurfs (yes, I admit it), Pac Man (don't knock it, it was an awesome cartoon), Jabber Jaw, Superfriends, Speed Buggy, Hong Kong Phooey, Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, Captain Caveman and many more.

Oh well, maybe I can hope for a second Hanna-Barbera Treasury where some of the above mentioned classics could get a little love and where I could get my hands on some reproduction Pac Man cels or Superfriends style sheets.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book to any animation nerd, especially if you can find it cheap, like I did in a bargain book store for $15. At that price, it was a steal.

Anyway, I guess I've rambled on enough about this heavy tome filled with classic cartoon goodies. I'm going to go bust out some of my old Scooby Doo and Smurfs DVDs. Yabba dabba doo, everybody.

The Star Wars Scrapbook!

Here's a priceless little gem that I picked up the other day for $10 and it was worth every penny. Trolling the sci-fi aisles of may favorite used book store the other day, just looking for something to flip through while I ate lunch (do any of you ever do that?), I came across this book from 1998, that I never even seen before, called The Star Wars Scrapbook, which is essentially a brilliant little of collection of reproductions, photos and facsimiles of some of the more offbeat Star Wars paper ephemera and other saved items that were never meant to be saved from 1977 through 1997. Luckily, this book was released before the horrid prequels, so we're spared pics of Jar Jar Binks water bottles or Watto wrist watches.

Some of the best slices of Star Wars' past come in the form of such items as this newspaper clipping below written by the only reporter to take the time to visit the set in London in 1976. Their confusion as to what they were seeing was evident, as they describe the picture as "two robots escorting an ape-man".

Remember those cardboard masks on the back of Frosted Flakes? This Threepio one came from ice cream treats, but seeing it transported me back instantly.

Another treat was this exact facsimile of the very first Star Wars Fan Club newsletter. It shed some interesting light on how Lucas looked to 1950s sci-fi comic books for inspiration.

Make your own mini X-Wing! Seriously, this cardboard die-cut and scored insert is calling to me to pop it out and put it together, but I don't want to ruin the book.

The book even comes with a couple of pages of actual vinyl stickers. Once again, I must resist the urge to peel these up and stick them to my Trapper Keeper.

Buy a small box of candy in japan in 1978 and you'd get a tiny Star Wars ship inside. Seriously, I'd kill for one of those little Darth Vader figures.

Speaking of stickers, here's a sheet metallic stickers originally produced in Japan.

A real prize out of so many prizes in this book is this reproduction of a Boba Fett "Revenge of the Jedi" action figure backing card.. Kenner was ordered to destroy tens of thousands of these backing cards when Lucas changed the title to "Return of the Jedi" in late 1982.

Now I can brag about having my very own invitation to the staff screening of Return of the Jedi in Hollywood. This may not be valid any longer, though...

Want to be a Jedi Knight? Bam! Just fill out this certificate originally included with Star Wars Underoos. I wonder if Luke knew it was this easy?

The book has several pages on embroidered patches from various sources such as film crew patches to fan clubs exclusives.

And a great section of the book includes disposable ephemera such as these Popsicle wrappers, which, like the old Star Wars Dixie Cups and cereal boxes were just the kind of thing that my Mom told me to throw away, but I kept in a box under my bed for years. It's nice to know that I wasn't the only person crazy enough to do this.

If you're a Star Wars nut, like me, and you happen across this book, I strongly suggest picking it up. It'll catapult you down memory lane in less than 12 parsecs.

The Lunchbox Book!

Here's another little gem I picked up for all of $2 a couple of weeks ago. I notice that I am becoming a sucker for these picture-heavy "collection retrospective" type books. It's sort of like having an instant collection of whatever the book is about. For example, this one is obviously all about classic lunchboxes, which I don't collect (although I do have one vintage Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox with the thermos) but can now spend a lazy Sunday afternoon poring over, soaking in the brilliant vintage graphics.

This book got me thinking about my own lunchboxes of yesteryear, which were as follows:

1st grade: Peanuts
2nd grade: Star Wars
3rd grade: Dukes of Hazzard
4th grade: Masters of the Universe
5th Grade: Return of the Jedi

I bet in 3,000 years when Earth's new alien colonists start to excavate our landfills in order to learn more about us, they'll unearth any one of my old lunchboxes and it will probably still smell like peanut butter and jelly and cherry Kool-Aid.

I also had an old Spider-Man lunchbox that I got at a yard sale that I just kept trading cards in. God I wish I still had that.

Anyway, enjoy the pics of the book...