1. Living Classics Comics – This is big. I’ve been looking for this for awhile. When I was a kid in the ’80s, this commercial would come up in seemingly every break – it started with a line from Moby Dick read by some guy who was really into the part.
“There she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”
The ad is for a set of 50 comic book renditions of classic novels. Weird, right? I’m not sure how successful these guys were – I never saw any copies of these comics at friends houses, in libraries, or at doctor’s offices. Their marketing budget must have been huge, though!
2. New York 2012 – Found this article on Daily Mail from last year that featured an article from the New York Times from 192 in which Robert Wagner shared his predictions on what New York would be like in 2012. Confused yet? Anyway, it’s neat to see a little futurism and enthusiasm from the then-mayor of New York City. Here are a couple of illustrations from the article:
And here’s an illustration they included that seems to have no relation to Robert Wagner, but is still pretty gorgeous and inspiring:
3. Pac-Man NES Print Ad – On the End of a Quill features a few NES game print ads, pointing out that most of them dont have screenshots. Having played most of those games I can confirm that that’s not just an oversight. One that did include screenshots though, the Tengen version of Pac-Man, actually had a solid looking game. The rest of the artwork, however, is a little…off.
It looks like a two year old drew it! I can’t think of anything Tengen put out that didn’t look second rate on the packaging.
4. Pac-Man Pasta – For something a little more on-model, here’s the Pac-Man from the cartoon shilling some Chef Boy-ar-dee pasta:
5. Reggae Man – Whatcha doin?