As a slightly anticlimactic close to this mini Tron nostalgia week, I decided to close out with the wrapper to the 1982 Donruss Tron card set (as a bookend to the stickers I posted on Wednesday.)  It's not the most engaging wax wrapper design.  In fact I believe other than the neatness of the logo, this is probably one of the more boring card pack wrappers out there.

I think this is a bit indicative of the marketing issues I've noticed with the original film.  Most of the merchandise I've seen used the same hands-on-hips static pose of the Tron character blankly starring, or it uses that image as the center piece surrounded by a barrage of small screencaps that don't really capture the excitement of the lightcycle race, or the emotional resonance of watching a program get de-rezzed.

I know Disney wanted a big push with the merchandising of the flick, but I'm wondering if people just didn't know how to market a movie like Tron?

Well, the new flick opens tonight and the wife and I are going to try and catch the 1st screening in the morning.  Here's to hoping it does the original some justice…

Though I feel completely like a child of the 80s, I have to say that being born in 1977 there were a handful of 80s pop culture events in which I completely missed the boat.  Tron and the boom of arcade gaming are a couple  phenomena that I didn't get to really immerse myself in as a kid.  Sure, I had an Atari 2600 (bought at a garage sale) after the big home console crash, and I was a full-blown Nintendo kid, but I didn’t catch a screening of Tron until only a few years ago.  In fact, aside from a vague idea of the iconography of the arcade console (in particular the awesomely large joystick) and what the characters in the flick more or less looked like, I was largely unaware of the film.

My childhood video game movie experience surrounded flicks like the Wizard, Wargames, and the Last Starfighter.  I've met so many people at work over the last 10 years that attribute Tron as the incipience of their awakening to the potential of computer technology and quite possibly the reason that they entered the IT field as a career.   Having never experienced a film like Tron and being exposed to the idea of anthropomorphizing the inner workings of a computer, I never saw the excitement inherent in programming and computing.  Like most people, it took the wide acceptance of the internet to open my eyes.  Because of that I'll always probably feel a little left behind.

On the bright side, getting a chance to catch up with the film as an adult I can both appreciate some of the more technical aspects to the conceptual nature of the flick, and it gives me the unique opportunity to discover something new and nostalgic.  It's rare that I get a chance to stumble upon something from the 80s that I'm either not familiar with or have been inundated with during the last 10 years of the 80s nostalgic resurgence.  For that I'm thankful.  Because of this and because of the news of the new sequel over the last couple of years I've been keeping and eye out for any bits of scan-able Tron ephemera, in particular vintage advertisements.  Here are a few I've found while flipping through old issues of Woman's Day and Muppet magazines…

First up is this 1982 ad for Dial and Tone bar soap with a mail-away coupon for a discounted Tron beach towel.  Featuring the static hero pose of the titular character, this towel is one of the few times when I think that image is successfully striking.  I'm always curious how many of these mail-away items make it into the public (and it's not like old beach towels get proffered up on ebay all that often), so it's cool when you can find some photographic evidence of these items.  Thanks to Hillary over at I'm Remembering for coaxing her readers into submitting old photos for her site…

Next up is this 1982 Smuckers ad for strawberry jam and the in-store special offer for a free Tron Futuristic Adventure Book with the purchase of a bottle of preserves.   Maybe not as cool as a collectable jelly glass with Tron characters and scenes, but the book did come with a fold-out 17"x22" poster, and featured games, puzzles and stickers!  I've seen a couple of Tron sticker sheets over the years, but I don't think I've ever laid eyes on the stickers from this free book.

Last, but not least, is this 1984 holiday ad from Disney Home Video featuring a VHS copy of Tron.  Back in '84 this cassette copy of Tron was a steal at $39.95 (msrp at the time was a whopping $84.95.)  This was back before most people had started purchasing movies for their home libraries, and videos were largely still priced for the rental market.   Also, at first I was pretty excited when I flipped to this ad in the back of an issue of Muppet magazine because I though the video came with a free Tron ornament.  How cool would that have been?  Well, even though there is that die-cut gold Tron disc on the packaging, the ornament is actually the image on the top left featuring Mickey as the Sorcerer's Apprentice.  Still a cool ornament, but not nearly as cool as one featuring Tron.

There is another thing that stuck out to me in this ad.  I thought it was weird that the graphic designers of this advertisement chose to feature a rare red variation of the Tron character artwork.  Though my memory might be a little shady, I thought that red was reserved for the "evil" programs in the Tron world like Sark and his minions?  I guess this is sort of the equivalent of catching a glimpse of Luke Skywalker with a red lightsaber…

Well, 2010 is shaping up to be one hell of a year.  I've had some of my highest highs with personal projects and experienced some personal family tragedies that I had hoped never to live through.  Though I still haven't recovered from the latter, I don’t want to lose track of Branded, so I thought with the upcoming Tron Legacy sequel hitting theaters this weekend it'd be a good time to share some ephemera from the original film.  So for the rest of this week I'll be sharing my meager collection of Tron goodies.

Before I jump into that, I did want to make note of a milestone that Branded recently crossed as the site has had over one million distinct page views.  When I set out to work on this project, the million page views mark was one of my personal goals, and I've made a promise to myself that once I reached it, I'd stop looking at stats and stuff.  So next week, I'm going to shed the hit counter, dropping off an outdated bit of old school web design in the process.  A very heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who has ever stopped by to read some of my ramblings or to take a gander at some of the magazine, stickers, and advertising scans I've put up.  I'm just glad this stuff has gotten out there.

Anyway, back to Tron.  Today I'd like to share the complete Tron sticker card collection from the 1982 Donruss card set…

The sticker set only consisted of 8 cards, five featuring screenshots of the Tron video game, two images from the movie, and a pretty sweet logo sticker.  Each of the five video game stickers also featured "tips" for the game on the back (as you can see below), though they aren't so much as Nintendo-Power-esque game tips as they are straight up descriptions of the various levels in the game.  I'm sure there was a legion of kids disappointed in these less than helpful descriptions.

I'm glad the Donruss design team included the game screen shots as stickers because I've never had the opportunity to play the Tron game and I at least get a sense of what the game looked like.  I am kind of surprised that they didn't make the sticker set a little bigger though including other scenes and characters from the flick.  I'm glad we get a sticker featuring Tron and the lightcycles, but I would have loved to have some stickers featuring Sark and Flynn, and maybe even the ugly mug of the Master Control Program…

Though I'm sure there are a ton of sites providing commentary on the Tron legacy this week, I'd like to take a second and point to one of my favorite spots on the web, Neato Coolville.  Run by Mayor Todd, Neato Coolville is featuring a whole week of posts with all sorts of great stuff including vintage magazine articles, artwork from the film, some of the regular trading cards from the 1982 Donruss set, and much more.  If you get a second stop on by and tell him Branded sent ya…