After reviewing the documentary, Candyman: The Dave Klein story, the film (and Hillary Buckholtz over at I'm Remembering) reminded me that I had yet to talk about another flick that I'd been meaning to write about for a while, The Rock-afire Explosion.  The two documentaries are very similar in that they focus on genius inventors who have been all but forgotten by their chosen industries and have gone under appreciated in the pop culture they helped to shape.  I popped the flick back into the DVD player this weekend though and decided it's time to share my thoughts…

All the world's a stage and history is apparently nothing more than a collection of script revisions.  Whether it's the question of who invented the Jelly Belly jelly bean, or who designed and built the first Whac-a-Mole, the truth isn't always what's recorded.  In the case of the Whac-a-Mole, a quick Google search leads to the company that "originated" it, Bob's Space Racers.  The website describes how it all began "…in 1976 when the crew at Bob's Space Racers, Inc. developed the first working game for a customer who wanted to try the new concept at a carnival midway…"

What the site neglects to mention is that what they "developed" was reverse-engineered from a prototype they purchased that was designed and built by a guy named Aaron Fechter (who was developing it for a carnival that ended up selling it to Bob's Space Racers.)  Fechter even came up with the name for the game, Whac-a-Mole.  Very similar to how Dave Klein was written out of the history of Jelly Belly, Aaron Fechter was dropped from the story of the Whac-a-Mole.  But that's not all there is to Fechter’s legacy, and the anecdote about the famous midway game is only a segway into a much more interesting story, the rise and fall of America's most famous animatronic band, the Rock-afire Explosion!

For most kids growing up in the early 80s there was only one place they wanted to go for birthday parties and celebrations, Showbiz Pizza Place.  It's where a kid can be a kid, at least it was if you bought the pizza chain's tag line, and from the ages of three to ten I was drunk on that company’s Kool-Aid.  From Skee Ball, what seemed like hundreds of arcade games, ball pits, and the afore-mentioned Whac-a-Mole, to tiny completely-carpeted rooms lit by strobe lights under the main stage, game tickets, prizes, pizza, soda by the pitcher, and a little animatronic band called the Rock-afire Explosion, these were the ingredients for legendary birthday parties when I was a kid.  I've podcasted and written about my love of Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheese at length before, and how it's almost impossible, even with some remaining C-E-C franchises still open, to get back that feeling of what it was like to dine and play in these establishments as a kid.  Though I was lucky enough to grow up less than 30 miles from Walt Disney World, I can only imagine that for kids that lived in other states, Showbiz was like a mini Disney theme park.  Sure, there weren't any roller coasters or dark rides, but who cared about those when you had a band full of animatronic, anthropomorphic animals belting out great music from the 60s, 70s and 80s at your birthday party?

When I first started Branded in the 80s back in 2006, one of the first bits of obscure childhood bliss that I wanted to talk about was the Rock-afire Explosion.  So when I discovered that there was a documentary detailing the rise and fall of the Showbiz Pizza phenomena, the band's creator Aaron Fechter, and how a handful of fans have been striving to bring back the magic I was ecstatic…

Produced and directed by Brett Whitcomb, the film starts with a tone setting awkward pause as Aaron Fechter is gathering his thoughts about the legacy of his creation.  Honestly, these first few seconds were a bit unnerving for me as I was afraid of the direction the film would take.  If there's one certainty about 80s era fandom, it's that people either love it or mock it, and usually people just love to mock it.  Though I personally find the sarcastic mean humor that's rife with 80s homages boring and overdone, it's the route that most people take, and when all is said and done this documentary walks a pretty precarious tightrope act, only dipping it’s toes into smarminess a couple of times.

The flick is comprised of a series of talking head interviews with Rock-afire Explosion creator Aaron Fechter (and his significant other Kerry), super-fans Chris Thrash, Mike Scherpenberg, Damon Breland, as well as showbizpizza.com head honcho Travis Schafer, intermixed with old vhs video footage of Showbiz commercials, local news clips, company tapes, and some vintage behind the scenes footage of Creative Engineering.  Basically, we follow the story of Fechter, a genius inventor who graduated college at the age of 19, and Chris Thrash, a fan so dedicated to the Rock-afire Explosion that he sought out Fechter so that he could purchase his very own animatronic band.  In a way, Thrash can be attributed with a lot of the recent fan-fair of the Rock-afire nostalgia as his desire to own a copy of the band, and through a series of youtube videos where he programmed them to play some current music has breathed new life into the property.

"I believe that you should be a child at heart and don't be ashamed of it. Y ou know if there's something you dreamed or you wanted to do when you was a kid, then do it.  You dreamed it for a reason.  And I dreamed to have this, and I had it.  Some people like it, some people don't, but I don't care, it's mine." -Chris Thrash

As a kid, one of the coolest aspects of the band and stage show at Showbiz Pizza was that it was like seeing Sesame Street, the Muppets, or Pinwheel live, right in front of your eyes.  In the film fan Mike Scherpenberg really puts in context what it was like for a kid when he says, "If you didn't grow up with it, then you can't understand what it meant. It was like meeting a real celebrity…"  And it was. Even growing up in Orlando and having the opportunity to mingle with all of the "characters" at Disney World, seeing the Rock-afire Explosion was so much cooler because they talked and blinked, and ironically just felt more real.  It was truly like seeing a cartoon character coming to life.  Subsequently I probably would have flipped my lid had I realized that I lived so close to the home the Rock-afire, Creative Engineering in Orlando...

Looking back, one of the things I really respect was the amount of thought and back-story went into each of these characters.  Whether it's good-natured country bumpkin Billy Bob (the face of Showbiz), Fatz Geronimo (piano player and leader of the band), fan-favorite Dook Larue (the astro-dog who played some mean drums), Beach Bear (the resident cut-up, surfer, guitar playing polar bear), Mitzi (the slightly ditzy cheerleader mouse and only female on the stage), or even Rolfe & Earl (the Don Rickels of animatronics), each of these characters was unique and well thought out.

With that in mind, the filmmakers managed to address some odd aspects of this kind of fandom by cutting in both vintage footage of the Creative Engineering workshop with exposed endoskeletons of the various characters in production, as well as current bits with Thrash, Schafer, and Breland grooming their animatronics.  It's a not-so-subtle way of reminding the viewer that this fandom, as well as most fandom of fictional characters, is a little hollow and can be very strange the closer you get to it.  There's a bit where Thrash recalls pulling back the curtain once at a show and climbing on stage coming face to face with the frozen robots.  It reminds me of Will Wheaton taking about his experience "meeting" the Muppets back in the 90s at the peak of his Star Trek popularity.   As he watched the puppeteers open a series of drawers and pull the lifeless bodies of these characters out it sort of ruined the magic of the shows and movies.  Personally, this is the sort of touching awkwardness that I can totally relate to, and I think it addresses an honest harshness of fandom, in particular this sort of extreme fandom.  In fact, there's a bit in the film that shows Mitzi Mozzarella being decommissioned as Showbiz was being integrated into Chuck-E Cheese, and there's a quick shot of her right after some workers lifted off her cheerleader's uniform.  I actually gasped a bit at seeing the animatronic's bare breasts exposed.  What's left of the kid in me found that weirdly obscene…

Where the documentary falls apart a little for me though, is when it strays away from this honest representation of fandom and wanders into more voyeuristic territory.   Everyone has a little weird in them, and it's no secret that geeks, nerds, dweebs and dorks typically have more than their fair share.  The flick gets a little uncomfortable for me when it unfortunately starts to focus more on the quirks of the fans and of Aaron Fechter. It starts to feel like its taking advantage of them for entertainment's sake, working in aspects of their lives that aren't that important to the narrative.  There's a bit around the 25 minute mark where Thrash starts talking about his habitual Mountain Dew drinking, and you can feel the film shift away from a celebration of Showbiz Pizza and the Rock-Afire Explosion to his lifestyle as a person outside of the fandom.  Similarly there are moments with Fechter and his relationship with super-fan Kerry that gives the impression that he's kind of a creepy old man.  I question whether this benefits the story the filmmakers are trying to convey, or if it sort of undermines any celebration of this nostalgia.

Lucklily these uncomfortable bits don't go on for too long, and in the end the film gets back on track, digging into why Showbiz Pizza and the band are so interesting.  I was glad to also get an opportunity to see some of the performers behind the characters as there's some footage shot during one of the recording sessions that's pretty interesting and features glimpses of Aaron Fechter (who voiced Billy Bob), Shalisa James (Mitzi), Rick Bailey (Beach Bear), Duke Chauppetta (Dook), and Burt Wilson (Fatz) performing.  The music in the film is also great with some songs by the Super Furry Animals, and overall a great score.  It's also fascinating to see the extent that some of these fans go to, to reclaim a bit of their childhood.  Purchasing whole shows (as the set up off all the animatronic characters are referred to in the documentary) for god only knows how much money and setting them up in specially constructed garages and rooms just blows me away.

All in all, there's a lot to love about this documentary, and I wish there were more flicks out there like it shining the spotlight on some obscure but awesome bits of what it was like to grow up in the 80s. 

As a last bit I thought I'd share two of my favorite pictures from celebrating my birthday at Showbiz as a kid.  Though I look less than thrilled in the group photo (that's me in the back on the right), I really did love that place…

So for this week's Wax Paper Pop Art I thought I'd provide a teaser for a set of stickers that I'm going to share on next week's Peel Here column.  1989's Baseballs' Greatest Grossouts sticker cards were the follow-up set to Donruss/Leaf's 1988 sticker set Awesome All*Stars…

The illustrations on these wax packs were done by (I'm 99% sure) B.K. Taylor, an artist I'm becoming increasingly familiar with due to my explorations into the Scholastic newsletters and their publications like Maniac, Dynamite and Hot Dog.  Taylor did all sorts of artwork for Scholastic, from sticker sheets to comic strips, as well as illustrations for some of their books.  I believe he also did the artwork for the Zero Heroes sticker cards (based on his art style and relationship with Donruss doing their Odd Rods stickers in the late 60s and 70s.)

So check back next week for some of Baseballs' Greatest Grossouts…

Over the past couple of weeks I've been sharing some fun stuff from the pages of the obscure Scholastic publication Maniac Magazine.  This week I thought I'd go ahead and give an overview of what this periodical was like.  If I had to pin it down I'd say that Maniac was the high school variation of magazines like Hot Dog and Dynamite, centering a bit more on music and the MTV-influenced pop culture of the 80s…

Who was the magazine aimed at specifically?  Well, take a gander at this page from the 1st issue to get an idea of who the publishers deemed a Maniac...

Sigh, if only the writers had a little bit more foresight this list would have been slightly different.  Mr. Rogers is indeed a maniac in my book, and Eddie Murphy?   Well, lets just say that back in 1984 when this was published, no one would have seen the Post-Beverly-Hill-Copacalyptic career path of the once Golden Child comedian.  Even so, I think it's kind of interesting how the guys behind the magazine were trying to point teens towards some cool folks that might be beyond their radar (with a mention thrown towards Abbott & Costello, and in a later bit towards Monty Python, Rocky Horror, and Chuck Berry.)

The magazine was overseen by R. L. Stine, who was apparently one of the lead creative guys at Scholastic back in the day…

Maniac was basically a teen-i-fied amalgamation between Saturday Night live, National Lampoon & MAD magazines, as well as stuff like Topps Wacky Packages.  In fact you can really get a feel for their influence in the various product parodies peppered throughout each issue.  My favorite is the ad for Coco-Birds.  There's just something so deadpan about the model in that first photo that it reminds me of the nonsensical humor of shows like Home Movies or Dr. Katz…

There were also TV and film spoofs in the tradition of Cracked and MAD magazine.   The below Splash parody was done by the awesome Sam Vivano and R. L. Stine.  Vivano's Eugene Levy drawings are so spot on...

There were also interviews, like the below piece with Molly Ringwald…

…and articles about stuff that’s really important to teens, like hair make-overs.  In this case, I'm voting for the before pictures personally...

Each issue also had a couple pages of gag classified ads, a space for a Dear Abby like column, some strip comics, stickers, and even some continuing teen fiction.  I've managed to track down five issues (out of six I know that exist)…

I'm not sure how many teens would get into a magazine like this today seeing as how kids seems to grow up so fast these days (jesus, did I just type that?!?), but I'd like to think that there's still a place for in the world for a magazine like Maniac.  I'm going to close this out with another set of caricatures by the wonderful Sam Vivano…

So it's been almost a year since I stumbled upon a mystery that I like to call "Michal Knight and the Mystery of K.I.T.T. and the Blue Prowler".  The basic gist of the story is that while I was looking up Knight Rider read-along books on eBay I stumbled upon an auction for one that was originally published in Greece.  Though at first it didn't seem all that special, the title font for the book looked weirdly familiar.  It struck me that the company that produced this foreign read-along had used the Transformers font for the book.  Upon closer inspection I noticed a really small grainy picture on the back of the packing highlighting some of the other books in the series and I could have sworn that one of them featured either Prowl or Blue Streak from the Transformers.

As I wrote in the article detailing this mystery, I'm not completely unaware of these sorts of cross product mash-ups, as the Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe comic books were pretty darn popular back in the day.  Typically though, these cross-over events took place between two product lines released by the same company, whereas the idea of Knight Rider meeting a Transformer was just the sort of thing that doesn't happen.  Anyway, I couldn't be completely sure that I wasn't just seeing things as I didn't have an really good proof that this book even existed outside of the tiny grainy photo on eBay, so after writing about it I promptly tucked that memory away incase I ever found some better evidence.

Well that day has come as I've finally managed to track down a copy of this crazy Greek book!

Published by El Gre Co sometime in the early to mid 80s (there is no publication info, at least nothing numerical), this book does indeed feature a giant robot facing off against Michael Knight and K.I.T.T., though I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be a Transformer.  The artists who worked on this book obviously swiped the character design of Blue Streak from the toy's packaging art…

Though I'm not having much luck translating any of the text in the book, there are some context clues in the design that lead me to believe one of two things.  Either El Gre Co was a foreign partner of the Kid Stuff record company, or they completely pirated both properties to make bootleg books.  The Kid Stuff connection, though tenuous, makes some sense as they were the American publishers of the Knight Rider and Transformer branded read-along books.  There's also some design and artwork on the book that's taken directly from Kid Stuff like a "This Book Belongs to" page that is a spitting image for the ones they typically used.  It wouldn't be that crazy to figure that when sending over some sample art for a foreign Knight Rider book they also shipped some artwork from other properties they held the license to.  Heck, maybe there are El Gre Co brand Transformers read-along books out there as well.

Either way, I wasn't crazy and this book does indeed exist.  I have to say that I was a little disappointed after opening up the set as it wasn’t as artistically cool as I'd hoped.  Though the cover is pretty awesome, the inside of the book is filled with some pretty terrible artwork.  Not only that, but the artist was super lazy and continuously re-drew the Blue Streak robot in the same pose as the packaging art it was originally stolen from with only minor tweaks here and there.

There was one cool picture of the robot sprouting a couple sets of helicopter propeller blades and taking to the sky, but honestly it just looks like some really loose fan art that I might have done when I was five or six.  I guess in a way this adds to the charm of the whole book, but only a little.

This all raises yet another crazy mystery though, as the original auction that brought this all to my attention was for another Knight Rider book that had what appeared to be the alien mothership from E.T. on the cover.  There's some pictures in that previous article, as well as on the back of the gift set below…

Though I'd love to track that book down as well, I'm not so sure it's worth the effort as the interior art would probably be horrible.  Maybe the meeting of Michael Knight and E.T. is best left a mystery for the ages.  In fact the image in my head of the two standing next to K.I.T.T. and giving a dual thumbs up could probably never be topped anyway...

Well, as I've hinted at in the past month, the house of Branded was visited by none other than that crazy stone-faced, logical Vulcan Spock!  I recently played host to Eclectorama's traveling Spock Mego figure on it way around North America, and it was my duty to show him a good time around Duluth, Atlanta, and Athens, Georgia.  Well, the pictures are back from the photomat and they're up over at Charles' site!  So click on the picture of Spock below to skate on over to see his vacation photos!

I had a lot of fun with Spock and was a little sad to see him go, but on the bright side, I handed him off to the wonderfully talented Liz Vitale of Puppatoons fame, so I know he's in good hands.

Well, even though the market for classic cartoons on DVD seems to be unfortunately drying up, there are still a handful of companies taking the chance to release some great shows.   One in particular is Millcreek Entertainment.  Though they typically seem to concentrate on public domain material, in the last couple of years they've been actively acquiring licenses and partnering with other studios to act as the DVD production and distribution house.  In fact they've begun re-releasing a lot of the cartoons that BCI Eclipse was putting over the last ten years (stuff like Dungeons and Dragons, Defenders of the Universe, and even Bravestarr.)  They've also recently teamed up with Cookie Jar, the company that rose out of the ashes of Cinar Films and DiC, to start releasing a bunch of their cartoons on DVD.  One of the these titles I was really happy to see is the complete Paddington Bear, which is coming out on DVD today, February 15th…

I have a ton of fond memories watching the Paddington Bear shorts (including the awesome theme music) during Pinwheel on Nickelodeon back in the 80s.  In fact I still feel very lucky that my parents popped for cable because I was introduced to a lot of imported shows and shorts from all over the world, almost all of which came to me through Nickelodeon.  Simon in the Land of Chalk, Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, Belle & Sebastian, the Little Prince, Bunny in the Suitcase, the Hattytown Tales, and of course that adorable marmalade-eating, stow-away bear from the darkest reaches of Peru, Paddington.  The UK series originally aired between 1975 and 1978, and had three follow-up specials that aired in 1980, 84, and 86.  I vividly remember watching it during Pinwheel sometime between 1982 and 1987…

Paddington is based on a series of books written by an ex-camera operator for the BBC named Michael Bond.  He began the adventures of Paddington in 1959 and is still writing them to this day.  As far as the series goes, it was produced by a company called FilmFair, and was directed by the wonderful stop motion animator Ivor Wood.  The series was shot in a very interesting variation of stop motion that blended puppetry with hand-drawn paper cut-outs which gave the show a very convincing storybook look. It didn’t hurt that the series was also narrated by a single actor (the sweet dulcet voice-work of Michael Hordern), so it added a book-on-tape sort of feel to the production.

The gist of the story centers on a chance encounter in a train station where the Brown family happen on a little bear in a clunky over-sized hat and a duffle coat who secretly immigrated to the UK from Peru.  The family decides to adopt the bear and name him Paddington after the Paddington station where they found him.  He might as well be a propber British bear as he loves his marmalade sandwiches and always has time to take tea with family and friends.  Of course in the process of exploring his new hometown he gets himself into all sorts of unfortunate situations, but such is the life for a little brown bear.

One of the aspects that I love about this series is the interesting take on the animation.  In the series there is an odd style which mixes puppetry and miniatures with paper cutouts.   Basically, Paddington and the immediate area surrounding him is typically shot in miniatures while all of the characters and environments not directly in contact with him is done as drawings on paper, though they aren't combined in post production, but instead all short together on film.  It makes for a very distinct look and tone, not to mention some crazy jump-cuts where a paper figure will hand a paper prop to Paddington that becomes a miniature after the jump.

The Millcreek/Cookie Jar set is (I believe) the first time that the complete series has been released on DVD with all 56 episodes.  It also features the three later specials that I remember also watching on HBO on Sunday mornings during their kid's block of programming.  These specials have a slightly different look where Paddington sheds his black hat and dark blue duffle coat in favor of a light blue coat, a yellow hat and little yellow rain boots. These specials also updated the look of the paper-cutout animation, increasing the number of "frames" and getting rid of any extra white paper halos around the figures.  They look a lot cleaner and much less clunkily animated than the original series, but all of it is gold in my book…

This set also features a bunch of bonus episodes from two other FilmFair UK stop motion series, five episodes of the Wombles (1973) and ten episodes of Huxley Pig (1989)…

I’d never seen these series growing up, but they've very similar in look and tone to Paddington.  I'm secretly hopping that Millcreek and Cookie Jar will see fit to also put some episodes of Hattytown Tales on DVD in the near future (please, please, oh please!)

As far as this set goes, it's super affordable at $16 for the whole shebang, which honestly is what Millcreek does best.  The packaging is in the new style (discs housed in individual sleeves that snap into the clamshell case) that I'm not a fan of (see my review of the Complete 21 Jump Street for pictures), but at only 3 discs it's nowhere near as frustrating as some of their other sets.  The picture quality is a little jumpy and grainy, but at this price it's really a non-issue.  All in all, if you grew up with the British and Canadian programming available on Nickelodeon then this is a must have set that will bring back all sorts of fond memories…

So, continuing with the slight Valentine's Day theme and as a preview for the Maniac post I hope to have up this week I thought I would break out my meager collection of stickers that were available in issues of the magazine.  This first set of stickers are kind of Valentine's day related, so it seemed like a good place to start.  These came inside issue Five of Maniac, which was the Jan-Feb 1985 issue available only through the various editions of the Scholastic Book clubs in middle and high school…

I'm 99% sure that David Coulson did the illustrations for both sets of stickers I'm going to feature today (based on seeing his work inside the magazine), and I'd be willing to bet that 'ol Jovial Bob (R.L.) Stine came up with the gags.  Oh, and even though both I and the magazine called these "stickers", they're better defined as stamps since you had to lick the back to stick them.  I'm loosely including them in Peel Here since I've featured a few Sticker Fun books in the past that use the same sticker/stamp technology…

I ended up winning these in a lot on eBay and only two of the magazines still had their stickers intact, issue five and four.  Here's a look at those covers…

This second set of stickers was in the Nov-Dec 1984 issue, and had a much more general theme.  I can say one thing for certain, in this day and age you'd never see a sticker with the slogan "Make My Day" next to a drawing of a handgun in a school-based magazine.  Oh and I love the "I'm a Hip Hop Maniac" sticker on the bottom right.  That dude tied himself into a human pretzel with break dancing!

Hopefully I'll have the main Maniac article up sometime this week…

So even though I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's day, it is just around the corner and I thought it would be a great opportunity to share a couple pieces of truly awesome Wax Paper Pop Art that I recently acquired.  They're pink, girly, and just plain rad.  It doesn't hurt that I had the biggest crushes on both Helen Slater and Cyndi Lauper growing up.  Between Supergirl, Secret of My Success, and the Legend of Billie Jean, Mrs. Slater just knocked me out, and who doesn't love Cyndi Lauper?

First up is the wrapper for the 1984 Topps Supergirl sticker card set (which I've talked about here.)

Seeing this wrapper, and juxtaposing it against the extremely yellow borders of the sticker cards, it makes me wonder why the designers at Topps didn't just go with a pink bordered theme…

Our second wrapper comes from the 1985 Topps Cyndi Lauper cards and stickers…

This is actually only one of two designs that were available for this set, but it's the only one I've come across that was included in an affordable lot.  I've posted about the sticker portion of this set here…

Getting a chance to look at all these old book club flyers reminded me that I have a stack of some of the more obscure Scholastic branded magazines from the 80s called Maniac.  I plan on scanning the best of those issues for next week, but today I have a really cool advertising parody from the back of issue five called the Crabbage Patch Teenagers!

There are metric tons of parodies of the Cabbage Patch Kids phenomena from the 80s, Garbage Pail Kids being my favorite, but the above ad is kind of cool because it was one of the earliest that I've been able to track down.  In the timeline of insanity we have the CPK craze really kicking into high gear around the Christmas season of 1983, then sometime in early 1985 John Pound painted Mark Newgarden's CPK parody concept called a Garbage Pail Kid for the 1985 Topps Wacky Packages re-launch (though it never made it into the final set), next John Pound, Mark Newgarden, Tom Bunk and Art Speigleman launched Topps full-on Garbage Pail Kids parody stickers in June of '85, and last but not least, Mad magazine premiered its Cabbage Patch Kids parody in their December 1985 issue (consequently I couldn't find any mention of CPK in Cracked through the end of 1986.)

So the above Crabbage Patch Teenagers is one of the earliest parodies, sliding in right behind the initial doll insanity.  Though I think I can safely say that this ad wasn't an inspiration for the Garbage Pail Kids, it's none-the-less a GPK precursor that looks a whole heck of a lot like the artwork John Pound would be producing just months later.  Especially when you look at the painting he did for the Wacky Packages piece, which bears little resemblance doll-wise to what he ended up doing in the 1st GPK series set, this Maniac ad really is the 1st time the public saw something resembling a Garbage Pail Kid.

I don't know,  I find this parody fascinating…

I never questioned whether or not history was written in stone until I had my eyes opened by a cheerleading coach in my senior year of high school.   No, I wasn’t in the cheerleading program, Coach Gordon also taught World History at my school.  During the one semester I spent in that class there were a couple of things he really opened my eyes to, one being the definition of the word usurp, and the other was the concept of revisionism.  Mr. Gordon was the only teacher I knew that ever questioned the content of the textbooks we all had to use, and at one point he taught us that the content of these books, especially ones centered on history, are written with a point of view and an agenda to impart specific teachable facts.  He wasn’t a complete conspiracy nut, he was just trying to open our eyes to the idea that there's more out there to learn and that just because something is passed off as a fact doesn't mean it's the full truth, it's just the version that was put to paper.

With that in mind I'd like to ask a question.  Who invented Jelly Bellys?  Well, I don’t know about you, but the first place I'd look for the answer would be on the Jelly Belly website, and more specifically on the company history page.  Go on, check it out and I'll meet you back here in a few minutes.  Alright, according to the official company history it seems that the man responsible for bringing the world Jelly Belly jelly beans would be Herman Goelitz Rowland Sr.   Well actually the history lists Rowland and an unnamed marketing guru, but really Herman seems to have been the man with the plan.  Well that's that, right?  Well, maybe not…

Most of us have heard the fairytale about Jack, his cow, and a bag of enchanted beans, but it wasn't until this past week that I first got a chance to experience a real life variation of the story about a man named David who, instead of selling a cow, sold his bag of magical beans.  Candyman: the David Klein Story is a documentary about the eccentric genius who invented America's first gourmet jelly bean called Jelly Belly.  Directed and edited by Costa Botes (co-director of Forgotten Silver), the film features David Klein and his son Bert (an animator for Disney and the Simpsons) as they take a look back at the Klein's life, the creation of the iconic confection that was championed by none other than former President Ronald Regan, and how Klein was more or less erased from the legacy of Jelly Belly.  The documentary follows David on a short tour around a lot of the southern California locations where he worked and developed his passion for making and marketing candy.  The journey is peppered by interviews with friends, family and industry professionals (including some super funny witticisms from Weird Al) reflecting on Klein, Jelly Belly, and his love/obsession with making people happy at any cost.

What really struck me was Klein's son Bert (who also produced the film with his wife) and how he was sort of using this documentary portrait of his father to set the record straight, not so much to stick it to Jelly Belly, but to validate Klein's legacy and passion.  David Klein had the idea to take the ordinary maligned jelly bean (brilliantly described as Easter basket packing material by Weird Al Yankovic in the doc), and transform it into a natural, high-quality, great-tasting candy.  He got the ball rolling, contacting the Goelitz Candy Company and getting them to manufacture his ideal bean, and then took to the road telling everyone that would listen about his creation.  There were local publicity stunts, visits to national TV talk shows where Klein was truly decked out in the part of the proverbial candy-man, and zany photo-shoots, all in the hopes of getting the world to notice these amazing Jelly Belly beans.  It was as if he stepped out of the pages of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  For four years Klein was the face of Jelly Belly and is a huge part of the candy's success.

Costa Botes does a wonderful job of shinning the spotlight on Jelly Belly, Klein and his family, touching on the sadness of the tale without getting too mired in the ennui of corporate shenanigans and unresolved family issues.  The documentary is as much about celebrating Klein's eccentricities and ideas as it is about being written out of the history of a pop culture phenomenon.  From his use of paper plates as notepads (hard to lose and easy to throw), to his later insane confection creations (my favorite being yellow liquid candy sold in urine sample jars), Klein has led a wacky and truly interesting life and it makes for a very entertaining film.  All in all I think this portrait is the perfect way to remind us that there is always more to the story.

I wanted to mention that though I did receive a copy of this documentary on DVD for review purposes, I've also purchased one with my own funds that I'm going to give away here at Branded.  I'm certainly not biased because of an access to review materials, but I also want to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and I enjoyed this film enough to do just that.  So if you'd like to win a copy of Candyman: the David Klein Story, send me an email with the subject line "Candyman DVD" and a description of your favorite flavor of Jelly Belly jelly beans by February 17th at 12:00am est.  I'll pick one e-mail at random to win a copy of the DVD.

The film is currently available via the Indiepix website on DVD, On Demand, or to Download.  You can also see a trailer for the film at the above link.  If you're curious about what David Klein is doing these days, check out his candy company Sandy Candy!

This week brings yet another set of vintage book club flyers from the 80s, though sadly it's also the last.  So far I've covered the Troll and Weekly Reader flyers, and for this last installment I'm going to take a look at the largest of the various clubs, Scholastic.  As I mentioned last week Scholastic was the last book club company standing after the various mergers and acquisitions over the past decade, most likely because they're not just a book distributor, but also a publishing house as well.  Another way that the Scholastic book club set itself apart was by really developing its branding.  Though both Weekly Reader and Toll had different catalog flyers aimed at the various grade and age groups in public school, Scholastic differentiated these flyers by issuing them under unique brand names.  For instance, the grades 4-6 received the Arrow book club flyers, while middle school and high school students received copies of the TAB club flyer.   This splintering of the main brand was just one of the ways that Scholastic tried to stay relevant to students, who would quickly outgrow the various clubs and would be looking for stuff that appeal to them and seemed more tailored.

Like Weekly Reader, the Scholastic book club flyers came bound inside a monthly educational newsletter.  This was where you got a chance to see the main company branding as the handout was called the Scholastic News…

Another way that Scholastic set itself apart from the other clubs was by offering back-issues of their entertainment magazines like Dynamite, Hot Dog, Maniac, and Bananas.  Actually, I didn't see any full-on subscriptions for these magazines in the book club flyers below, so I wonder if this was the only way to get access to these magazines to begin with.  I don't remember seeing any of them on the newsstands or spinner racks growing up.  Maybe Scholastic would hook you by offering up an issue each month and then you could get the exclusive subscription mailer inside of the actual magazine.  Anyone out there remember subscribing to any of these or finding them outside of the Scholastic book club flyers?

Anyway, for this last vintage book club article I have four more flyers to share from the collection of Esteban, who runs the awesome Roboplastic Apocalypse.  Three of them are from the Arrow club which was handed out to grades 4-6, and the last one is from the TAB club which was handed out to the 7th-12th grade students.   First up is the January 1985 issue of Arrow…

So after looking through a number of these book club flyers from the various companies I have to say that I am surprised by the gusto with which Heathcliff was advertised compared to Garfield.  In the battle of the little orange tabby cats, Heathcliff always comes out on top (front and center, page one) of these book club flyers.  I wonder if the various companies sold flyer space like ad space is sold in newspapers?   If so, Ace books sure were willing to shell out a shinier dime than Ballintine.  Either that or because Garfield was most likely much more popular in brick and mortar stores, the company didn't feel the need to compete in these school book club flyers…

I also thought it was interesting, from a design standpoint, that the guys and gals that worked on these Arrow flyers chose to highlight the publisher imprint logos on a lot of these book listings.  So when you see a listing for a Twist-a-Plot book like the one on the 3rd page of the flyer above, the T-a-P logo was separated out and placed at the top of the blurb.  I know I was always on the lookout for specific branding when it came to books, as even at a young age I was responding to the various publisher and series logos.   Again, it's another in a long line of examples in how Scholastic was trying harder to reach these kids (and in turn reaching into their parent's wallets…)

There are a couple of cool books in this first flyer, in particular Robot Race which was part of the Micro Adventures series of paperbacks that were trying for a sense of interactivity back in the day.   Instead of letting the reader guide the story as in a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, the Micro Adventures stories featured BASIC style computer programs printed through out the book that he reader could program into their home computing systems to play games and solve problems from the story.  I'm amazed at just how many ways the writers and publishers of the 80s were trying to heighten the reading experience for kids.

As I mentioned above, there were a handful of entertainment magazines published by scholastic in the 70s and 80s, two of which were available in this flyer, Maniac (aimed at high school kids that were in tune with the MTV generation), and Dynamite (which I've written about before.)

The first thing that jumped out at me in this February 1985 flyer is the rock and roll themed poster/sticker sheet combo.  Stickers were typical of these flyers, but I've never seen a sheet that listed the artist and gag writer before.  Apparently R.L. Stine (of Goosebumps fame and who often whet by Jovial Bob Stine) got together with B.K. Taylor (the artist for the Awesome All*Stars! sticker cards as well as a regular feature artist in the pages of Hot Dog and Dynamite) and whipped up a sheet of rock inspired stickers.  I'm guessing that they were featured because they both worked at Scholastic on the various magazines, but it's still a little weird…

This May 1985 flyer is also pretty interesting as it's an example of the end of the school year edition.  Since the kids would be out of school in the first week or so of June, May was the last good chance Scholastic had to sell some swag, and I think it's interesting that they eschewed the standard flyer for a two page blow-out sale…

Though I don't remember the Arrow book club, or any of these end-of-the-year blowouts, being the bargain shopper that I am I think I would have flipped for the flyer in May of '85.  In particular I would have really dug picking up multipacks of the Micro Adventures and Twist-a-Plot series all for the price of one book.  It even appears that there was some really old stock being pushed, as the 1983 Return of the Jedi storybook was bundled with a 1980 Empire era poster of Darth Vader.  I know for a fact that there was a metric ton of overstock on this particular Jedi story book as I've consistently seen brand new copies of this book in dollar stores and overstock book stores over the last 20 years.

The last vintage book club flyer I have to share is from the Scholastic imprint called TAB which was aimed at 7th graders and above.   This particular edition is from February of 1987 and barely survived to be shared…

My first impression of this flyer is that it's sort of schizophrenic in its odd mixture of offerings.  On the one hand there are some more adult fare like teen romance novels, classics (such as the Count of Monte Crisco, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies and Dracula), and books on writing term papers, but on the other there are still kid oriented books (like one about race cars) and sticker collecting kits.  Then again, when I think back to my 7th grade days I know I was going through a similar period of weird reading habits, bouncing back and forth between thousand-page Stephen King epics and cracking open Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing for the umpteenth time.  I guess the 7th grade really does mark an awkward transition period for children.  Most are turning thirteen, and depending on individual predilection, most are probably also facing that time when it isn't cool to collect toys, read comic books, or bring your lunch to school in a lunchbox anymore.  I know that I personally rebelled against the idea that these things had to stop, but I was also far from popular...

As a special bonus, friend of the site Jose Anibal Gonzalez (who has a great art blog by the by), went above and beyond and sent in a scan of his daughter's current Scholastic book club flyer from this past January.  It's the perfect way to end this series as we can see how these flyers have changed over the last quarter century.  Thanks Jose!

A little while ago I agreed to take part in a fun project for Charles over at Eclectorama called Spockcation 2009.   The whole idea is that Charles would mail out one of his Spock Mego figures to various people in different states who would then take Spock around their area to get some fun photos as he traveled around the country.  Well, Spock has been on vacation for a couple years now and he's finally beamed into Branded HQ.  Since the wife and I have been taking him around town, I thought it would be apropos to share some Spock-centric Wax Paper Pop Art this week…

This first wax wrapper is from the Topps Star Trek Series, circa 1976.

This second wrapper hails from the Topps Star Trek: The Motion Picture set, 1979.

Click on the banner below to visit Eclectorama and see all the places Spock has stopped so far…

This post was supposed to consider and defend why I choose to more or less stick to covering 80s era stuff here at Branded.  Sure, 80s is in the title, but the concept of being branded in the 80s is more about defining the time period of when I grew up (which had a big part in shaping my adult outlook.)  It's not like I didn't live through other eras of pop culture, a lot of which I like (I'm looking at you early 90s era skit comedy cartoons.)  I do however enjoy the general climate of the 80s more so than the 90s, though when it comes to decades and pop culture it's never as clear cut as the numbers make it seem.  1987-89 feel like a completely different decade than say 82-86, and 1980 and 81 might as well be tacked on to the 70s.  Hell just looking at how I dressed in 83 (ringer T-shirt with an iron-on, shorts with stripes down the sides, knee-high socks and Roos on my feet) versus 1987 (T&C Surf T-shirt, loud neon green and pink shorts with a tiki pattern, ankle socks and Airwalk skate shoes) there was a world of difference.  It might sound similar at first glance, but it really does look and feel different.  And the 90s, don't even get me started on that.

So even though we're crossing over into a new decade and the 90s are diminishing from sight in the metaphorical rear-view mirror, I'm still not ready to start thinking about that era yet.  Again, this post was supposed to be an example of why.  While flipping through some late 80s and early 90s issues of Boy's Life I stumbled upon some Levis advertisements that seemed to epitomize the early half of that decade, illustrating a mind-numbing proclivity for what we'll deem The Extreme.   Anyone who was collecting comics at the time will no doubt remember an almost uniform shift in the tone of artwork which inflated what were once "normal" body types to gargantuan proportions.  Remember when Scott Summers, aka Cyclops of the X-Men, was referred to as Slim by his teammates and friends?   Well after Walt Simonson's tenure on X-Factor was up, all bets were off and Scott got pumped.  The same happened to the Punisher (if ever a character didn't need to look like a Schwarzenegger clone), and practically every other character in both the Marvel and DC Universes, not to mention most of the independent super hero books from companies like Valiant, Malibu, or Image.

Stuff wasn't cool unless it was pumped, in your face, and most importantly, Extreme.  Our tennis shoes were pumped (literally), pop music had to be hard or edgy to be considered cool, and advertising went through a period of sharp angles, neon, and mixed incongruent fonts that made everything seem loud and obnoxious.

So when I stumbled upon the below ad for Levis (circa 1990) I thought I had the kernel for a 90s era Extreme rant…

I mean Ho-ly crap!  This ad has some off-the-chart air brushing, insane fish-eye "camera angle" perspectives, an insane sense of movement, and fiercer than fierce facial expressions!  The only things missing from this ad are a few more fonts and neon pink.  Just looking at it makes me feel like four body builders are surrounding me and screaming in unison that I need to buy some Levis, like right NOW!  This is in-your-face advertising taken to the proverbial extreme.  So lets step back a second and take a look at what I'd consider your run of the mill bad 90s era ad design…

See what I mean about the neon and the six million fonts?  Also there are weird clashes between curved simplistic landscapes, sharp wavy lines, dot patterns, and way too many overlapping and slanted pictures.  Looking at this thing makes me think that all this loot is about to fall off the magazine page.  So when I saw the above karate-inspired jeans ad, it was like taking this second ad and turning up the volume to eleven.

I was already to start typing up a critique of 90s design philosophy when I realized that there were more examples of this 1990 Levis ad campaign…

For a second I was awestruck, but the more I examined these insane images, the more and more I was being sucked into their aesthetic.  In some ways I think these pieces are so over the top that they've come back around to brilliant.   They function as a sign of the times (in terms of tone and attitude), while simultaneously lampooning that very attitude and tone.  They're incredibly intricate and realistic in their rendering while also being insanely over-exaggerated cartoon-y caricatures.  These pieces are like the visual representation of irony, and I think that's amazing.

My favorite in the series cranks this up to another level by ditching the extreme sports and lifestyle elements and wrapping this boy's-jean-ad-campaign around a mad scientist theme!

What in the hell do jeans have to do with crazy kids building robots?   I love it.

I've become so won-over by this artist and these ads that I feel like I've completely lost that original idea for a rant on 90s design.  In mid-draft I've gone from complaining to loving 90s extreme ad design.  Not only that, but after stumbling upon a couple more ads from 1991 (which I believe have to be the work of the same artist or production studio), I almost want to create a whole section of Branded dedicated to examples of awesome extreme 90s advertising.  I think I've managed to regain enough of my composure to brush off that idea, but I will share the other ads that I found. 

The next example is an ad for Mead "No! Rules" branded Trapper Keepers from 1991…

Pitting kids, sports, and really pissed off and violent animals against eash other is crazy.  I totally missed out on these binders back in the day as I think at this point I was just entering high school and I'd adopted a no-bookbag, no-organized folders mentality only carrying around the bare essentials to classes.  I kind of wish I was still into Trapper Keepers at that time though, because I'm sure I would have had some of these.

The last example of this unknown artist's work I found is from a 1991 Donruss baseball cards ad…

I would love to find out who did all these ads, and if it is indeed the work on one artist as I believe. 

Overall though, I guess that old adage is true.  If you just stop and walk in someone else's shoes (or stare at a bunch of ads from a specific era in time), you'll develop an appreciation for that journey.  I still hate mixed and messy fonts, not to mention extreme tonality for its own sake though…

I know it's a little late for Christmas missives, but I was away from Branded during the holidays and I had totally intended to share this rad 1980 advertisement for the Schwinn Phantom Scrambler…

This came out of an issue of Boy's Life which I've heard tell also featured an even rad-er image of Santa on a Tron light cycle.  Now that I want to see!  Anyway, a belated Merry BMX-Mas everyone…