Well, I had a blast with the first run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vintage postcards, and since there are a slew of super hero flicks coming to the theater this summer I thought it'd be a good time to start up the second run of the Post Card Project!  I've been digging around and I managed to find another fun vintage book of branded postcards, the DC Super Heroes PC Book from 1981.  These have been floating around for the last 30 years just waiting to be mailed out into the world.  The book features 28 cards with a bunch of the characters from the DC Universe with an obvious emphasis on Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.

Again I have 23 postcards up for grabs (5 of the original 28 are Get Well Soon, Birthday and Christmas cards), so if you'd like to received a bona fide 30 year-old vintage postcard in the mail directly from Branded in the 80s, send me an email with "DC Super Heroes Post Card" in the subject line. Be sure to include your name and snail mail address.  As with the first wave's participants, if you'd like to take some photos with the postcard, you can send 'em in and I'll post them here and on the Branded Facebook page with a shout out to your blog or website.

Oh and if you do happen to want a Birthday, Christmas or Get Well Soon DC postcard, let me know and I'll send them out first come, first serve (I just figured they'd be sort of weird ones to send willy nilly.)

Just wanted to give a quick heads up that Branded in the 80s now has a Facebook page.  The general idea is to use it as a place to host future contests as well as a point of contact for the future Postcard Project waves.  I've also been posting some pictures there that have never popped up here on the main Branded site like book covers from my collection of Choose Your Own Adventure style paperbacks...

If you're so inclined, click on the picture above to head on over, "like" the site, and join in on the conversation!

It's not very often that I get a chance to revisit a set of stickers I've shared before with some interesting behind the scenes updates on the production and input from those involved in creating the set.  I was really happy to have a chance to do just that this past week when Gary Cangemi the co-creator, artist and writer behind Fleer's 1986 sticker set called Grossville High paid a visit to Branded.  Not only did he share some of his experiences working on this set, but he also graciously provided a scan of the original artwork for one of the cards to share here as well as to clean up a bit of a buggy mystery.

About a year ago, a reader of the site named Joe pointed out one of the obscure facts about this set that I neglected to talk about when I first posted about the Grossville High cards.  Basically, the Grossville mascot (named Ronnie the Roach) is hidden in the artwork for each card in the set, so there was a additional bit of fun to be had in searching for the little bugger.  Joe had also pointed out that there was one card that didn't feature a hidden Ronnie, sticker card #58, Miss Body English (pictured below at the center-left.)

As you can see in the original artwork below, Ronnie is indeed there, he was just cropped out of the final card art by Fleer…

What I really love about getting a chance to see this original artwork is the little details and differences between it and the final printed card.  First of all, one of the things that I'd appreciated about the artwork when I first took a look at this set was the care that was put into the aesthetics of the color when it came to the backgrounds.  This set is very loud with a lot of neon yellows, neon greens, reds, oranges and purples, and it can be an assault on the eyes at times.  One of the ways that I assumed Fleer tried to tone this down was by dimming the backgrounds, which both highlights the main characters and reduces the color "volume" so to speak.  Well, with the original piece, we get a chance to see the artwork as it was intended without the background obscured, and honestly it's not nearly as eye-strain-inducing as I'd imagined.  Actually, the overall art seems less garish and less intense.  I think this has a lot to do with the fact that Fleer went with a very vivid and saturated look to the set instead of using the more subdued palette Cangemi originally chose.

Closer inspection of the piece also reveals some changes in the art that Cangemi noted Fleer had asked him to make.  In particular you can see a reduction in Miss Body's bustiness…

Anyway, here's what Gary had to say about working on Grossville High…

"My business partner Larry Newman came up with the concept of a gross high school and most of the names.  I did all the writing and artwork for the series.  There are some creative and design problems with the series caused mostly by the lack of time given me to complete 66 designs PLUS the humor on the backs.  I remember doing the whole thing in 5-6 weeks.  Some of the stuff got repetitive because there wasn't enough time for creative development and feedback.  You will notice there are no African-American characters in the series.  Joe Stereo WAS black originally but fleer was so afraid of being accused of racism they made me turn him into a white guy.  I told them they were wrong, that to exclude African Americans was more racist.  Of course they had no objections to my stereotypes of Chinese, Italian, or Latino characters...go figure.  Some of these cards wouldn't survive today's hypersensitive market and others make me cringe a little, but the 70s-80s were a different time when people could kid around about race without all the political correctness.  Sitcoms were loaded with these stereotypes.

The only resemblance I see to GPK (in response to my assertion that Fleer was riffing on Topps' GPK stickers – Shawn) is the naming scheme and the grossness, but I tried to be as original as possible and more MAD-like.  The faded backgrounds were fleer's decision.  The original art, which I still possess, is rich in color depth and detail, too much so.  Fleer said the characters didn't stand out enough like the GPKs did so they cut masks around the characters and lightened the backgrounds.  There IS a roach on the Miss Body English card, you just need to look harder.  I had a great time designing these cards but wish they had given me more.  They would have been much better.  By the way, the GH originals were not painted, they were done in Prismacolor markers, ink and colored pencil on Arches watercolor paper."

As for the future of Grossville High, Gary had this to say…

"I now own the exclusive rights to Grossville High and plan on resurrecting them in some form or another, either a class reunion or a next generation concept.  I also wrote a script for a GH graphic novel which I would like to produce someday.  I think Grossville High, with some updating, would make a great CGI film."

Also, another bit of fun trivia for this set is that it was originally intended to be called Grossburger High, but Fleer nixed that idea for being too close to yet another of their rival Topps' products, Gross Bears (their Garbage Pail Kid-like parody of the Care Bears released in 1985.)

I really want to give a huge thanks to Gary Cangemi for sharing his thoughts on the set and for giving the Branded readers a chance to look at some of his original untouched artwork!  I also hope he gets a chance to bring these characters back to life in a new project, and I'm really excited to see what might come in the future...

For this week's spotlight we're going to get a glimpse at one heck of a wonderfully strange kid…

Strange Kids Club is the brainchild of Rondal Scott III, and is a mecca for all sorts of cool, obscure wonderment from nostalgia and art, to animation and the outright bizarre.  In the photo above we get a chance to see club member number 1, Strange Kid, with the weirdest of the postcards that I had to send (featuring a picture that looks a lot like Shredder is proposing to Krang.)

So if you get a chance, head on over to the clubhouse and take a look around.  I'm positive there will be something to entice you.

Oh and Rondal is also spearheading his first SKC comic anthology with a great roster of artists, and one heck of an amazing cover by Brent Endstrom!  Click on the artwork above and snag yourself a copy!

For the second reader spotlight we have to go all the way over the pond to the UK to visit Mark Gabler.  Mark was a little camera shy, but it's cool because he made sure Danger Mouse and his trusty sidekick hamster Penfold rescued the postcard from their pillar box headquarters!  It's a good thing to because Baron Greenback was looking to intercept it…

If anyone else would rather not show their mug on the site, that's cool.  Take pictures of the postcard around your town or pose it with some of your toys.  It's all about showcasing the readers.  Oh and if you have a website or blog to pimp, let me know that too…

Last week's post on the DC Comics cookbook insert from the 1981 reminded me that I have another one that's been sitting on my desk for almost a year.  I picked up a huge lot of old Woman's Day magazines a year or so ago and I spent a weekend flipping through all the issues to pullout any interesting ads, article and inserts, and one of the things that really jumped out at me was a 4-page spread that was a mini Muppet Babies cookbook.  Don't know why I haven’t gotten around to scanning this and sharing it sooner…

This insert is from the January 8th, 1985 issue of Woman's Day and it features recipes presented by all the characters from the cartoon (well, except for Bean Bunny, but we don't speak of that character here at Branded.)  Actually, now that I look a bit closer, whoever whipped up this insert snubbed Beaker, and added a drink by the tadpole version of Kermit's nephew Robin (who did make some appearances on the cartoon), which is kind of irksome as well.  Oh well, Beaker usually gets the crap end of the stick anyway, so why not here as well…

Honestly, aside from Animal and Fozzie's deserts, and the "mixed" drinks, there's noting all that great to write home about in this cookbook.  In fact Skeeter's Flying Saucer recipe reminds me of a noxious meal my friend/roommate used to eat all the time.  I lived with this guy for almost three years after high school and every night he'd prepare the exact same dish.  He'd put four pieces of whole wheat bread on a plate, cover two with a can of beans and the other two with a slice each of white American cheese.  Then he'd eat his two bean sandwiches in silence.  For three years.  Egads!

I wonder how many other mini cookbooks popped up between the covers of Woman's Day back in the 70s and 80s?

One of the weirder areas of nostalgia for me lies within the realm of the not-so-exciting household products that either my mom would buy or that I'd see while grocery shopping with her as a kid.  Sometimes I get the same sort of longing pangs for a Fresh'n Up room deodorizer (the kind that came in a rectangular cylinder where you'd lift the outer casing to expose the room-freshening power contained within) that I do for some of my long lost G.I. Joe and Transformers toys.  That's one of the beautiful things about flipping through 30 year-old issues of Woman's Day and McCalls, getting a chance to see some of these mundane extinct products that I never in a million years would have guessed had such an impact on my youthful self.

In the category of obscure and unfortunate household style degradation comes today's advertisement for the line of colored Cottonelle toilet paper, circa 1982…

Seriously, in this age of ever increasing and exciting technologies, why is it so apparent that the toilet paper industry is practically falling apart at the perforated seams?  When the key advancements surround thickening the sheets to an extent where we're practically rubbing our nether-regions with small pillows, and the best the industry's advertising has to offer aesthetically speaking is a bunch of multicolored bears with dingle-berry issues, we know we're in trouble.  What happened to the days when companies were so secure in the age-old technology that they began to shift their focus to enhancing the color scheme of the paper to make for a better looking lavatorial environment?  Long story short, where are my mint green rolls of toilet paper?  Why has this advancement been stripped from store shelves?

At the end of the day I just want a toilet paper option that'll really (design-wise) tie the room together.  Is that so much to ask?  In the immortal words of Weird Al, "You better squeeze all the Charmin you can...", because one day Mr. Whipple and Charmin might not be around...

A little over a month ago I was inspired by a contest held over at the Retroist as well as Eclectorama's traveling Spock campaign, and decided that I wanted to introduce a slightly more tactile section to Branded.  I'd been sitting on a great gift from a friend, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles book of postcards, and it just seemed like it might be fun to send out some vintage postcards to readers of the site.  I was really happy with the response and I ended up finding a home for all of the postcard and though it may have taken a little over 20 years, these cards finally completely their destiny traveling through the postal system to locations all over the world.  I also put out a call to everyone who received one, that they could send back a photo and I'd post it on the site with some link love.  So thus, a new column has been born, the Post Card Project.

The invitation is still open for anyone who received a card this past March, but I did receive a bunch of responses, so from time to time I'll be posting some pictures and highlighting readers of Branded in the 80s.  I'm also getting ready to announce a second installment of mailings as I've come across some other great vintage postcards that need to fulfill their postal destiny. 

Anywway, getting to the heart of the matter, today's postcard spotlight is on Christopher Tupa, an amazing artist, podcaster, and comics storyteller who hails from the great state of Texas (birthplace of yours truly)...

When Chris sent in this picture of his local classic movie theater I was all sorts of jealous.  There are no theaters around these parts that look that cool!

He also sent in some candid shots of the shell-heads in some more familiar environments…

If you get a chance, stop by and take a gander at some of Christopher's superb artwork (a lot of which tugs on the heart-strings of my childhood), as well as his blog where he talks about some of the cool stuff he finds in his area like toys, books and art.  If you're a fan of stuff like G.I. Joe, Knightrider, M.U.S.C.L.E.S., and the Goonies, stop by his store.  I have some of his original art and it's so much cooler in person!

Thought I'd take a second today to share this great gift that I received in the mail in response to my TMNT postcard project from a few weeks ago.  Mr. & Mrs. McFavorite (of the fun podcast Open Your Toys) sent in this awesome vintage mini DC comics cookbook (ripped out of a July, 1981 issue of Woman’s Day magazine)…

Seriously, it boggles the mind.  There were so many geeky awesome kid-centric inserts and advertisements in these 70s/80s era housewife magazines that 30 years later they've become a goldmine for great vintage ephemera.  From insanely obscure Transformers comics and cool mail-away and in-store Tron merchandise, to the coolest jungle gyms known to man and advertisements for the one and only Nerd Tuxedo, Woman's Day was apparently where it was at in the early 80s and I never knew.

This tiny cookbook is no exception and features some food art that I'm sure to try and replicate in the coming weeks at the house of Branded.  Nothing says "Um, um, Good" like a Mild Mannered hamburger…

Though in reality there is no conceivable way that the Superman insignia scrawled on top of the cheese would last past the placement of the Clark Kent bun-face, it's still pretty awesome that the fella or gal in charge of writing this insert thought enough about the character to consider his patented transformation in the recipe.  I guess this is one burger that begs to be eaten open-face style.  As a side note, I never thought about adding wheat germ and bread crumbs to my hamburger patties.  I wonder if it gives the burger a more meatloaf like consistency?

There's even a "recipe" for constructing an army of villainous Veggie Robots!

Well, at least I think they're villains based on their threatening posturing and proclamations to destroy some of our favorite foods, healthy or not.  I also love the notation at the bottom that parents could order a copy of this army as a full-sized poster.  "Mommy, I can't sleep under the paralyzing olive-eyed stare of Broclotron!"

Next up we're charged with solving the case of the Invisible Banana French Toast with Batman and Robin.  Though the writers got a bit cheeky with this entry ("You get that taste by putting the banana IN the Batman…"), I did learn a new term, Alimentary.  By the by, it means of or relating to nourishment or nutrition.

Lastly we have Flash's Quick Apple Crisp, that actually isn't all that quick.  I mean, having to peel, core and slice up 5 apples and baking for over half an hour still seems like work to me…

Thanks again Mr. and Mrs. McFavortie, this was an awesome gift!

I was picking through a pile of ephemera that I plan on sharing on Branded in the future when I came across my meager collection of sticker transfer sets.  I bought most of these around the time I started this website and for some reason I never got around to really talking about them.  Though not stickers in the most accepted sense, these sets pretty much hit on all of the reasons why stickers were/are cool, and they're an example of an interesting microcosm that exists within the hobby.

Basically these sets were a much cheaper variation of the Colorforms playsets (which debuted in the 50s), both of which are plays on the evolution of paper dolls.  While Colorforms were a bit sturdier, consisting of cardboard background scene and a bunch of re-useable vinyl cut-outs featuring pop culture characters and imagery, the various brands of transfer sets were much cheaper, featuring paper backdrops and single use transfer "stickers."  Like coloring and activity books, these sets were designed as a way for children to use their own imagination to create a story with pop culture imagery.  I loved these sets when I was young because I always had more fun setting up a scene when I was playing (be it with actual toys or when I'd draw) then actually executing my ideas.  These sets play on that part of the creative brain that leads kids to drawing scenes of two opposing military forces where you see the cut-away of bases and underground drilling machines.  Best of all they were really cheap, around $0.50 to $1 in most cases, so it was much easier to convince parents that they were a worthwhile purchase.

Though I'm sure there are more, I'm really only aware of two brands for these transfer sets, Colorforms Rub N' Play sets and Presto Magix.  The Colorforms sets tended to feature more transfers in their sets, but Presto Magix always had cooler backdrops…

Here you can see an example of a Presto Magix Thundarr the Barbarian set from 1981.  Each package had a small sheet of transfers and a fold out scene with which to place the action…

To transfer the stickers you simple had to place the sticker sheet in the desired position and then use a pen or pencil to rub over the area you wanted to transfer.  Some of the more deluxe sets came with a little red plastic tool with a rounded tip that you used to rub the transfers off the sheet.

When seeking out these sets after 20 odd years I was surprised at how many I managed to find.  Like stickers, these sets seemed destined to be used, and afterward I'm sure that most of them ended up in the garbage.  Since they've quadrupled in value over the years I limited my shopping spree to 8 sets.  In addition to the Thundarr set above I also picked up a handful of Star Wars Return of the Jedi Presto Magix sets…

…as well as three Colorforms Rub N' Play sets featuring Michael Jackson, Masters of the Universe, and Gremlins.

Aside from the single use aspect, the biggest drawback of these sets was getting the transfer on the backdrop in one solid piece.  The heavier plastic material that these transfers are housed on tended to stretch and distort when you'd rub the stickers off of them and since they were so thin and fragile they'd often break in half or have a bunch of cracks in the image.  Sometimes it was also easy to mistakenly get a second transfer stuck to the backdrop while you were working on a separate one simple by the pressure of your hand on the transfer plastic.  For $0.50 though, it was worth the risk.

One of the other things that I loved about these sets was the opportunity to mix and match characters from my favorite TV shows and cartoons.  Why wouldn't Scooby Doo go on an adventure with Ookla the Mok from Thundarr?  Breaking these sets out again seemed like a great opportunity to put together that dream super-band I've always wanted to see…

I always imaged Admiral Ackbar had a very William Shatner-like delivery when singing, and you have to dig those hairy back-up singers!