Superman in "The Case of the Snake Shapes" (Comic Ads #12)
| Comic Ads are more than just the mountain of Hostess Ads we know and love. Over the years, many a company has used one page comic ads to shill their products in the pages of comic books! So I thought I'd do a list series that showcases those ads, and shows you what issues I've found them in. To me, these are as much a part of comics history as any superhero, and I love 'em for the nostalgia they bring. I hope they do the same for you. Enjoy. |
The Magic Snake ads are the closest in look to the Hostess Ads, but there were only a few of them that I know of- two DC ads (Superman, Batman), two Marvel ads (Spider-Man, Hulk), and one Archie ad (Josie). As far as I can find on the Internet, that appears to be it. So far, I've only found the Superman and Spider-Man ads in my back issue searches. Something I don't know is how many different sellers might have been featured in the last panel. For instance, the main ad on this page shows Toys R Us in the last panel, but the smaller one to the left shows K-Mart. (In the first panel, the sign behind the clerk is also different, showing Toys R Us or K-Mart, to correspond with which seller is in the last panel.)
A major difference between the Hostess ads and the Magic Snake ads seems to be that the heroes can be just as involved with the merchandise as the villains. Superman ably blows through all twenty-three trillion possible shapes to find Toyman (alright, so all but six of them were off panel- they had to get this done in one page, wiseguy).
Found one interesting bit as I searching for existing scans on the Internet: apparently, there was a Superman Magic Snake released at some point, covered with lenticular (wiggle card) pictures of Supes. Pretty cool.
The other Magic Snake ads will be added to Comic Ads as I come across them. See the categorized list to see the Magic Snake ad links all grouped together. I'll probably work in "jump to next Magic Snake ad" links, or something similar, at some point.
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