Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Orko, a Smurf, and David Hasselhoff walk into a bar...


Back in December, Dr. Geektarded did a post showcasing a bunch of vintage newspaper toy ads that just blew me away. I do a lot of searching through old newspaper ads, but I've never found any like the doctor's of toy stores announcing special guest appearances by celebrities like He-Man, Skeletor, Rainbow Brite and Grimlock the Dinobot. Hell, one toy store even had the Ecto-1 show up! When I was a kid I only remember seeing Spider-Man at K-Mart and Darth Vader at Sears.

Store appearance ads aren't the focus of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace so when they do come up in my travels I usually don't pay them any attention. Sites like Dr. Geektarded's blog and Plaid Stallions already do a great job of documenting those. But while I was in Cincinnati I did come across two ads in the Cincinnati Enquirer from the 80's that advertised a couple of celebrity guest appearances. One was a typical Darth Vader appearance from November 9th, 1984, but the other ad...HOLY CRAP THE OTHER AD!

I cut off the bottom of the ad because who cares about the details. In a nutshell there was a TRU grand opening November 2nd of '84 in some place called Colerain and they got David Hasselhoff, a Smurf, Orko, Skeletor and He-Man to show up. That right there is a colossal lineup of just about every important celebrity in my life at the time. If I was the Beyonder, this is the group of super heroes I'd abduct to fight the Secret Wars and teach me the nature of desire.

4 comments:

Heavyarms said...

I remember going to a TRU in Dallas back in 1999, they had posters all over the place announcing that Dirk Benedict would be making an appearance on a certain date. It had a head shot with a very serious, dapper looking Starbuck. I was pumped, "I get to meet FACE!" Then I read in small print under his picture "Star will not be signing autographs."

That pissed me off. Exactly how busy was Dirk Benedict in 19-friggin'-99 that he couldn't sign autographs for the five people that would be coming to see him?

Evil King Macrocranios said...

He was probably very busy..AS THE JANITOR!

Anonymous said...

Dirk Benedict wasn't signing autgraphs because even *he* forgot who he was.

I'd love to see photos from the Toys R Us grand opening with He-Man, the Smurfs, and the Hass.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Most people would love to see photos of the Gettysburg address or the sermon on the mount. Personally I'd like to see a picture of Voltron cutting Jabba the Hutt in half.

 

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Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.