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:
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?
He was probably very busy..AS THE JANITOR!
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.
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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