I spent about three hours tonight reading the journals of the Donner Party for no real good reason, except to think, "Hey, wouldn't it suck to be in the Donner Party?"
-- Tjames Madison
"Them thar Tootsie Rolls sure put steam inta yer muscles, don't they?" It's time for
another round of stupid comic books ads lovingly critiqued by the wise guys at
SeanBaby.com.
"Captain Tootsie" has a bad-ass military-issue rifle equipped with an infra-red
sniper-scope and a fluorescent eyepiece. But "You don't need a sniperscope to spot the
gosh-a-mighty goodness of chewy, chocolaty Tootsie Rolls," he reminds us. And one bad ad
is underway.
It seems that a military rifle would come in handy if a killer bear were rampaging
through a campground of little girls. But here's how that scenario gets rendered by the
artist of the comic book ad.
"Wow! Listen to that excitement!" "Screech! Eek!"
And so on and so on....
Seanbaby has assembled a new collection of ads so jaw-droppingly bad that it's impossible
to resist heckling them. ("I have no idea what Tootsie Rolls have to do with murdering
bears," Seanbaby notes.) Though he's famous for de-constructing dozens of 70s ads in
which Marvel and DC superheros pimped Hostess Fruit Pies, Seanbaby reminds us of that
truly bad comic book advertising transcends the entire comic book universe.
He's discovered another gem
where two small children frighten an escaped gorilla with weapons that they earned
selling White Cloverine-brand Salve. They weren't plastic weapons, one Pigdog reader
believes. "Dude. It was the seventies.... You actually could get a .22 caliber rifle
from selling cloverine salve.
"We live in a different world today...."
Indeed. Another extremely violent ad even features Sam Spade.
If there's one upside to bad comic book advertising, it's this. Besides the thrilling
cultural vertigo you get from seeing ads that are hopelessly outdated -- it's also
really, really entertaining to watch someone making fun of them.
