Comic Ads of the 1970s
The 1970s gave us Star Wars, The Godfather, disco, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiggle_television, Geoff Johns, watergate as well as a new era of comic books. What kind of amazing ads were contained within the pages of these wonders?
Big hair, big pants and big characters (New Gods anyone) were the trend for the 1970s. Comics went from 20 cents per issue to 60 cents by the end of the decade. Comic ads evolved along with the rest of society.
The staple of comic ads, the muscle building promising advertisements did not go away in the 70s, but merely got more colorful. The promises and language did get toned down a bit from their predecessors, no longer promising everything for the skinny weakling some ads now offered their readers a choice of which amazing new body they would want; from doubling or tripling your strength, trim your waist to gaining weight (up to 50 pounds of of rock-hard muscles some promised).
Columbia House made its comic debut in the 1970s offering you the choice of 15 records or 11 tapes for only $1.97, as long as you agree to buy 11 more at full club price. This type of ad and music club continued long into the following decades.
Who could pass up the chance to own such eternal hits as T-Rex – The Slider, Poco – Good Feelin’ To Know, or the brilliant classic album from Herald Melvin & The Bluenotes!
Drugs became a social issue during the 1970s, going from a groovy time to a public enemy. Huskies sport shoes even used steroids as the subject for one of their ads. You probably don’t remember seeing this ad, or any similar attempts at drugs-are-bad-so-buy-our-products type ads even to this day. The reason? This kind of negative association is not good for products. How are your Huskies sport shoes treating you today? Exactly.
One of the most memorable ad campaigns in comic book history, at least according to this article, was the Hostess Comic ads the featured ‘real’ comic super-heroes saving children so that they could be free to enjoy delicious Hostess® Twinkies® and other sugary bombs of goodness.
The multi-ad pages were still around, but now instead of live monkeys you could purchase seahorses (yes, seahorses NOT sea monkeys), quail eggs, learn kung-fu and more. The “Be Taller” and “Super Muscle” ads still appeared, tho somewhat diminished in promise the same as their full page brethren.
Toy soldiers of all kinds were still available in this decade, from classic army men to Roman Soliders and more. I still regret never having sent away for one of these sets. While more than likely to be disappointing today, as a kid a small box of 100s of plastic soldiers was a gateway to epic battles.
Overall, ads did not change dramatically from the 1960s, back page as taking on full color full spread photography was the precursor to this kind of ad inside the books in the years to come.