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Monday, March 19, 2007

Superhero Cookies - 1982

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Since I posted the DC Superhero Cookbook last monday (and my bitter feelings toward it), I thought I'd highlight another food related item today.

I had forgotten all about these cookies until I saw the Aquaman box on ebay last month, and then the memories all came flooding back. I remember begging--begging!--my Mom to get them for me, and rifling through all the various boxes looking for different characters.

It's amusing to me that DC has some villains that are so merchandisable that they can get their own cookie boxes. Could Marvel have ever done that? Dr.Doom's Chewable Vitamins? Red Skullables?

Nice art by Dick Gioradano (of course), too bad Aquaman couldn't quite make it onto the front-of-the-box-group-shot. This box via ebay came empty, so I cannot confirm whether or not the cookies remained yummy over time.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have very fond memories of these cookies. The Perez art on the front makes every box a treasure.

I did feel weird about biting my heroes' heads off, though.

Chris

Anonymous said...

Wow. I had never seen this item before! Sweet! (at least, I hope they were...)

Plaidstallions said...

Those are so cool. I kept several boxes of "Superhero Mac and Cheese" in my cupboard until my well intentioned Mother In Law actually fed them to the kids one day.

Anonymous said...

Yum! 10 year old Mac n' Cheese! ;-)

A sidenote on these cookies I just remembered.

These cookies kept Robin out of a Teen Titans book.

Remember those New Teen Titans drug awareness books from the 80s? They were part of Nancy Reagan's "Say No to Drugs" campaign, and sent to schools. Since NTT was DC's most popular book at the time, DC decided to use them for the campaign. Marv Wolfman and George Perez (there he is again!) even did the book. Everything was going well, until Keebler stepped in to sponser the book. Robin was licensed to Nabisco (for these cookies),Keebler's chief competeitor, and so Robin was replaced by "The Protector" and all of George's Robin figures were redrawn as this new hero (by someone else). The Protector appeared in a subsequent NTT drug comics, and eventually made it into DCU continuity.

So Perez did box art for a product that caused his comic art to be ceonsored. Weird!!!

Chris

rob! said...

you've shed light on the brutal, bare-knuckle war between Keebler and Nabisco.

that Protector character always seemed weird to me...i remember getting that comic and being like "who the hell is this guy?!?"

...i didnt say that out loud of course, since i was only about 11 yrs old at the time and would've gotten in trouble if i cursed.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, there's an interview with Perez in TwoMorrow's great Titans Companion book where he talks about how weird it was for this new guy to be piloting the Titans' jet and bossing them around. Our grade didn't get the books that year, but I recall seeing posters in the hall of my elementary school that showed the Protector, and wondering where in the heck was Robin.

Years later, I got the comics at convention, and years after that learned the sorid tale of the cookie war that claimed the Teen Wonder as it's lone victim. ;-)

By the way, the cookies tasted just like aniimal crackers.

chris

Anonymous said...

"It's amusing to me that DC has some villains that are so merchandisable that they can get their own cookie boxes."

I wonder if this is because of lingering recognition from the old Adam West Batman series?

Which might also explain why Joker and Penguin were Mego'ed and not, say, Black Manta...

Unknown said...

I actually got a few boxes intact a while back, and I just had to open one. The cookies were, for the most part, intact, though I wasn't quite adventurous enough to eat one. Alas, no Aquaman.