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Monday, June 18, 2007

Superman Gift Set - 1978

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While this is obviously mostly a Superman item, when I saw the box and all the Super Friends/Aquaman ancillary stuff that came with it, I picked it up.

The set is made up of blank cups and bowls, and sets of b/w art that you color yourself and apply. Its the usual assortment of stock art, with a few unusual choices:
--On the Aquaman strip, we have shots by Curt Swan and Jim Aparo, who you didn't see on merchandise much.
--The Super Friends piece by Alex Toth does not feature the retouched Superman face(by Murphy Anderson) that was seen on the Limited Collectors' Edition cover. Somebody in Licensing was out sick that day.
--Enjoy the traced-over Toth Super Friends group shot with the awkward addition of Batgirl, Green Arrow, Flash, and Green Lantern.

One other thing I noticed--on the box cover, you see the cup, bowl, etc. already colored, when of course you'd have to be friggin' Tatjana Wood to color them as well as you see them on the box, thereby instilling a sense of failure in children early on in their lives. Thanks Avalon and DC Licensing!
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Update: I got a response from DC regarding my AquaPetition to get the 1986 Pozner/Hamilton mini-series collected. It was from an assistant of Dan Didio's saying thanks for my interest, and my letter was being forwarded to the Collected Editions Editor, who by now has gotten a copy, too.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. Though any response short of "Great Idea! The books are being put together right now and we want you to write the intro!" was going to be a let-down. I'm just glad someone at DC read the thing.

Speaking of, if you're reading this and did send a letter(or two) in, please leave a comment and let me know, ok? Thanks, Aquafans!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had seen that Super Friends shot with Green Arrow on the cover of the Word Find book DC put out in the late 70s, and I thought it odd. Now I guess THIS is where it came from.
And I, too, got a letter from Didio's assistant. Frankly, I did not expect to receive any response, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Anonymous said...

That SF pic with Batgirl solves a mystery that has puzzled me for most of my adult life. I SWORE I had a SF bean-bag chair that had the main 5 SF, with GA, GL, Flash and BATGIRL as well! Even as a kid, I thought it weird, since Babs NEVER appeared on the show! The bean bag split, little white pellets went everywhere, and over time, my memory got fuzzy. But now, here is proof. It did indeed exist!

Cool set by the way! It's a cornicopia of DC's greatest artists!

Chris

Eric said...

I sent a letter very recently because I wasn't able to otherwise find the series (still only have issue 1). I asked John Cunningham, VP of marketing at DC, if there were any plans for a collection and he said, "Not at the moment."

Rick L. Phillips said...

I Wanted to send a copy of the letter but when I printed it out it was too big. It cut off one side and the bottom. So I didn't send the letter but I hope your campaign works.

Anonymous said...

Rick, if you go into your Print Settings before you push PRINT, you can check "Print to size" or something like this and the whole pic will automatically down-size to fit the paper size. I had that problem, too, and that is how I fixed it.