Welcome to another masterpost where you get information that exists nowhere else! Today we are going to tackle a murky subject with lots of misinformation: vintage Godzilla "radio spots," which is for some reason the preferred industry name for radio ads or commercials.
I don't need to tell you, but back in the day, studios and/or licensing companies would prepare specially-made radio commercials (as well as television ads) for many of their films, because radio was one of the best places for promotion. These were (usually) free to the promoter, because after all, they helped everyone involved.
The best way to know what was available is to read the vintage pressbooks. All pressbooks for the films we are going to discuss are available on this blog, so I am not going to repeat photos, but instead place links so you can see them for yourselves if you so desire. As you will see shortly, there was no uniformity to the media that was used, and sometimes the available literature didn't even specify any details.
So? How many are there, then? Well, the short answer is: eleven. Probably. MEGALON is a little unclear, but hang tight, because here we go:
1) KING OF THE MONSTERS (Godzilla Releasing Co./TRANS-WORLD) A 12-inch 33&1/3 record of 5 spots [first made available on this very blog, dear readers!] was "created by Terry Turner and Don Thompson" according to the pressbook. The book only says they were "available," and doesn't specify the media involved. Only a few months ago, it came to light that these were also offered on a (probably 10-inch) 78 from a kind soul who posted them to YouTube, making these a rare example of spots available in two formats! You can see the KOTM pressbook here, and download the radio ads (and even see the video for the 78 version, which I believe are completely identical) at this post!
2) GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER (Warner Bros./Thaddeus Suski Productions) This is a sad one, because this record has only come up for sale a couple of times in the last several years, and apparently the buyers have no intention of sharing its contents, preferring instead to simply hoard it away somewhere. As the pressbook tells us, the record contains "one 1-minute and three 20-second radio spot announcements...taken directly from the soundtrack of the picture." This was a 10-inch, 33&1/3 rpm one-sided disc (you can see the back had a neat textured pattern). You can read the pressbook in this post, but as I said no ads have ever surfaced. This film was released in many places in a double feature with TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, and the last track on the record is for that double-bill. Hopefully, we will hear them for ourselves one of these days!
3) KING KONG vs. GODZILLA (Universal/National Screen Service) This is an unusual entry, because we are going to discuss two different records! The official disc of radio spots was issued as a 7-inch 45 rpm record on red translucent vinyl (also unique in this list!). There are five ads, although the pressbook ("Showman's Manual") merely says ads were "in all the usual 60, 30, and 10 second lengths." What's most unusual here is that a second record was actually available, and this was an in-theatre one:
6 comments:
Hi,
Is there any chance you could reup the first 5 sesame street 45s, please and thanks? The links are dead.
https://snakeandboris.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-first-5-sesame-street-45s-part-one.html
You probably already know about this but FYI
https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2022/06/season-2-of-godzilla-animated-series-to-stream-on-youtube/
@Anonymous - Thanks for letting me know. It took me a couple of days but found them! They are all together, and can be downloaded at the end of the "Part Five" post. I put notes in all of the other posts, so that should work! Enjoy!
@Anonymous (the other one; maybe the same person, even?) - I did know about Toho putting Season 2 on YouTube! There are rumblings about it MAYBE finally getting a proper release on a physical media...after all, they had to remaster these. Why not just give us a proper box set, after all these years?
Thank you for the re-upload!
I think these might be two Gigantis radio sposts with visuals added. What are your thoughts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p01xnU-_jy8
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