Godzilla Crayon By Number (Craft House, 1995)

Here's another of those things that you won't find anywhere else, and it was really made possible by a complete fluke.  But we will get to that momentarily. 

First of all, as I'm sure you know, "activity sets" have always been popular with manufacturers, primarily because they are incredibly inexpensive to produce (paper products, including jigsaw puzzles, were famously the only Star Wars merchandise to be found when the film first became a surprise hit in 1977), but let's not diminish the fact that they sell very well.  I myself spent many a summer afternoon ruining a perfectly good activity book, watercolor kit, or velvet coloring poster! They have always been a reasonable way to keep a child busy...you have to wonder if they are expected to be all digital today!

If you are a fan of the 1990's Trendmasters Godzilla output, then you've noticed that the look of their particular KING OF THE MONSTERS branding could be found on products made by several other manufacturers (you can see a list of these products on our Trendmasters page).  It gave a nice uniformity to Godzilla products of the time, and this particular item is no exception.

This thin box holds two things:  a 12-page booklet with pages that can be separated easily for coloring, and a bundle of 8 generic crayons in a rubber band.  I would love to tell you these are really terrible restaurant-level crayons and make a joke about it, but they seem to be fine (or perhaps hardened by age, who knows).  What's really strange about them is that they weren't packaged in a box, which would've allowed them to be stored flat, instead of in a round cluster.  At any rate, the manufacturers were smart enough to put a protective sheet of blank paper between them and the booklet...which wouldn't have been necessary if they were boxed, come to think of it.  Also, while we are complaining, the coloring pages are double-sided, which was never a good idea, and certainly made the possibility of markers impossible!

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.

But enough pedantics, let's get to what you came for:  cool Godzilla artwork! As this is a pretty rare set, and doesn't seem to be anywhere else, I was originally debating even opening it, but lo and behold, that was decided for us.  The seller, in their infinite wisdom, packaged it in a "bubble mailer" instead of a box, allowing the postal service to crush and mangle it, with the final indignity being that the postman folded it nearly in half to cram it into my mailbox.  Thus, fate has decided for us. Enjoy!

If you'd like to download the complete set of 12 scans, you can do so here!