The Things That I See (continued)

 These posts always begin with "it's been a while since we did one of these."

It's been a while since we did one of these, but guess what, things are still weird out there, so here goes:

This is what action figure-hunting is like for me.  I wanted to change the title to "The Invisible Iron Man."

I know a jigsaw puzzle exists that's completely blank, but this must be the second-worst puzzle of all time.  

And speaking of worst, here is the worst design for War of the Worlds, ever (I've read this book; there are no blondes in it at all).

Staying in the book section for a moment, I've noticed that, over just the last few years, I could've built an entire bookshelf of weird and/or disturbing books if I'd been so inclined...it would be interesting to have something like that in a prominent place in your home, that would be the first thing people see.  Turns out, "Rice Blast Disease" is also known as: blast fungus, rice rotten neck, oval leaf spot of graminea, pitting disease, ryegrass blast, Johnson spot, and neck blast.  I assume that list I just typed is most of the content of this book.

And, for the ladies, a book about that time that Hasselhoff played Nick Fury.  And bought a rug.

You could make a swell coffee table book about public domain VHS artwork, and how it fails at anything that it ever tries to be.  If only I had that kind of time.  This is "Based Superman just does not care."

Best for last department:  All of us who are old enough know that there was a time when "woodburning sets" that came with electric soldering-iron type tools were approved toys for small children, along with the normal comedian-fodder items such as lawn darts and chemistry sets.  Well, perhaps there was something to that after all.

This set came with very thin wooden shingles with pictures printed on them, the idea being that you used the iron to draw over the lines, color the picture somehow with some included paints, and then you'd have a piece of "art" that your mother would throw away next spring cleaning.  This particular set had a cardboard insert with some "Practice" areas:

Yikes. Junior Misogynists of America, much?

That feeling when your date's head is gone suddenly.

Godzilla vs. Mothra - The Byun Byun Monsters 2 Model Kit (Bandai, 1992)

 

Yuji Kaida is one of the greatest kaiju artists of all time.  I didn't even qualify that statement with "in my opinion," because it's simply an indisputable fact.  He's simply amazing, and the artwork for this Bandai model kit shows he is also a Chibi/Super-Deformed master...because of course he is.  He also sculpts for SH Monsterarts figures...but I digress! 

This model kit is one of a series called "The Byun Byun Monsters," ("byun byun" being an onomatopoeia like "vroom vroom") which included tiny buildings and adorable kaiju that were built around pull-back motors, allowing some hijinks and random destruction.  There are three model kits in the series--one for GODZILLA vs. KING GHIDORAH, and two for GODZILLA vs. MOTHRA.  This is the middle kit, #2, and it features Godzilla, Mothra (decorated with foil stickers), and a Mothra larva.  It would have been nice if the series had continued until DESTOROYAH...or, at the very least, we could've gotten matching artwork for the rest of the series' posters in SD style.  

Nevertheless, there is a lot to enjoy about this kit, even if you don't build it.  The instructions have a full-color side that showcase the artwork (which is a little cropped on the box), and even includes a guide to all of the kaiju cameos on the front! Can you name all 17? I bet you can!

While we are on the subject, here are "Byun Byun" kits #1 and 3.  I feel like the Battra kit wasn't a huge seller, because it doesn't turn up very often.  The Ghidorah kit, as you'd imagine, stays in pretty high demand.  It includes the parts to swap out and convert to Mecha-King Ghidorah too, which is nice.

GODZILLA'S REVENGE stills (1969 / 1971 US)

Here are a couple of stills from the unfairly-maligned GODZILLA'S REVENGE that I picked up recently.  What really caught my attention was this second one, which is obviously a still from DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, with Gabara pasted in.  Toho often did "paste-ups" for promotional purposes, and some of them are pretty zany.  

This one almost looks right, like Gabara belongs in the photo, until you stare at it too long and realize what's going on.

GODZILLA/DYNOMUTT HOUR Promotional Television Film Frames (Hanna-Barbera, 1980)

 

Amazingly, I was able to score another pair of adjoined 35mm film frames that were used by TV stations.  You may recall the first set of these, which we looked at a few years back, and you can see here:  HB Promotional Film Frames (1978).  These frames were often made into (or just used as) slides and used by TV stations for promotional purposes, such as bumpers or showing what was coming up next.

The Hanna-Barbera Godzilla animated series had two seasons, but was reconfigured several times as part of an hour (or longer) block of time.  In 1980, it was paired with Blue Falcon & DynoMutt, which is where these particular images come from (he was even eventually paired with Hong Kong Phooey and the Harlem Globetrotters).  I color-corrected them a bit, as old film stock tends to turn a bit (in this case, more red).  I think I got them closer to what they would've looked like.  There are two frames, just like before:  one with a title, and one without.  Also, the scale is a little less than accurate, but I guess it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if DynoMutt only came up to Godzilla's foot!

By the way, who are they looking for? Blue Falcon? The crew of the Calico?

I love this kind of stuff, because it's what gets lost, over the years, and forgotten about.  And that's a tragedy that I work to prevent.

GODZILLA vs. KING GHIDORA(H) Rare VHS Revision Discovered!

 

Here's a weird one.  It's pretty rare for a VHS box to have ever received any kind of update.  Sometimes a year will be replaced, or the manufacturer's address will change, but here is a major example that was apparently done at Toho's insistence.

Now, granted, lots of the 1980's Godzilla VHS were semi-legitimate at best, and there often wasn't a lot of attention that went into them.  In 1998, when  the Hollywood debacle known as "GINO" caused another surge of Godzilla merchandise in the United States, the Heisei series of Godzilla movies began to finally get official releases in the U.S., by Columbia/Tristar.   

The front of the box for this movie was then printed as "GODZILLA vs. KING GHIDORA," giving us yet another spelling of everyone's favorite golden space dragon's name.  (Both "Ghidra" and "Ghidrah" had been prevalent since the 1965 release of his film in the U.S.)  

Now, it's clear that by the mid-to-late 1990's, Toho was earnestly trying to normalize and streamline all of their preferred kaiju names (remember when you first started seeing the little pictures in the circles, each with the character's "proper" name, on products?).  Soon after 1995's GODZILLA vs. DESTOROYAH film came out, American fans typed about "Destroyer" pretty commonly, but Toho was having none of it, and has done a good job at correcting us all to his actual name of "Destoroyah," which continues to this day.

Which is a good example:  the VHS box for the 1995 film was correct when issued, which lends further credence to the reason for this one being revised. Also, the original (crummy, non-letterboxed) DVD of GODZILLA vs. KING GHIDORAH was released in the fall of 1998 too, and strangely, the title had the correct spelling of "Ghidorah" on that artwork. (What's hilarious is, in the synopsis on the back of both versions of the VHS, the correct spelling of "Ghidorah" is used in the text!)

The initial DVD release of this film (paired with GODZILLA vs. MOTHRA) was very lackluster, but they did spell Ghidorah's name right.

The back of the revised tape still gives 1998 as its date, and it's not just a straight copy of the previous artwork, because the (vertical) title had to be changed there as well (see photo below)...plus, there are some differences in the fine print that add King Ghidorah to the copyrighted characters.  And the strangest, most baffling  move of all was changing the running time from 103 minutes to 89 minutes! That one I can't figure out.  

No doubt this was a "running change" done in production, although it must've been done quite late in the game, because this tape is apparently super rare.  I was lucky to snatch this up, and I should credit the eagle-eyed Ebay seller who knew of its existence (he said it was only the second one he'd seen in his life!).  I know I will definitely be looking twice at any tapes of this film that come up (the incorrect version is quite common).

One further oddity:  while the title is corrected on all sides of the box artwork, the label on the tape remains incorrect! This is further evidence for the "running change" theory! By the way, this tape has been added to our sub-page that keeps track of all Godzilla & Toho VHS released in the USA!

The Prince and The Dragon (KidStuff Records, No Year Given)

This is the worst kids' record that I've ever heard, and that's saying a lot.  It's just so bad, it's difficult to put into words.  I bought it because I thought the cover was sort of cool (even that falls apart; the longer you stare at it, the more problems you find with the art...for example, the dragon's tail, and his absence of back legs), which is never a great reason to buy an album, of course.

"Remember your complete involvement as you listened to your favorite tales?" Yikes. Remember the complete revulsion when you listened to this album?

It's so obscure, KidStuff couldn't even be bothered to print any details about it on the sleeve, much less the year it was even made.  It wasn't even on Discogs (it is now; I had to add it myself), and I suspect there was a good reason why.  Most likely, I've brought back an unholy power that was supposed to stay buried forever.  And for that, I'm sorry.

You won't be surprised to learn that the times given on the labels (the only info about this LP that we even get) are incorrect.  KidStuff (really should be a backwards "S" there, but who cares) often credited their ridiculousness to the highfalutin title of "The Kid Stuff Repertory Co.," which in this case is just two men, a woman, a piano player straight out of a silent movie theater, and lots of accents that go all over the place from minute to minute (and some occasional ad-libbing).  I'd be shocked if there was any organized method behind this "production" other than just buying a tape from amateur theatre students, or somebody's brother-in-law.  I say "buying" a tape, but most likely, it was "trading for a sack of Big Macs, or possibly rolling papers." 

My favorite line? "The dragon's tail whipped around his body like a whip."  The whole thing somehow drags on for just over 28 minutes of your life--which you will never, ever get back--and the last few minutes are even extended by letting the piano player improvise and vamp endlessly (these are listed as two separate songs on the label, but that's wrong too).  

The worst problem though, is the story, which makes no sense.  There's a prince, whose father is a king (duh), but there's another princess somewhere, whose father is also a king (also duh), and they have the same voice, so meanwhile the listener (me) is thinking they are siblings, and perhaps don't know it? Eww. (Insert George Lucas joke here.) There's a dragon that's eaten nearly everyone, and the prince finds out that there are a bunch of random animals inside of each other (you read that right) like nesting dolls, that are "the source of the dragon's power," and he sets out to fight the dragon (hand-to-hand, I might add).

All of this confused me so much, I did what I do for nearly everything else that confuses me:  consult Wikipedia, who tells me that "The Dragon and the Prince" (KidStuff obviously reversed it so they could retain the toy rights) is a Serbian fairy tale (so you know it's going to be extra happy).  The synopsis sort of matches, in that there are various (but different) animals inside of one another, and they are the source of the dragon's power, who must be burst open...only in the KidStuff version, it's not very clear at all (and there's a second dragon for some reason at one point) how this works out, or even what happens to the dragon.  They just stop talking about him.  Also, the prince has to get three sticks that open a prison somehow, and all of the people that the dragon has eaten are captured there (alive, because reasons), which makes no sense EITHER...they are freed, of course, but the Wikipedia version ends with the whole town disappearing, and the prince crying and having to dig their graves.  So, there's that uplifting ending to enjoy. (The KidStuff version only ends with the listeners crying.)

Here's the take-away.  If you don't know, no matter what culture they are from, basically, fairy tales are drug-fueled, paste-eating fever dreams of nonsense, originally designed to control wayward children by scaring them in or out of doing something...this is all fine, but what boggles my mind is that somebody wrote this crap down, and saved it for posterity, as if it would be meaningful to any of us in the future.  And that is the real crime, my friends.

LINK (you have been warned): Prince and the Dragon

Learn the Secret Powers of the Deadliest Killers in the Orient (Comic Book Ad, 1975)

 

Remember all of the bizarro, too-good-to-be-true items that were advertised in comic books back in the day? You may recall some of the famous ones:  the purported 7-Foot Polaris Submarine, X-Ray Specs, 6-foot Moon Monsters, Sea Monkeys, and heck, even real monkeys.  All of these were offered in the pages of comics.  And, don't forget GRIT, or the promise that I could become rich enough to buy my own Atari games, just by selling seed packets.

The other day, I was enjoying a classic slab of primo 1975 Jack Kirby goodness, when I ran across this full-page ad.  I'd seen it before, but I had never stopped to take it all in.  It's quite a read.  

Try to remember the kung-fu craze that had taken hold of the world and had reached its peak by the early 1970's.  By the time this ad was run, Bruce Lee hadn't even been dead but probably a year and a half; maybe less.  Ninjas would become, for the 1980's, what kung-fu fighters were to the 1970's.  By the time you got to the byline of THE PHYSIO-MENTAL POWERS OF THE NINJA, you had the attention of most kids...although admittedly, this ad was too wordy to have interrupted my comic book reading...and in 1975, I was too little anyway.

So, right away, under the headline, we bandy the term "invisibility" about twice, and we aren't even into the ad proper yet.  But, you have my attention!

Right away, we are launched into a whirlwind of capital letters and incredible claims.  You would expect an ad like this to make lots of cringey mistakes, but despite the hugely-entertaining hyperbole, it really doesn't.  (In lots of American fiction, ninjas are wrongly associated with China, for example, but they don't make that mistake here, and even use the name of the discipline of Ninjutsu correctly.)  All of the secrets discussed here are in a manual they will be glad to sell us--and, we are told that revealing the secrets of Ninjutsu meant "a gruesome death," implying that, well, somebody bit it big time in order for us to have this knowledge.  So, shouldn't we honor that?

Generously, they also make a point to offer discounts to law enforcement agencies...although to this day I have never seen the Ninja Task Force of my local police department...but, you say, that's because they are obviously invisible.  I know.

We are also promised that we will learn "the all important time-lag factor...instrumental to the art of disappearing."  Yes, please!  That would be handy at work.  They also tell us that "NINJA were the deadliest of fighters who were unbeatable in unarmed combat."  (Wikipedia tells me that ninja actually used lots of weapons.) The text then immediately discusses an "incredible array of weapons" (huh?) such as "Stars of Death, or their deadly Retrievable Stone."  "Stars of Death" I think is a breakfast cereal, but this "Retrievable Stone" perplexed me.  From some mild yet lazy Googling, it looks like it is some sort of weight on the end of a rope, probably used for climbing.  

The farther you get in the text, the more subtle bombshells they keep flinging:  "These fighters were unsurpassed in their ability to overcome all of their enemies.  They employed magic and stealth, and--" hang on, how did magic get into this? Somebody's 20-sided die just fell out of their pocket in public.  I mean, you had me at ninja, and now we are talking about magical ninja.  "You can protect yourself and your loved ones against ANY ATTACKER under ANY CONDITIONS.  Even while sleeping."  Wait, what? Suddenly I have questions about somnambulist fisticuffs...in the later bullet points, they mention "The NINJA'S special techniques of invulnerability--Even While Sleeping," so which is it? My takeaway from these factoids is that if you hire a ninja, you should let them sleep at work, like Google does.  After all, you're getting them at their best.

Another random bit that they just drop in is when they promise us the "Closely Guarded Secrets of Atemi-Waza," without even giving us a remote clue as to what that is (I looked it up; Atemi-Waza is a series of body-striking techniques adopted into judo in 1882...what this has to do with ninja stuff at all, I have no idea).

And then we get to the mail-away coupon, and discover that this manual will cost $5.00, with 80 cents postage.  For those of you who don't know, five dollars in 1975 was a week's wages.  You could buy an entire personal computer for five bucks back then.  Of course, I am kidding, but my point is, $5.80 was very steep for what was probably just a pamphlet.  

When you submit the order form, they force you to promise "to use the deadly SECRETS OF NINJUTSU only for defense and that I'll never use it as an aggressor," during which I would have firmly had my fingers crossed the entire time.  If I get this power, I am definitely messing some people up.

Now I come to the point in this discussion where I wish I could find somebody who ordered this "manual," so we could see what it really contained.  Then again, maybe that person became a super hero and is far too busy...then again, maybe that person just used it to disappear! 

STAR WORN - Theme Covers Collection (Discs 4 & 5, Leaping Fox)

 

Today we conclude at last this Herculean effort that made me question my very sanity, with discs 4 and 5 of the Star Wars Theme Covers Collection.  

If you are here, then you no doubt remember the iconic Star Wars LP that launched Meco's career:

Meco (here we refer to the artist; the backing band used for live performances was also called Meco), who had seen the film on opening day and several times soon thereafter, can attribute a portion of his success to his expediency and speed.  His idea for a disco project based on John Williams' soundtrack was arranged and recorded in just a few weeks, and was at the head of the pack of Star Wars cover records.  Not only was it a hit, but it cleverly reduced the soundtrack and story of the film into a fun, 15-minute side of an LP (and had a great cover, too--I have one in a frame!).  

What I failed to ever realize was that it had apparently spawned a cottage industry...covers of his cover quickly began to appear all around the world.  We can only assume that this was approved and/or licensed, but as we say in the liner notes to this project, it sounds like some of these records even occasionally utilized Meco's backing tracks!

Some were trying to get a piece of the pie from that sweet, sweet edit version of the Main Theme from Star Wars, which was a #1 single, by the way.  But some opted to cover his entire 15-minute suite, as you will see.  

Results vary, as you would expect.  Somebody called "Galaxy 42" decided that the song needed some words (it didn't work).  James Last, the "Gentleman Conductor" from the UK, gives us a rousing live version (from the Royal Albert Hall), as does the backing orchestra for the Japanese duo, Pink Lady, and both are great.  One rare record from Germany by "The Force," which I actually waited on--in our new habitat of Virus World--for many months, arrived disappointing, and even a little skippy.  An outift called "The Tennessee Guitars" attempted to put some steel guitar swing into the arrangement, and as such it's a standout track for its uniqueness.  Surf-rock legends, The Ventures, sound like they are at a desperate crossroads of their career, however (and the track was only released in Japan), and may have been asleep.  It should also be pointed out that several of the other tracks are merely the same recordings under new names--as stock filler tracks for kids' albums--which we explain in the liner notes.  

Meco, of course, went on to an entire career that was launched by his Star Wars project, and released several other albums of film themes and soundtrack music (another vintage phenomenon which would be impossible in the modern day...how many current film themes can you name that have been hits, even to the point of spawning covers? Right.).  He also was smart enough to continue his Star Wars output with great music from the two sequels...with the innocent but dreaded "Christmas in the Stars" LP coming in between.  We could joke about that album being right behind the Holiday Special in cringe factor, but: 1) we all treasured it as children, and 2) he no doubt made a FORTUNE from it, so more power to him.

We hope you've enjoyed this journey through no less than 53 versions of the Star Wars theme.  Should you ever discover an additional, pre-ESB version that we've missed, send it our way. 

LINK: Disc 4: Attack of the Meco Clones (part 1)

LINK: Disc 5: Attack of the Meco Clones (part 2)

GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS Ad Slicks Set (Trans World Releasing Corp, 1956)

 

Sometimes, pressbooks come with a set of ad slicks (sometimes not, and sometimes they are built in).  For KING OF THE MONSTERS, a hefty set of ads was included in a separate stapled bundle.  They are oddly sized at an inch shorter than the actual pressbook that we looked at last time, at 11 x 16". But they are GREAT.

I really like the smaller, bumper-sticker shaped ads at the bottom of this page.  Here they are, cropped out:

Another value of pressbooks is that they serve as checklists for all of the materials that existed for a particular film.  Can you believe a 24-SHEET poster existed for this movie? We have looked at the album of radio ads in years past! If you are interested in hearing them, go to this post!

And, they also would provide copy for fluff articles and reviews, to be used in newspapers of the day.  Here is a better look at a couple:

None of the crazy ballyhoo ideas that would permeate the later pressbooks, though! And of course, this movie didn't need it!