Nostalgic For My Childhood - Comic & Magazine ads

Following on from my Nostalgic post about Christmas catalogues (which you can read here), I started  thinking about the ads of my childhood.  Not just the ones we saw on TV, but those in comics and magazines too, for toys and sweets, posters and books, bikes and things you look at now and don't quite understand.

There was a charm to them certainly - as you'll see, they were often hand-drawn and the hyperbole was fairly muted - and they also carry with them a lovely sense of innocence - though maybe that's me reflecting back on talk of stamped, addressed envelopes, postal orders and things costing pennies.

Here are a few, I hope they spark some memories for you...

through the 70s

These weren't even British ads (the whole concept of a zip code used to fascinate me, until my Dad explained it was the US version of our post code) but if you read any Marvel comics during the 70s, I can guarantee you saw this ad.  Charles Atlas himself (born Angelo Siciliano on 30th October 1892, he took his name from a statue of Atlas his friend said he resembled on a Coney Island hotel) died on 24th December 1972.

1974

A fantastic toy that me and most of my friends had - he didn't jump like the adverts on TV showed (he kept falling over which, thinking about it, was probably closer to reality), nobody ever got a second stunt rider and the noise the rev-booster made was perhaps the coolest thing about it all.  I'd love to have another go on one...

1976

In my experience, roller skates were never "self guiding", unless that meant deliberately aiming you towards the road, holes in the pavement or at little old ladies who couldn't get out of the way quick enough.  For those who don't remember these, you put your feet on the plates and then buckled that loop around your ankle - how more of us didn't hobble ourselves, I'll never know...

1976

So I buy a book, draw you a picture and I get a free badge?  I was seven in 1976, this would have sent me rushing to table with my pencil case full of colouring pens and a pad!  And I might even win a Raleigh Chopper (trust me, that was a big deal back then)...  The John Menzies shop chain was sold to W H Smith in 1998 and the stores rebranded.

1976

The Chopper was quite a regular prize, wasn't it and just look at that cassette recorder and those watches!  And to be in with a chance of winning, all you had to do was make a Christmas card and only use a Pritt stick.  If you look at the wording in the rules, that's a wonderful snapshot of how things were done before electronic communications...

1977

I remember being really excited about this at the time, though I don't recall ever getting a poster (maybe I spent so long trying to figure out which friend to use as the second name the deadline had passed).  And, wonder of wonders, this requires a postal order (are they still a thing?)!  The actual Matchbox vehicles themselves (which I wrote about here) were cool too (and go for a pretty penny these days...) and tied in with a Judge Dredd storyline (The Cursed Earth) in 2000AD comic

1977

My childhood hero.  I was a huge fan of Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man and had posters on my bedroom wall, the Bionic Crisis game (though I don't remember ever playing it) and the figure (complete with the engine block for him to lift).  Never got the Transporter & Repair Station though.

1978

The Texan, by Rowntrees, was a nougat/toffee bar covered with chocolate.  A major point of the advertising was that it took a long time to chew, inspiring the cowboy's catchphrases "A man's gotta chew what a man's gotta chew" and "Sure is a mighty chew!".  It was withdrawn from sale in the 80s but relaunched as a limited edition by Nestle in 2005 after being voted 'the favourite sweet of all time' in a 2004 survey of sweet-shop customers.  I loved them but if I tried to eat one now I'm sure it'd pull out every single one of my fillings...

1978

Horror was big back then, clearly.  And I love the fact you could get the game for 30p, when it was worth 75p!

1979

Arguably the GameBoy of my generation, Palitoy released eight Pocketeers games in 1975 under licence from TOMY - Cup Final, Fruit Machine, Crossbow, Blow Pipe, The Derby, Grand Prix, Pinball and Golf .  They were joined by more over the years (including three Smurf-related titles in 1980) and by 1982, 46 different games were available.

I had the Grand Prix one (long since lost to the sands of time), though I recently picked up a replacement at my friend Joe's Vintage Toy Shop in Leicester.  Dude was intrigued by it, I showed him how it was played and he was hooked for the evening.

1979

"Do you need to get petrol, Dad?"

"I will at some point, yes."

"Can we keep going until we see a National Garage then...?"

During the late 70s, this was certainly a ritual in our car and, I imagine, loads more - if you bought fuel from National, you either got a car sticker ("no, we're not sticking Smurfs all over the car...") or a little blue figure and they were a big deal then (even though some came with the attendant rumour that lead-based paint was used on them).  The National chain, part of BP since 1957, was phased out through the 80s.  You can still buy Smurfs.

1979

Apart from the Lemonade Dipper (which was always my favourite), you can still buy these today.  I never liked liquorice so didn't bother with the fountains.

1980

BMX bikes were big news in the late 70s and going into the 80s - Look-In was championing them, we'd seen people doing stunts on TV and they were hellishly cool!  And expensive too, I assume, since I don't think I ever knew anybody who owned one.  Instead, we had our regular bikes (or racers, if we were very lucky) and tried to do jumps on them.  I remember we didn't try jumps for long...

1982

Still available today and pretty much exactly the same.  I love that Dracula is so prominent on this!

1982

In contrast to Top Trumps, 1982 also saw the introduction of Game & Watch handheld games.  I don't remember seeing Donkey Kong at the time, but I did have one featuring a little man who caught balls and there was also a Snoopy one my sister had.

early 80s

It Tapes Tapes!  

The little copyright act notice would have been much better served, I think, with the cool Home Taping Is Killing Music! logo you got on the inner sleeve of most LPs in those days.  I explained to Dude that this was a portable cassette player when I was a teen - he knew what a cassette was (he's a cool kid) but laughed at the idea of it being portable.  So cruel.  Also, I'm still not sure why Amstrad thought we'd be swayed by Terry Venables.

1983

Return Of The Jedi was hugely anticipated and even though I wasn't making Airfix kits any more by this time (I was 14), I can imagine the poster would have been a huge draw!

1984

Around this time, we started to study computers as a subject at school (in the computer room, none of this IT mullarkey in those days) and used BBC Micros, which I remember as being very good (I had a ZX81 at home and loved programming on that).  £399.90 in 1984 would equate, inflation-adjusted, to £898 today and all that for 32k RAM.  Different times, as they say...


If you're interested, more of my Nostalgic For My Childhood posts can be found here