Game Genie by Galoob

Was this NES add-on a blessing or what? Sure, Nintendo wasn’t too happy that Galoob was making a cartridge that plugs into their game cartridges but the gamers didn’t care. It was a godsend!

FINALLY I could get some serious work done on the various games that plagued me. Many NES games were incredibly tough and it was nice to have the Genie around to help give me the advantage. Invincibility, super jumps, unlimited ammo, infinite lives, level select, one hit kills and so on were the kind codes I was looking for.

That famous screen.

The cartridge came with a book filled with codes to all kinds of games, but because new codes were discovered and new games were released on a continuous basis, you could subscribe to a quarterly newsletter featuring new codes.

Galoob would later make Genies for Sega’s Game Gear & Genesis and the SNES and Game Boy before finally calling it a day, but the spirit of cheating until you win lived on in to the 32-bit era and beyond with Action Replay, GameShark and Code Breaker.

Darth Vader LIVES

I think I scanned this one from an issue of Marvel-Two-One. It’s been awhile though, so I’m not positive.

I’d love to get my hands on that lazer sword! In some circles, it’s called a lightsaber, but apparently the Joe Kubert School (click and go look at the larger version… they produced this ad!) has never heard that term or they simply wanted to blaze their own trail. Geez, you could make a killing on eBay with this stuff today.

Anyone know what a “transfer book” is? Some type of Colorforms or trace book?

Own the Super Powers Collection on VHS (or Beta)!

This is a fun ad with the artwork by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Jose supplied stock art for many, if not all, of DC’s marketing in the 80s. It’s his work that, for many, is an iconic take on DC’s iconic characters.

The use of Super Powers is a bit misleading though because as far as I can tell, these full-length videocassettes appear to only contain the shorts that would pop up during the various Super Friends and two-heroes-in-one shows. But by this point, pretty much everything DC fell under the Super Powers name for marketing purposes.

Honey Nut Cheerios… Gummy Bees?

I don’t remember this promotion, circa 1991, but I’m sure these gummy bees were delicious!

Crocodile Mile

The first real heatwave of the Summer has hit Michigan (seriously, 90 degrees at 10:30PM, what’s up with that), so what better time than now to take a dive down the ol’ Crocodile Mile? And didn’t it just blow your mind when SUPER Crocodile Mile was released?

My own backyard was always relegated to the standard Slip ‘N’ Slide (and sometimes nothing but trash bags if the Slip ‘N’ Slide was deemed too torn up!), but I’ve been around the Crocodile Mile a few times in my life. I don’t think I could do it in this day and age though. I’ve become a bit of a germophobe in my older years and the very idea of a pool of water waiting at the end, filled with bugs, dirt, grass and whatever washed off my friends kinda ruins to whole “fun” concept for me.