More promotional Famous Monsters of Filmland back covers from Professor Kinema. I seriously doubt any reader wound up with one million dollars, fantastic secret or not, but I'll bet lots of kids spent the money in their imagination while trying to win it. I met Robert Lansing (4D Man) and sold an accounting program to him way back in the 1980s, while I was working at B. Dalton's Software Etc. store on 5th Avenue in New York City. He was shorter than I imagined.
Professor Kinema sends along more nifty magazine promotion from the back covers of Famous Monsters of Filmland. These indicate Warren's attention to the FM imitators sprouting up. The quote from Ray Bradbury is priceless. And how can you not groan at the cheeky wordplay "If the answer to any of the fivegoing questions (that's one more than foregoing) is no…?"
Before Warren Publishing realized the importance of advertising merchandise on their back covers, early issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland promoted the magazine with simple yet striking black and white pictures and text instead. From Professor Kinema's FM collection comes this visually effective promo using big Tor Johnson and big letters to ask the question…
I started collecting toys in earnest by the time The Empire Strikes Back hit the theaters. Blame the Star Wars merchandising machine. I'd scour Toys "R" Us every weekend for figures and vehicles, and dreamed of finding more of those red markdown stickers on them.
Then I hit the jackpot. A comic book store I visited for the first time had all the playsets for 5 bucks apiece. Those micro playsets with their diecast figures were my favorites. The guy was happy to finally sell all those playsets gathering dust on his top shelf, I was happy to suddenly find all of them. Win-win all around.
I miss the exhilaration of those early days before collecting became a business, and you could leisurely walk around Toys "R" Us without some knucklehead grabbing an action figure right out of your hands if you hesitated for a moment, or rudely shoving you out of the way to be first at the racks to find those hard-to-find gems.
Yes, I miss those days. eBay doesn't muster the same thrill-of-the-hunt enjoyment you get tracking your collectible prey in person.
Famous Monsters of Filmland wasn't always about monsters. As monsterkids entered the space age in earnest in the 1970s and 1980s, science fiction (or science fantasy, take your pick) took off for the galaxy from the pages of FM. Purists hated it, but the magazine needed to stay in step with the new interests of hybrid monster-space-age-kids, or it, and Captain Company's sales, would plummet back to earth.
Buck Rogers was a lively, well-concieved show primed for action figures and vehicles, until it went all bizarro with season two. The toys were wonderful to play with, especially Twiki (bidi-bidi-bidi, okay Doc!).