The End of Superman 180

The last few pages of Superman 180 have ads and other filler.  On this page, it's kind of interesting that there is really no difference in visual design, or other divider to separate the Trix ad (the top 3/4 of the page) from the bottom, editorially-generated strip.

Of course, the strip "Little Pete" is itself halfway towards being an ad for AMT models.  But "Little Pete" was an actual filler strip seen from time to time.

This the inside back cover is one of the infamous "Make Money, Get Prizes" genre.  These greeting cards might be considered the "creme de la crap" of such, because they would be actually imprinted with the buyers' names.  Just think -- in 1963, if such things were ordered, the system would require an involved chain of events that would involve writing down the name; sending in the name; a printer actually being able to READ the name written by a ten-year-old; setting up the name in a linotype machine; and so on.

Nowadays that ten-year-old kid could run off a card template on his home computer and probably would imbed a dirty picture in the background of the greeting card.

The back cover, in glorious dying color, presents the two newest Aurora monster models, The Witch, and Bride of Frankenstein.  I had both of these models, and they were sweet (no sexism intended)!

What remains of "The Witch" are the snake (seen in the background of the color illo above) and the ol' gal herself, sans feet (they just glued into the solid flat surface that was the underside of her dress).

With "The Bride," all I still have is the lady-in-waiting.  For some reason, her head (of one molded piece with her neck) can be slipped right out of her shoulders.

These fragments I have shored against my ruin, as T S Eliot said in "The Waste Land."  Actually, the ladies DO come out at Halloween time when we get all the spooky stuff down from the attic.  About every three years or so we actually decorate inside with these and other trashy, scary things.

As you can tell by the posted price of $1.49, these were part of the second wave of Aurora monsters.  The first series were 98 cent list price.  In 1963 Oklahoma, that meant that a solid dollar would buy one of them, for the total state and local taxes was only two cents on the dollar.  Sweet!

Later on in the week we will start a look at Philip Riley's book James Whale's Dracula's Daughter.