Somewhere between Darth Vader raiding the Hoth Base and my ever present Saturday morning bowl of Frankenberry, I discovered the joy of Superheroes. In the late 70‘s you would be a fool to miss a Saturday morning episode of THE SUPERFIRENDS or SCOOBY-DOO. Cartoons ruled. The represented the ending of an exhausting week, and the beginning of a glorious weekend of childhood imagination.
Another ritual of childhood, although not as exciting as Saturday Morning Cartoons, was the weekly ritual of grocery shopping with my mom. Going to the grocery store was huge production in our family. We made our list, we checked it twice, and weekly we spent an hour plus, surveying every isle, thumbing through every coupon. A mundane task to some, however a glorious adventure to an imaginative nerd.
To me the supermarket represented itself as an endless treasure trove of escapism. You had a cheap toy isle, water guns, green plastic army men, mad-libs etc… Near the entrance you had your arcade games, and quarter machines, who could beat a weeks allowance blown on Mouse-Trap and .25 cent green slime? Lastly, you had the magazine section, which also housed….comic books.
The deal with Superheroes and Comic Books, were that they were all nerds. Every single freaking one of them. Spider Man? Peter Parker…nerd. Superman? Clark Kent…nerd. Batman? Well, its hard to call Bruce Wayne a nerd, however his partner Robin? Nerd. This made a kid like me feel…not so different, and I latched on for dear life.
For myself, SUPERMAN was the first, followed closely by BATMAN. Thanks to the SUPERFRIENDS cartoons and a few hundred coloring and activity books, the idea of donning a red beach towel baby-pinned around my neck, “mock” flying around the living room, or simply playing the crime fighting detective made for a great afternoon of imaginary escapism. However as good as life seemed at the time, of all the superheroes to land at the right time in my life I would have to tip the hat to SPIDER MAN, for as Peter Parker’s alter-ego swung into my life, things suddenly got a little sweeter.
SPIDER MAN meant everything to me as a kid. His outfit was rad, his powers were amazing, and his enemies were some of the coolest you would find on the printed comic book page. MYSTERIO…how amazingly cool was that? It was during this time of SPIDER MAN-MANIA in which I truly became aware of how absolutely fantastic the world of marketing can be. Sure, I had collected everything I could with a STAR WARS logo on it in years prior, but be it my age, or the simplicity of the time…the comic marketing of the early 80’s stuck with me like nothing before.
It seemed as the superhero phenomenon lent itself to EVERYTHING when we were kids. Big-Wheels, bedroom curtains, bed sheets, action figures, drinking glasses, cereal bowels, television trays, and quite possibly the coolest…bath accessories. Now, not only could you enjoy your favorite web-slinger during the day, he also helped you prepare for the day, and hit the bed. Brushing your teeth with a SPIDER MAN tooth brush was no longer the chore it once was.
My favorite of all the bath necessities had to be the AVON SPIDER MAN Bubble Bath. I can’t recall if it were widely available in stores (as my mom scored hers from the ever present Avon Catalog), however I do remember this bubble batch led me to one of the most pivotal moments of kid-dome…meeting SPIDER MAN in the flesh.
Around the time I was in the first grade, SPIDER MAN (or someone playing him of course) did an in-store promotion for the Avon Bubble Batch at a department store in downtown St. Joseph. The place was packed with kids, each purchase of bubble batch got you a meet and greet, picture and memory to cherish for a lifetime. I was scared to death. He didn’t’t talk, he shot no webs, but his costume looked exactly like Nicholas Hammond’s costume from the live-action television series.
In my mind…I was meeting SPIDER MAN. To my chagrin he did not sling-off through the downtown buildings when he left, he simply got in the back of a waiting car and drove away, leaving me obsessed with all things spectacular and amazing. I was hooked on superheroes. Hooked on their magic, their allure, and their larger than life marketing techniques, it was about to get noisy in the Howard home.
…to this day we nerds of the house still sleep with SUPERMAN pillow covers…
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