I wanted to start off 2011 and the end of my winter hiatus with something that I think is pretty damn cool. One of my goals with this site was to try and track down and share some of the more obscure things that I was really fond of as a kid. Sure, talking about the Transformers and G.I. Joe is cool, but so are the Donruss Zero Heroes sticker cards and issues of Stickers magazine. Trouble is, the majority of the obscure stuff I’d love to track down and talk about isn’t all that easy to present in an interesting manner. It’s one thing to just talk or write about something, say the Screwball brand sherbet/bubblegum treats that used to only be available on the various ice cream trucks back in the day, but it’s hard to provide that heady feeling of instant forgotten memory recall without some sort of scan-able packaging, or a theme song, anything that’s a bit more visceral. So I have a list of stuff, a wish list of sorts, that I’m patiently waiting to dig into when I have something more tangible to share.
Well, this past December, a very awesome friend of the site dug deep into his archive of school papers and ephemera from over 25 years ago, and he came out with some very amazing pieces of newsprint. Esteban, the Evil King Macrocranios, the ruler of the kingdom roboplastico home to muchas robots fantasticos and metalicos, not to mention the host of the Roboplastic Podcastalypse (which if you dig any of the podcasts I’ve done in the past you’ll probably love this show), found his old stash of elementary and middle school book club flyers which he has very graciously scanned and sent over to be shared here, and I can’t thank him enough.
Much like vintage food packaging, school book club flyers are in my opinion so of the rarest pieces of ephemera as there is absolutely no reason to archive them. It’s rare enough that kids would keep their homework and school paper work longer than it takes to peel off a congratulatory scratch and sniff sticker, let alone any peripheral materials that would just clog up your backpack, but for it to survive for 25 or more years is just astounding. Even if these flyers were kept, it’s not there’s any sort of market or demand to get them out into the hands of collectors. The closest thing would be the very niche market of people selling old Saturday morning cartoon ads on ebay, but it seems like no one is selling book club flyers. Hell, I remember wracking my brain just to try and remember a single name of one of these book clubs when I first started this site and I couldn’t find anything on the interwebs that really helped. Either people don’t care or these book clubs have become obscure enough nostalgia-wise that there isn’t really anyone talking about them in the shadow of conversations about potential Thundercats movies, Smurfs as CGI, and Return-of-the-Jedi-themed jungle gyms. Honestly, that’s all right, because this is the stuff, the more obscure stuff, that still gets me the most excited nostalgia-wise…
So thank you Esteban for braving your old pile of school papers to dust off these amazing gems. I’m going to be sharing his collection over the next couple of weeks, and today I’m going to start with a few Troll Book Club Flyers, the first of which is from April of 1982…
For the most part my memories of these book club flyers surrounds the excited jolt I’d get when the homeroom teacher would hand out them out each month. In fact, I was kind of a nerd for anything that involved school and spending money; be it browsing for cool figural erasers and themed pencils in the school store, the occasional book sale held in the library, or the yearly Christmas fun raisers where we’d sell gaudy wrapping paper and off-brand meat & cheese gift-sets, I always got excited at the prospect of spending money at school. Maybe it was because I didn’t typically buy my lunch in favor of a packed lunchbox, but I always felt so independent and grown-up when I’d be trusted with a few dollars to spend any way I saw fit. These flyers were a monthly opportunity to tap into the bettering-Shawn’s-schooling fund and to pick up some nifty stuff like stickers and posters along the way…
With this first flyer, I realized that at least one company, Troll, issued different monthly fliers for the various grade ranges. This one represents books available for kindergarten through 1st grade, and mostly features the large format floppy picture books and read-alongs. Highlights for me include the Astrosmurf which featured artwork by Peyo (I wasn’t sure if his work was repurposed back in the 80s or if it was all derivative stuff based on the Hanna Barbera cartoon adaptation of the comics), and Leo the Lop by Stephen Cosgrove. Leo the Lop was part of a series of books by Serendipity written by Cosgrove and illustrated by Robin James that really knocked my socks off as a kid (illustration-wise.) Also included in the series were books like Little Mouse on the Prarie, Trapper (about a little while seal), and the Gnome from Nome (my favorite.) You also get your first glimpse at the book club flyer up-sale which includes the concept of a free poster with the purchase of three or more books. For a kid in the first grade back in the 80s, I’m sure that 11×17 of two white rabbits peeking out of a top hat was mesmerizing.
This next flyer is for a slightly older set (grades 4th through 6th) and was released in February of 1985…
This is a bit more of what I remember from back in school. Though I have all sorts of fond memories of these flyers aesthetically speaking, I have to believe it’s mostly just nostalgia. I mean look at the horrible job on that curved block font around the dog poster. Don’t even get me started on the six million different fonts used for the various book titles in the descriptions. Wowzers. I mean using the specific font as an image lift from a book like with the Heathcliff offering is one thing, but mixing in the serif and sans serif fonts is hurting my eyes a little. Anyway, enough grousing about design, I mean look, original solicitations for Choose Your Own Adventure books are in this flyer!
I also love the fact that even though some of these posters are super cheesy, they were al least also super cheap. $0.75 for 24″x18″ poster? Hell, I’d have a hard time passing up the one with the collies at that price. Also, notice the solicitation for Mad Libs #11. Though I never had any Mad Libs books as a kid I know they were huge and these book club flyers were most certainly one of the main places to score them.
Book club flyers were also a place to score stickers, and if memory serves there was also a sheet of stickers in the flyers offered by Troll.
Lastly, one of my favorite stand outs from this first ’85 flyer is the special on the break dancing book on the back. I’m sure this was the gateway for a bunch of fourth graders to get the instruction they needed to properly pop and lock like a pro…
The last Troll flyer I have is from December 1985…
Featuring more Heathcliff and Mad Libs, as well as Encyclopedia Brown, a handful of classics, and a trio of different Choose Your Own Adventure Style seris (including CYOA, Indiana Jones Find Your Fate, and Zork books), this was one heck of a flyer. My favorite listing is for yet another of my holy grail items, the 1985 Antioch sticker book, Hogan Wins the Belt. I’ve managed to find the majority of the Antioch book and sticker sets (from the Ghostbusters and Karate Kid, to Mr. T and the Bigfoot Monster Truck), but this WWF Hulk Hogan wrestling entry is proving one of the harder ones to find (at least with the stickers intact.) So it’s pretty awesome to get a glimpse at the stickers that were included with this book…
Rounding out this book club flyer are a sweet looking generic BMX book and a How To on Babysitting for Fun and Profit…
But before I end this post, I have a few more treats. Along with these flyers Esteban also found some of the sweet posters that he and his sister ordered back in the day. I’ll let the Evil Macrocranios set the mood for these:
“Among my childhood school papers were some of the posters of horses and kittens and puppies we got from various book clubs. It all seemed silly to me and as I unfolded yet another sickeningly cute poster of kittens I asked my mom what kind of little boy likes this stuff. Then my three year old son walked into the room and when he saw the poster he started yelling ‘CATS! CATS!’ and he did a little dance and grabbed the poster from me like it was the best Christmas present ever. Troll sure knew their audience.”
