The seventies were a really weird time for what we know as "classic animated characters"!
Case in point, this ad from JIMMY OLSEN # 155 (DC Comics, Cover Date: January, 1973)...
Which may be the most bizarre depiction of THE ROAD RUNNER AND WILE. E. COYOTE you might ever see!
Unless they, too, were strangely distorted for some inappropriate modern animated series that no one will remember in a few years, anyway!
I know "kustom kars" were a big thing back then... but really!
Did it have to come to this?
PS: You've just GOTTA LOVE that Wile E. is PUSHING his tricked-up contraption, while RIDING A SKATEBOARD!
Guess he typically couldn't get it to work - but then it'll suddenly run-away with him... and off the nearest absurdly high cliff!
4 comments:
https://www.modelroundup.com/product-p/mpc-r2-719.htm You can see what one of these kits looked like at this link (or a modern reissue of one).
Great find, Deb!
This MUST be a reissue, because Wile E. looks more like "the Wile E. we know and love" than the one pictured in that ‘70s ad!
Everyone, go check it out HERE! Be sure to look at ALL FIVE of the photos! Only the first one is still kinda questionable.
I daresay that, in the presumed reissue, Wile E. even looks *better* than he did in those later seventies and eighties Gold Key and Whitman comics… once he was no longer being drawn by Phil DeLara or Pete Alvarado.
I've seen a lot of off-model drawings in my time, but this has them all beat by a mile (pun intended).
I wonder, though: are the drawings of the Coyote and the Roadrunner in this ad simply bad, or are they fairly accurate representations of what these toys actually looked like?
Toy cartoon characters tended to be off-model until fairly recently.
Thanks for finding the picture of what the "Wile E. Willys" actually looked like, Deb.
I agree with Joe that it looks like a reissue, perhaps from the 1990s.
But maybe it isn't. The first packaging sample in Deb's link seems to be contemporaneous with the 1970s ad... at hand (if you'll pardon the expression).
The second packaging sample seems much more recent, again, likely no earlier than the '90s.
The only toy shown, though, is the presumed reissue.
I guess this is a long-winded way of wondering whether the appearance of the toy was the same throughout the years it was manufactured, and only the packaging changed.
Just another of those things we may never know, Sergio.
However, you make a very good point when you say “Toy cartoon characters tended to be off-model until fairly recently.”
So true, and thankfully so! Toy consumers – parents, as well as kids – tend to be far more discriminating than was the case in my early childhood days. …I remember having a RED plastic Huckleberry Hound!!!
All red, except for its black top hat! It didn’t sit well with me, but how much else was even available – much less be accurate enough to satisfy me? Never mind that NONE of the Disney merchandise of my kid-days reflected the comic books that I loved so much!
Most of it STILL DOESN’T, but you can still find some… and Huckleberry Hound hasn’t been “RED” since the Cuban Missile Crisis! Any connection? Who can say! :-)
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