Gaming Ads: Backfilling #21

It's been one year and two days since my last ads update. Browsing comic books from the 1980s has led to the acquisition of some good retro game ads, and for this post I'm adding five from Atari and three from Mattel Electronics.

FAO Schwarz: The Holiday Book 1999

I typically scan an old video game holiday catalog near the end of each year but this time I'm going with a toy catalog from FAO Schwarz. This 1999 holiday book features Stuart Little on the cover and is just over 100 pages when counting the front cover and foldout. However, I only scanned 39 pages, focusing mostly on holiday items, electronics, and popular brands, such as G.I. Joe, Star Wars, and Barbie. Skipped items primarily include toddler toys and plush. Also, one page is out of order as I placed page 50 at the end because it helped make the side-by-side pages match better and it made more sense to have the Furby product scans next to one another. If you're not familiar with FAO Schwarz, it is a toy store founded in 1862 with a flagship store in New York City, which can be seen in the film "Big," where Tom Hanks dances on the floor piano. It sells a variety of toys, some on the pricey side, and numerous exclusives with many marketed as limited edition collectibles. 

Year 9: October Update

It's October and I always do a blog update this month so that I can post the McDonald's Halloween sign! Last month and into this month I went a little off topic as I posted a lot about Japan, or maybe it wasn't too off topic since I did share some things related to toys and video games. In any case, I'll try to get some posts up by the end of the year in relation to video game ads, the reason I started the blog. I acquired some old issues of Starlog magazine that have a few nice ads and when time permits, I still look through comic books for more ads. Something that I've actually posted about over the years are ornaments, and this year Hallmark has created one of the best Star Wars ornaments. This one features Chewbacca playing Dejarik against R2-D2 on the Millennium Falcon. It's a light-and-sound ornament that has video too, but at $99.99 it is pricey, and doesn't even come with the required power cord. As usual, Hallmark has a lot of pop culture ornaments and I won't mention them all here, but some highlights include a Luke Skywalker action figure in vintage Kenner packaging, Megatron, Xbox 360, the Fantastic Four, Fruity Pebbles, and Kool-Aid Man.

Shortly after the last update I wrote in August, I came across LEGO's newest Death Star set that has since released earlier this month and costs $999.99. It does include 38 minifigures, if that makes the price any easier to swallow. Plus, LEGO posted a teaser video last month that indicates Star Trek sets are on the way. More recently, it unveiled a set from its "Ideas" line of the pirate ship from the 1980's movie The Goonies. The $329.99 set releases on November 4th.

 

Last week I came across Tomy Plus, a division of Tomy International, itself a subsidiary of Takara Tomy. I'm just a bit behind on this as Tomy Plus started in 2023, and some of its projects are crowdfunded, like the recent 1:10 scale, highly-detailed replica of Knight Rider's K.I.T.T. It cost $399 to back the impressive collectible car that features voice recognition, lights, "Super Pursuit" mode, and a rotating license plate.

In video game news, Electronic Arts (EA) is being acquired by an investment consortium for $55 billion, and that is expected to be finalized in early 2027. Although the investors are based in a few countries, the primary one is Saudi Arabia, and so it will no longer be an American company. EA was one of my favorite Commodore 64 developers and publishers, along with MicroProse, Epyx, and Interplay. In the '90s it grew substantially thanks in large part to its successful sports games, and I understand why a lot of game players grew to dislike EA, as tends to be the case with most large corporations. However, EA is arguably the most significant third-party game publisher, one that I thought would acquire more of its competitors, rather than being acquired itself. Maybe not much will change, though I tend to think this is a bad deal, and under new ownership the company is likely to focus more on online-only games with numerous microtransactions.

While I've been talking about Japan possibly too much of late, I should mention that the Tokyo Game Show was held at the end of September. For myself, the biggest announcement was that Forza Horizon 6 will be set in... Japan! Yep, more Japan. I've not even played Forza Horizon 5 yet despite it being one of my favorite game series. That's because of my out-of-date hardware, though I hope to upgrade my computer soon. October 18th was the 40th anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System's North American release. I probably could have come up with a post for that, but I haven't had much time and my video game magazines don't date back to 1985. Speaking of retro consoles, Atari is going to release a plug-and-play Intellivision console that has 45 built-in games and includes controller overlays. Dubbed the Intellivison Sprint, it is now available to pre-order at a price of $149.99. That price is on the high side for this type of device, but for fans that don't still own the classic Mattel Electronics console, it does look very much like the original system minus the controller cords (the controllers are wireless).

Now it's time for the McDonald's sign. Happy Halloween!

Thanks for reading,

Jonathan