The Sears Catalog was important during two phases in my youth. First, when I was a little munchkin, I used to marvel at the toy pics in the catalog. Then, as I grew older and video games began to consume my life, I would stare longingly at the game screen shots and the home console hardware. This Sears comic ad is like a page taken straight from one of those later catalogs.There are some truly classic NES games listed here: Contra, Bionic Commando, Legend of Zelda, Blades of Steel, etc. The screen shots are totally off, though. The supposed Super Mario Bros. II screen shot actually shows the first game, and the Zelda II and Simon's Quest screen shots are reversed. I wonder if I noticed these inconsistencies as a kid, or did I expect the game to look like the incorrect screen shot in the catalog?
Check out the prices for the games! Some of them are over $40! Many games nowadays aren't even that expensive, despite the inflation that has taken place since then.
Here's a cool NES commercial, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood YouTube:
This comic ad was featured in Detective Comics #605.
5 out of 5 - Simply incredible!
4 out of 5 - Pretty awesome!
3 out of 5 - Cool enough, I suppose.
2 out of 5 - Not quite good enough.
1 out of 5 - Pretty horrific!
0 out of 5 - No redeeming quality at all.
5 comments:
Wow, where did you dig up a vintage Sears catalog?! I used to linger over the action figures all the time as a young lad, especially in the annual Christmas Book. I didn't long over the video games too much since we had a Commodore 64 and I knew my parents would never get me an NES.
Growing up in the DC area, Channel 20 used to show classic monster movies all the time (Count Gore's Creature Feature!) which I loved. I remember longing for the Remco Universal Monster action figures in the Sears catalogs that were the same scale as Star Wars figures. Alas, I never did get any of them, but they were still fun to look at in the catalogs. I remember thinking about how much the Wolfman figure looked like that monster in the Star Wars Cantina scene (whom we all now know as Lak Sivrak)! Little did I know at the time as a naive 6 year old that it was my beloved Star Wars that ripping off a classic!
It's actually not a Sears catalog itself, but a comic ad for a Sears catalog. It looks like it came straight from a catalog, though.
Great ad choice!
I remember my longing for Blades of Steel - looking at pictures or the box, dying to have it in my hands. To this day I can remember playing it for the first time in my house and thinking, "They'll never make a better hockey game than this!"
To be fair, I wasn't too far off.
You think these game prices are bad, how about Super Nintendo? I remember paying $60-70 for plenty of games, and it wasn't uncommon for games like Final Fantasy II or III to cost $80 or so. Kids these days don't know how good we have it now with game prices. :)
Also i was going to say that the "Super Mario Bros. II" screen shot might have been from the japanese version of SMB II, but you're right. It's just a shot from the first game.
I always loved the mini game of Space Invaders during the intermission!
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