Game Ads from the Days of Yore: 1-900-Game-Codes
This week’s Game Ads from the Days of Yore goes into the world of comic book advertising. As video games became popular, they over took the ad space that toys once held in comic books. I picked this ad simply because it demonstrates both one of the many types of odd game ads there were in comics and how low kids had to go in order to get information on the hottest games of the time.
When this ad was made (in the early 80s) there was no internet to get any game info you needed. Unless someone you knew some sort of strategy, then you were SOL if you were stuck on a game. That’s where 900 numbers or 800 numbers that charged a credit card came in. Yep, this comes from the days when you could charge a person money on a 900 number for something other than phone sex. If you really needed to know how to get Frogger across a bunch of logs, then you could just call a number and have your parents murder you when they got the phone bill.
Anyway, this ad was clearly written by people who had no idea what kids thought was cool and had probably had never played a video game in their lives as exampled by some of the gems found on the bathroom door:
“Frogger Dates Flys”
“Roses are red violets are blue Q-BERT’S A HOPPER and this place is too!”
“JEFF IS A WIMP” followed by, “I am not a wimp! I play Popeye!”
How is the bathroom a “hopper”? The implication here is frightening.
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