My wife Jaime and I received a very awesome gift this past week when one of our buds on Bluesky offered to let us re-home a bunch of his TVGuide doubles, specifically almost the entirety of the 1983 issues. I had a trip digging through all of these old guides, scoping episodes of my favorite early 80s sitcoms and cartoons, but as I was flipping though them I started to notice a trend of a very specific advertiser with multiple pages in most of the issues. This specific batch mainly came from the Central Indiana area, and though the majority of the editorial, feature story and review segments were ubiquitous to all of the publishing regions in the country, the listings and the advertising would change market to market. Apparently the Hills chain of department stores were fairly prevalent in Indiana in 1983 as there were usually a handful of ads spread through the guide and sometimes ten or more. Though I noticed these ads, they didn’t really grab me until I saw the two ads below…
I’m such a sucker for vintage Masters of the Universe advertisements, but this one in particular really spoke to me. Not only did it feature Castle Greyskull and He-Man, but the artist chose to go dark with Adam’s hair (probably so that it didn’t blend into the castle behind it). For sure this wasn’t an early appearance of the “Wonder Bread” He-Man, but I can pretend right? The second one that really caught my eye was the Halloween mask ad featuring a trio of what I believe are Don Post Star Wars masks as well as a fun Wolfman and Hobo Clown. As much as I adore old MOTU ads, Halloween mask ads hold a very special place in my heart, I even dedicated an entire month dedicated to showcasing them on my old site back in 2011. So stumbling on an ad like this was so damn cool.
After I scoped these, I kept an eagle eye out for more and before I knew it I had found 50 or 60 of these Hills ads. What I really adore about these are the spot illustrations, some of them painstakingly recreating toy, board game, and video game box art. But the illustrations of the toys and sometimes the kids playing with the toys are the star of the show here. I thought it would be fun to compile a bunch of the more kid-centric ads to showcase a sort of snapshot of what it was like to shop at Hills back in 1983.
1983 was such a great year for kids toys as cartoon and toy merchandising was forming a synergy that would set this decade apart in terms of branding and a ridiculous variety of toy lines. Some of the biggest brands of the decade where either exploding or just hitting store shelves that year including Masters of the Universe, G.I.Joe, and Star Wars. It was rad finding advertisements for all three of these. In particular the G.I. Joe ad above that features Short Fuze, Gung Ho and Cobra Commander, not to mention the Dragonfly and the coveted (be me) Skystriker. That jet would prove to be the bane of my Joe collecting as a kid as it was the one vehicle I desperately wanted, and the one that I never got my hands on. Looking back, it seems crazy to me that it was only $15.97 too, especially when you consider that Castle Greyskull was almost twice the price at $26.58. Hell, the next year in 1984, most of the mid-sized Transformers would be about $15.
I was also stoked to see an ad for Fisher-Price’s Construx, as those were a building set that dominated my childhood, almost as much, if not more than Lego. I still have a very vivid sense memory of what the little blue connector pieces felt like in my mouth, as I was one of those kids that was always chewing on toy parts (though my favorite were the chunky, rounded Space Lego wheels.)
As cool as it was to find ads for some of the larger toy lines of the 80s, it was even cooler to see some for some of the more obscure lines like LJN’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Though I’m bummed that the ad doesn’t feature fan-favorite Warduke, it’s still pretty badass that it DOES feature the Fortress of Fangs play-set. Speaking of the prices that are featured in these ads, it’s interesting to note that the AD&D toys were almost a full dollar more than G.I Joe or Star Wars figures at the time. They were also just a hair cheaper than the Masters of the Universe figures, so for a 3.75″ toy, they were a little on the pricey side. I wonder if this had a hand int he set stalling out fairly early on in the run, or if it was more about the disconnect between the eventual animated series and the toy line (how the animated series characters were not included in the toy line, etc.)
In the same breath, it was super cool to find a View-Master ad featuring reel sets for the Shirt Tales and Masters of the Universe. Walking down the aisles of Hills, a kid had to make a Sophie’s Choice™ between picking up a new G.I. Joe figure or a pack of View-Master reels. I know I would have been torn…
I’m also kind of shocked at how cheap a lot of these board games were. I mean most were under $10, and some of them that seemed like they would have been pricier (RISK being a contender in this department) were only $6.48!
I love that the Star Wars ad below was specifically set up to play to the mail-away Emperor offer that was prevalent on a lot of the Return of the Jedi figures of the time. Though the artist/designer chose to highlight the Emperor’s Guard as the special 6th free figure, but I guess that’s close enough for an ad in the TV Guide.
Again, the idea that it was someone’s full time job to create spot illustrations for advertisements like this is so comforting. I miss this style of advertising. It also makes me think about the whole idea of Hills taking out so many full-page ads in TV Guide for such very specific items. None of these ads are like “Hey, we’re Hills and we got a bunch of crap for you to buy! Spend Money!” It’s always item specific, and sometimes so specific that there’s ad copy that suggests what you could do with the product, like these two Blank VHS tape ads for TDK and Scotch that even give advice for specific shows and specials you can tape off of TV including the date and time of the broadcast. I just love that so much. Like to be a fly on the wall while the accounts were doing the cost benefit ratios or ROI for these ads is my new time-travel goal. If Hills was selling Scotch blank VHS tapes for $8.97 (after the $1.00 rebate offer), I wonder what their costs was as a chain and how many overall tapes they bought? Probably tens of thousands. So the cost of mocking up the ad, paying the illustrator, securing the space in the TV Guide, etc, had to have been worth the amount of units these ads helped sell. Again, with how many ads they were taking out, all for such specific products, it must have made sense, but I find it wild.
All of these ads are such a wonderful snapshot of a time and place when the world seemed to make so much more sense than the chaos of today’s Amazon/Wal-Mart retail hell we’re living though. So glad I got to take a romp through these and it was fun putting them all together to share with anyone who stumbles on this piece…
