“50% off entire line of E.T. toys.”

December 10, 1982. E.T. was a huge summer blockbuster, raking in millions of dollars and firing the imaginations of children across the United States. E.T. as a toy brand, though, was a failure. Unlike Star Wars, which has dominated toy sales charts for decades, E.T. was a near-instant failure in the toy departments . . . as demonstrated by this 1982 JCPenny ad where the store clearly knew they had to get out from under unsaleable merchandise.