Superman and the Magic Snake in 1983
The Magic Snake toy/puzzle (find at Amazon.com*) was hot when the Rubik’s Cube was a cultural phenomenon in the early eighties, and this 1983 advertisement featuring Superman shows ToysRUs trying to sell the toy to kids. Toymakers and retailers must have lost faith in comics as the eighties wore on, and these days I rarely encounter a toy ad in a comic. Why is that? Someone out there has to have put the time into researching the change in comic advertising over the last three decades.
Do ”kids” actually still read comics? I know it’s always been a niche medium anyway but given that it seems kids don’t even read ”real” books anymore, have comicbooks suffered a similar fate?
It would be interesting to see the demographics on who buys what…
A bit of googling and looks like the average age of readers is in the 30s. That said, comics are at an all-time high for readership and sales and that includes an increase in kids-focused titles. So it seems kids *do* still read comics. Quite a lot, actually!
I’m not convinced of that. According to my own quick check, back in the 80s, a relatively low-key title like Alpha Flight (featuring a bunch of Canadian obscurities, no less), could still sell over 200,000 copies per month, whereas nowadays even the flagship titles like Avengers and Justice League struggle to move half that many units
That’s good to know. We need a good gateway to ”real books…”
It still doesn’t explain the lack of toy ads, though. Which is weird, as if you watch DisneyXD (for example) you’ll see plenty of TV commercials for toys…