Tuesday, February 1, 2022

You Are Earth's Only Hope!

While the efficacy of advertising for its intended purpose is open to question, I nevertheless find it difficult to deny that many advertisements are exceptionally good at sticking in one's memory, even after decades. A good example of what I'm talking about is this ad for Yaquinto's 1981 game, Attack of the Mutants

I never saw, let alone owned this game, but I've never forgotten the image below – and there's a good reason for that. The illustration accompanying the advertisement was drawn by John Hagen-Brenner, best known for illustrating the works associated with the Church of the SubGenius (he also illustrated other games from Yaquinto, like Hero). It's a very memorable piece of artwork that amusingly evokes 1950s B-movie "atomic horror." No wonder I can still see it in my mind's eye after all these years!

9 comments:

  1. One of very few Yaquinto games I never owned, in large part due to dreadful reviews in several gaming magazines. Certainly is a striking ad, though. IIRC the robot in this image was credited for helping inspire the design of Johnny 5 in Short Circuit in 1986.

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  2. I bought this, probably largely due to the above ad. I thought it was pretty good and captured the feel of the 50s movies quite well.

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  3. I definitely remember this ad…though I never played the game. Remember how zombie apocalypses were once caused by weird radiation rather than virus-spreading infection?

    *sigh* The good ol’ days….

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    1. They aren't zombies, despite the ad art. They're mutants, created by Hollywood radiation from a nearby reactor accident ("The Big Melt-Down of 1993"). You can see the counter sheets in detail on BGG - the silhouettes are quite varied but none really look like generic zombies, with conjoined twin style muties, double-headers, ones with tentacles, distorted limbs, etc, etc. Every one of them has a different name too, many of which are clearly from TV shows - Gillis, Norton, Harriet, Beaver, most of the Cartwrights, etc. It's really kind of cute.

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  4. I used to stare at this ad in various comic books I was reading as a kid. Loved the combination of cool sci-fi robots mixed with zombies (the ad said mutants but I saw zombies) I actually found a copy on Ebay a couple of years back and bought it purely out of nostalgia

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  5. Yep, I've always loved that ad and coveted the game... but never had a copy (there's at least one good review/playthrough on Youtube). But despite not owning it I definitly drew inspiration for it... most recently in games of Mutant Crawl Classics. The plucky 'can do' attitude of the 50s playing out against the tropes of the 'atomic horror' genre always appealed to me.

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  6. I did onw a copy of the game and more recently obtained a new copy which I reviewed for its fortieth anniversary.

    http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.com/2021/11/1981-attack-of-mutants_0665320985.html

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  7. I too specifically remember that one...

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  8. I 100% remember this add! It was at the same time I was trying to make sense of Gamma World, after starting D&D a couple years earlier.

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