As in, why would there be line art for figures that were never made (or more likely, prototyped but never sold)?
Now, we have two examples of Ideal's program for line art. Above, see a recent acquisition for the Toyfinity archives, the Spring 84 Retail Advertising Catalog.
As Steve has noted so many times on his blog, there were a few ways that different retailers assembled their ads. Ideal seemed to be heavily reliant on line art, making line art for each and every character in the Manglors assortment. I suppose Thrift Drug might have really wanted to create their own advertisement featuring Manglosaurus and Manglodragon...imagine having that job circa 1984. "Jones, make me an ad for those Manglor things! You choose what you want to have in it."
The only thing I'm sorry about is that I knew someone who had a copy of the 1985 line art catalog who I have lost touch with over the years. Dave, where are you?
That's a great score. So my questions then are:
ReplyDeleteDo you recognize anything in that catalog that never made it to retail? And can you tell where the art came from? That is, is this original or is it line art based off of existing promotional photography?
There has to be a way to track down the artists who created these drawings.
This particular catalog, no. Everything Manglors here was produced. And I don't know enough about Alvin and the Chipmunks to comment on those. :)
DeleteThe line art is based on photos - you can actually see it on the Manglors page, that they provided stores a picture of the physical product - and the line art matches it exactly.
I will find the 85 version of this eventually. I have people actively looking for it in their 10,000 piece collection of toy catalogs.