Vintage advertising is by far my biggest passion... but I'm also a huge fan of comic books! So, there's no surprise that when the two fields merge... I love it! One of my favorite series that brought these areas together was the Hostess Comic Book ads! These ads ran from 1975 till 1982, and featured tons of major comic book characters. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Daredevil and Iron Man all appeared in this series!
One of the most interesting ads from this series was the1979 Hostess Fruit Pies Ad - Human Torch, Icemasteradvertisement. What makes this one so special is that it's actually the first appearance of the Icemaster, who later went on to appear in issues of Avengers and Thunderbolts!
Sometimes, the ads focused on the Super-Villains instead of the Super-heroes, like this one with the Penguin. Of course... the overall theme of all these ads were pretty much the same. There was some sort of conflict between the good guys and the bad guys... and then there was always a happy ending with Twinkies, Cupcakes or Fruit Pies at the end.

What I remember the most about reading these when I was a kid, though... was that I didn't really think of them as ads... I just thought they were a nice extra short story in the middle of the book. I guess that's a sign of a successful ad campaign... when your target audience wants to read your advertisement! Check out all our Hostess ads here!


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