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James Henry
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Joined: 02 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 576
Posted: 12 November 2011 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | 1  
The January 1980 edition of The Comics Journal has an article about a series of comics that were going to be done as giveaways with 2-liter bottles of Coca-Cola.  There were going to be comics for the Fantastic Four, Hulk and Spider-Man, 34-pages each with wraparound covers.  Coca-Cola executives apparently pulled the plug on the comics in favor of the posters ended up doing, but I was left wondering what happened to the comics?  Were they finished and published as Annuals as the article suggests or did they disappear into inventory at Marvel?
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Shaun Barry
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 08 December 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 6983
Posted: 12 November 2011 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | 2  

See Fantastic Four #'s 220 (my JBF avatar!) & 221, James!

 
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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 10:17am | IP Logged | 3  

"...Coca-Cola executives went on to say that their suggestions to improve the material by removing said violence were unjustly rebuffed, and they could not see why the Fantastic Four hitting the hexagon-shape headed minions of Ego was somehow 'better' than gathering the little beings into a crowd and giving them voice lessons, thereby transmitting the information 'up the line' to the planetary entity that animated them, and literally 'teaching the world to sing...'"

Okay, no, not really... :-)

 
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134200
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 11:42am | IP Logged | 4  
That was truly one of the more bizarre adventures of my early career. I dumbed down my story as much as I could, and still have it read SOMETHING like an FF story, but Coca-Cola seemed to deem anything much beyond the characters sitting around drinking Coke to be too "violent".
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Matt Hawes
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16591
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | 5  
Those posters may not have been distributed, but they were printed. Many years ago, a former Coca-Cola employee tried to sell me multiple copies of each poster. I wasn't sure about buying them because I wasn't certan if he acquired them legally.
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4188
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | 6  

"Were they finished and published as Annuals as the article suggests or did they disappear into inventory at Marvel?"

I can't officially confirm, but based on something that JB said awhile back and looking at the creative teams, I'd say they were eventually presented as FF #220-221, Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #2, and Hulk Annual #9.
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Robert White
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | 7  
Amusing how standards change. The Jim Shooter era of all eras was deemed too "violent" by the corporate pinheads at Coke. Wouldn't you love to hop in a time traveling machine and show that committee any one of the "New 52"? I bet the traumatic convulsions that would ensue would rival that of the first showings of King Kong and the Exorcist. 
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Lars Sandmark
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Joined: 05 October 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 3138
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | 8  
Here's pics of the posters:
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Lars Sandmark
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 05 October 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 3138
Posted: 13 November 2011 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | 9  
I own the FF one by JB thanks to the Mighty Dave Pruitt.
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