Ramblings of a Marketing Mind

Clearly I need to dedicate more time to writing. I started out this blog before Christmas 2016, and I am finishing it just now, April 2017... note to self: be more constant on my writing habits! Ok, so, back then, as Christmas was rapidly approaching, I started thinking more and more about the subject of  Action Figures. I used to love them. As a matter of fact I still do. When I was a kid I spent long hours playing with my Big Jims, GI Joes, Mego’s Planet of the Apes and Star Trek action figures, Mattel’s Space 1999 figures and of course, Kenner’s Six Million Dollar Man.  When Kenner launched the Star Wars 3 ¾ figures… well, that was a turning point that revolutionized the industry and the way we played. A lot of movie properties were released on that format (and are still being released for collectors). However I’ve noticed today's kids outgrow action figures at a very early age. As they get older, they buy them mostly as collectibles, not toys to play...

Long ago, in a decade far, far away during the monster craze period, two wonderfully creepy family shows were released through different networks and ended up competing against each other to  everyone's delight. According to Wikipedia, The Addams Family aired for two seasons on ABC from September 18, 1964 to April 8, 1966 for a total of 64 episodes; while The Munsters aired on CBS from September 24, 1964, to May 12, 1966 with a total of 70 episodes.  Both shows have lived in our cultural psyche ever since through reruns in syndication and now video collections, becoming enduring franchises. I had the chance to discover them in the early 70’s and immediately became enamored with the concept (as a child I even had my mom sew me up a black Herman Munster costume and buy me a red Herman rubber mask… yeah, red, go figure). The Munsters had an arguably successful revival with The Munsters Today , a more traditional sitcom which (according to Wikipe...

As someone who was born in 1970, one year after man first set foot on the Moon, I grew up believing space travel was a common thing. As a boy, I regularly watched TV series like Space 1999 , Star Trek , the British UFO and the Japanese Ultraman , so to me starfighters were as common as a Sopwith Camel or a Curtiss P-3​6 Hawk might have been to my dad (and remember, this was a few years before Star Wars !). Some of my TV heroes such as Steve Austin ( The Six Million Dollar Man ), Virdon and Burke (The Planet of the Apes TV series), and even I Dream of Jeannie ’s Major Anthony Nelson, were all astronauts. One of my favorite movies was “ Journey to the Far Side of the Sun ” starring Roy Thinnes. It was one of those slow, bleak-ending films with a weird premise about an astronaut finding a mirror-image Earth at the other side of the Sun. I don’t recall much about the story, but I remember I loved the space-travel aspects of it… and the bleak ending. Oh, how I l...

First off, I've just realized I haven’t posted anything since last October… which goes to prove I really only post when I have something to say. However, I've got to write down on my agenda reminders to update my blog periodically! Ok, off to today’s subject: the Holy Grail . As everyone knows, the Grail from the legends of King Arthur is supposedly the cup from which Christ drank during the Last Supper and later became the sacred object of various Knights’ quests. The ultimate McGuffin, if you will (masterfully used in films such as John Boorman’s Excalibur and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). The Grail represents the ultimate prize, powerful and valuable enough to justify life-long quests and epic crusades. So I got to thinking: is there a Holy Grail in my life? Should everyone have one? And the answer, of course, is yes. And I don’t think it should be generic stuff as “be happy” or the common “get married and have ki...

I finally have a little time to pick up my blog, and since we are already in October, I chose a Halloween-ish theme, only because the idea came up from a monster bobble head figure (even though it’s not really a Halloween-related monster). If you weren’t a kid in the ‘60’s or very early ‘70’s you probably have no idea of who this character is: That’s Ed “big daddy” Roth’s “Ratfink”. Ed Roth was a drag racing car aficionado and designed a lot of outlandish customs back in the '60's. He was also the cartoonist who created Ratfink, among many other similar frantic monstrous creatures (very similar to the Weird-Oh’s characters created by Bill Campbell). Anyway, that’s not really the point of today’s blog. I grew up looking at some of these monstrous creatures around the house and they always bring back memories from my childhood. Last year while on vacation with the family in San Francisco, I visited the Cartoon Art Museum where I was fortunate enough to see ...

Hey, finally making a quick, much anticipated (mainly by me) comeback to my blog! And to celebrate the occasion, I’d like to reminisce about something that happened to me a long time ago, when I was a teenager: one day, a friend’s daughter (she was about 6 years younger than me) anxiously asked if I liked Alyssa Milano. She was dead serious about it. Back then I only had a slight idea of who Alyssa Milano was (the girl who played Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter in “Commando”, right?) and I did think she was cute, so I told her so. She immediately sighed with sincere relief, so I asked her why she was interested about it. She explained that Alyssa Milano was dating Corey Haim, and if I liked her I could date Alyssa so Corey would be free to date her. Yes, she was absolutely certain of this. That was a very enlightening moment about the workings of a young teenage girl’s mind, but more importantly, it was also a lesson about the perception that people have about ...

If there’s something that really, really bothers me, are people my own age acting as if they were old. I’m only 42, and I’m already surrounded by self-appointed pipe-smoking old men, cat ladies and old maids. What’s wrong with these people? I’ve never really felt old at my age (because I ain’t!) Hugh Jackman (who’s less than 2 years my senior) in his first “The Wolverine” photos, became a wake-up call for me to shape up again (not to mention Daniel Craig’s physical condition in Skyfall- who’s also 2 years older than me). I believe attitude is EVERYTHING! If you feel old at 40 (or 50, or 60, or… shall I continue?), man, you are really not getting it. And to prove my point, here’s a list of people I truly admire for keeping active, current and with a positive attitude (there are a lot more, but these are the ones that truly stand out for me): STAN LEE: I didn't meet either of my grandfathers. But damn, I wish one of them had been like Stan the man (as a matter of ...