MY POSTER PAST :: part 12

Tonight, we're gonna get Funky -- we're going to briefly explore the history of another poster company. Yes, this is my idea of funkiness, but in more literal terms we're gonna be looking at Funky Enterprises, Inc. - a brand that started strong in the 1970s, and as usual, died out in the 21st Century.

Located in Richmond Hill, New York, they hit the ground running with an inventory that consisted almost entirely of psychedelic art and, most notably, blacklight posters. In fact, if you saw or owned any blacklight posters from the 70s through the 90s, the odds were pretty even that it came from Funky. (I had a few myself, but in my experience blacklight bulbs typically tended to melt every lamp I'd screw them into.)

Their supremacy in the world of "Blacklight Art" was more than enough to secure their legacy in classy home decor, but in the 1980s they gracefully (actually, skillfully) changed with the times by successfully securing the licenses to a ton of music artists. Like, all of them; they offered popular prints for Bon Jovi, Guns & Roses, Metallica, and Ozzy, but they also had the monopoly on recognizable Classic Rock images of Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, Queen, and The Beatles. 

If a big neon wizard or a picture of David Lee Roth in midair wasn't appealing enough to the youth culture, they also leaned hard into the pinup category, offering tons of tantalizing portraits of oiled bodies of both sexes in various states of undress. By the end of the decade, Funky had dominated the bedrooms and dorm rooms and basements and garages of at least two generations of fine art collectors. And they weren't done. 

I have personal experience with the blacklight trend even though I was a teenager two decades after the height of its popularity, but if you're anywhere near my age then you remember how a gaudy wave of superficial 60s and 70s "retro" nostalgia abruptly became big business in every corner of the culture, and suddenly I found myself in my bedroom behind a beaded curtain listening to "Within You Without You", lit by a 16'' Lava Lamp and a glowing Grim Reaper on my wall. In other words, blacklight ornamentation came back in a big way. Maybe bigger - not that I was old enough to visit a "head shop", but the expansion of this otherwise niche artwork into mainstream retailers and shopping malls (i.e. Spencer's Gifts) made them that much more accessible to minors like me. All they had to do was swap out KISS with Sublime and it was like no time has passed.

Funky's biggest "competitor" (and former Poster Past subject) was O.S.P. Publishing - a company that also put out plenty of posters of music artists and centerfolds, but also had the monopoly on major motion pictures. As far as movies, Funky's involvement was sparse and notable. They had a deal with New Line Cinema, and with that they managed to produce some artwork from Elm Street to Lord of the Rings for public consumption. The other really huge deal they landed was with comic books - both Marvel and DC. So if you remember those big illustrated prints of Superman or various X-Men that had that specific Fox Kids aesthetic to them, they were probably from Funky. In fact, they managed to hold onto the license long enough that they were able to put out a series of prints for the 2002 Spider-Man movie. 

The company's end is tired and predictable: The Internet came along and they dissolved into the ether. Again, not just because the Net killed retailers, but it also wounded the concept of decorating your environment with pictures that would ultimately distract you from... The Internet. Me, I don't march to that beat -- but I did do a quick inventory of what's on my walls right now and sadly I'm currently displaying only one Funky Enterprises print - of New Kids on the Block (though I have an embarrassing amount of Funky brand Britney Spears posters rolled up in my closet). Additionally, I'm currently only showing two O.S.P. posters (Bram Stoker's Dracula and a Dick Tracy Madonna print). But I suppose that makes sense - over the years, the ratio of movies to bands to boobs probably evened out statistically, with Cindy Crawford, Danny DeVito, and Freddie Mercury all vying for my attention. Really nothing's changed. 

- Paul

STATIC SHOTS

Linda's Theme

Junk Food Mascots: The 90s Upgrades!

Shit got noisier, faster, and more colorful during The Last Great Decade. But that's because it had to: the salt got saltier, the sizes got super, and the corn syrup got more glutinous. To match that, advertising took the plunge into the neon pool of Pop Art and Wacky Pomo, creating marketing that would reach out of the TV, grab us by the ankles, and dangle us by our Air Jordans as they commanded "Hey! Come get this sugar, home skillet!" Not even the Noid would've survived this technicolor jungle, his clay ass woulda been dried and crushed into Baby Bottle Pop dust and snorted into the big red nose of some demented clown. This was the era of IN YOUR FACE and these brave soldiers got way up in there. 

- Paul

The Craver

Honeycomb Cereal

"The Addict" is more like it. The "Honeycomb Hideout" was sorta the star of the previous campaign (or maybe it was the robot who lived there) but those still embraced the "Yeah Yeah Yeah" jingle that went all the way back to the 1950s. All of that crumbled in the wake of this meth head with matted hair and a speaking syntax that matched the baby from that Dinosaurs show. His energy blended right into the mania of the times - as a result, he left little impact on me, but looking at him now from a distance, I kinda hated that asshole.

The Polar Bears

Coca-Cola

Coke has never had any truly pronounced spokespeople (they never needed one) - many famous bands and artists sang their jingle, but apart from a few plugs from Max Headroom, their main character was, statistically speaking, Santa Claus. So the North Pole seemed like a smooth transition in 1993 when they kicked off their "Always Coca-Cola" campaign that would ultimately become one of the most synonymous hallmarks of the decade. At the forefront of the campaign was computer animated polar bears that drank Coke, lumbered around, and groaned a lot. They materialized as everything from stuffed animals to cookie jars and we all just took it as it came. In this case, I wasn't entirely thrilled with it then, but I love it now. 

Polly the Parrot

Polly-O String Cheese

This bird that sells cheese has actually been with the brand since the 1940s. But when Kraft bought the company in the 80s, the parrot took a backseat to character actor John Capodice, who gracefully handled the task of pushing their "new" product: String Cheese! (It's the best part of the pizza!) Flash forward to the 90s when cheese products aren't just popular, they reign fucking supreme. Polly-O doesn't need to sell it, they need to represent, and suddenly the bird is the word: give Polly a backwards hat, some bling, and induct him as the fourth member of House of Pain. This is how a proper society functioned.

The Simpsons

Butterfinger

I say "The Simpsons" but really it was Bart. And I say "The 90s" but technically this crusade started in 1988, which means the cartoon was still only confined to The Tracy Ullman Show. I can only speak for myself when I say that I didn't take notice of these commercials (or of Butterfinger) until the family got their own series -- and at that point we were prepared to buy any and every thing that had even the most mild correlation to the show. But even after the mania died down, they stuck with the Nestlé company for the entirety of the decade, also appearing in ads for at least two kinds of Butterfinger Ice Cream, as well as the now-cult favorite Butterfinger BBs. After 2001, they no longer heartily endorsed this event or product.

Reba McEntire

Fritos

In 1994, Cheetos had Chester Cheetah, Doritos had Chevy Chase, and Fritos had... Reba? The task bestowed upon her was to bestow upon us Fritos Scoops (which was totally a huge deal) and then the new Fritos Texas Grill flavor. But this wasn't just some commercial cameo - she appeared on actual bags of the stuff, as well as shirts and hats and supermarket displays. Meanwhile, Frito-Lay sponsored her tour schedule for years to come, so that she could spread the word across the land about the night the lights went out in Georgia, and also corn chips. 

Gidget

Taco Bell

Not since Clara Peller asked "Where's the Beef?" did a fast food representative generate so much buzz (or merchandise) - seriously, I don't think Ronny McD ever even had this much juice. I feel like it was around this time (1997) when that brief era of Chihuahua Culture began (I doubt it was from Ren & Stimpy), but for me, this was about as cute and clever as it was ever gonna get; the absurdist angle was refreshing to find in mainstream advertising (compared to those Budweiser frogs this was high art) but like with anything else that generates "surprise popularity" they drove it right into the ground hard and fast.

ROGER CORMAN and CHEESE part XIX: "Watchers II" and Dave Portnoy's One Bite Five Cheese Pizza

Of all the "formulas" (some real, some rumored) utilized by Roger Corman, they're all meant to land on the same conclusion: profitability. Sure he expected quality as well, so when his company put out a good movie made for cheap that managed to be profitable, he would put another formula into play: The Sequel. 

The first Watchers movie (which we saw very recently so expect comparisons) was released in theaters in 1988 and did very little business. However (and predictably) it prospered as a video rental. And so, directly onto tape came Watchers II in 1990, recycling basically the same story as the first one, which isn't weird since they're both based off the same singular novel by Dean Koontz. We thought the biggest strength of the first movie was its charming domestic core of a boy and his mom trying to rescue the family pet from bad guys. The sequel (which supposedly is more faithful to the book) leans heavy into the science/military perspective, and our two main characters are literally a solider (Marc Singer as Guile from Street Fighter II) and a scientist (Tracy Scoggins as Laura Palmer's cousin Maddy). Their chemistry is forced but pleasant; they never get annoying, but we never get invested. But truly unlike the first movie, the monster (called The Outsider) actually gets screen time - a ton of it (which might not be a good thing). In appearance it looks like an updated colorized version of so many rubber monsters that haunted so many black & white B-Movies of the past (many of them from Corman), but more specifically a combination of the transformed Dr. Z in Zaat and the Gargoyle from The Terror Within. It's adequately icky, but it's completely undermined by the stuntman's performance: he stumbles and waves his arms around comically and constantly like the robot from Lost in Space (or, more appropriately, a B-Movie monster with a rubber suit). Stuff like that makes us appreciate performances like Kevin Peter Hall as the Predator and how some menacing choreography can make all the difference.

We didn't know who Dave Portnoy was. We kinda continue to not know who he is - a quick search proved to be just boring enough to be almost sedative; despite our role in this medium, "Internet Personalities" aren't really our thing. But the one relevant phrase that popped up was the concept of "one bite", in which you're meant to provide a rating of a pizza's quality after just one bite. Coincidentally (or is it ironically) the first bite of this One Bite Five Cheese Frozen Pizza isn't particularly pleasant. Think of how many frozen pizzas advertise "Three Cheese" or "Four Cheese" or "Five Cheese" or "Every Cheese Ever" and in the end, it just tastes like one singular nondescript cheese. But in the case of this recipe, the mix comes across as aggressively salty/sour, and there's a ton of it; it combines Provolone, Asiago, Parmesan, Romano, and "low moisture" Mozzarella, and it makes for a beautiful color & texture that most closely resembles a Ninja Turtles cartoon, but the flavor is, at best, just okay. Actually, the closer you get to the crust as the cheese ratio begins to regulate itself, the closer it comes to nearly excellent pizza. But dude, you're gonna need way more than one bite to get there. 

The Movie: C+

The Pizza: B

NAME THAT MOVIE!

Here we are: early-to-mid August. The Sunday brunch of Summer. Only 5 more minutes till Halloween and a couple more Zendaya movies till Xmas. Be merry and bright.

For the last round we attempted to stagger the publication of answers to allow a fresh take on the whole set without the influence of others' guesses. Of course, we didn't designate any specific amount of time and the whole approach was kinda vague at best, but mostly it relies too heavily on folks actually reading these long ass intros, and frankly we're just asking too much of everybody at that point. The whole purpose of this place is to chill (sometimes to complain, but mostly chill), and a good way to achieve that is to lighten up on the red tape. Just sit down and have fun dammit!

EASY

FAIR

DIFFICULT

GROOVE APPROVED