Comics Flashback: When Hostess Ads Rocked the Comics World

 As someone who grew up reading comics in the 1970s and 80s, I was in love with the humorous ads that Hostess ran in the comics. These were BRILLIANT advertising and perfectly suited to their medium: in these ads, there was a random one-page comic ad, drawn by a current comics professional (so it looked exactly "real") and featured our favorite superheroes using Hostess products to foil crime. These included Superman using Twinkies, Batman using Twinkies (and not just as a sidekick!), Hulk using Fruit Pies, and so forth.

The really wild thing was, sometimes the ads appeared in comics by other publishers, so you might see Captain Marvel or Sad Sack appearing in a Gold Key comic! Crazy times.

Here's a link to a guy who took the time to document which ads appeared in which comics:

http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/gallery.php?page=hostess 

And this guy has a great list broken down by individual hero:

http://www.seanbaby.com/hostess.htm

Here are a few of my favorite ads:

These ads are such classics that they often fall prey to parody... and as you'll see in my next blog post, I'm no stranger to such shenanigans, myself!