1980 / Advertisement Samples

Since the purpose of Toy Fair is for toy producers to pitch and hopefully sell product lines to retailers, promotion is a big issue. Basically, the more advertising oomph a company can put behind its products, the more comfortable a retailer will be carrying it. After all, it's important for a product to be placed in front of the public eye. In this photo you see some samples of print advertisements Kenner was planning to run in support of its ESB line. The leftmost piece seems to represent some sort of color newspaper ad, while the center one is for a black and white ad. The one on the right is perhaps the most interesting, however. It shows an image of Bossk (the revealed "secret figure" from Kenner's mail-away promotion), as well as an early version of the art used on the ESB sweepstakes flyer.