Original Newspaper Ad for Kenner Early Bird Kit: This is a pretty interesting item. Its an original advertisement for the first of Kenner's action figure products, the Early Bird envelope. The item was made available for Christmas of 1977, as a stand-in of sorts for Kenner's hotly-anticipated figure line, which at that time was still in the late stages of pre-production. Kids who received the colorful envelope could mail away a special certificate, which would allow them to receive the first set of four figures some months later.

As you can see from a look at the bottom of the ad, the projected arrival date of the first four figures, which had originally been guaranteed for June 1978, had been recently bumped up to mid-February.

That disjointed bit you might notice at the bottom of the ad is due to the image having been spliced together from two separate scans.

Description: Ron Salvatore
Photo: Will Grief
From the collection of Will Grief