Video Game Advertisments & Competitions from 1982/1983

Whilst reading through the collection of old Eagle comics I picked recently, I was amazed at the amount of memories that were being rekindled by all the old adverts for toys, food and video games that filled the pages! 

So as usual, I thought I'd scan some of them in so as I can rekindle some memories for you lot too, or maybe show you some stuff you've never seen before about the aforementioned items! First, you'll find in this post all the stuff I could find relating to video games and consoles....mainly adverts and competitions....

Above is an ad for CGL's Galaxy Invader 1000 and Puck Man games. If you read my last post you'll know that my brother owned Galaxy Invader 1000....perhaps it was this very ad that influenced its purchase? It's more likely we just played it in Asda and that's the one he got, but you never know.

Here's one for Imagic, a company formed by expatriates of Atari and Mattel. I'm guessing the giant bashing the Intellivision is from their Beauty And The Beast game, which was a sort of Donkey Kong clone....

This one is an ad for the Philips Videopac console. Can't remember ever having seen one of these in action...It's the European version of the Magnavox Odyssey 2!

And this is one telling you how to sign up for the Philips Video Games Club! You got a newsletter and everything!

Pac-Man gets a set of chompers for this competition being run by Colgate to win an Atari 2600! You had to paint a poster with paints you'd get free with the toothpaste...

If you were far too busy being a "Boy of Today" to bother brushing your teeth, you still had a chance to win yourself a 2600 by buying a pair of Finders shoes! I obviously wasn't a boy of today, as I can't even remember this shoe-brand at all.....

Here's one I'll need to ask about on World Of Spectrum..an ad from SMT trading featuring some "Super Software" for the ZX Spectrum....but it doesn't bother giving you the actual titles of the games. making it tricky to look them up! I've tried searching for Hi-Tech, SMT and Super Software but can't find any info there either..

In this Ever Ready Batteries campaign, you can get some Innovator Electronics handhelds for just 6.99! Innovator were a company who licensed the games from V-Tech apparently.

Another interesting one...an LCD Watch called Plane & Tank Battle that you could get if you sent Eagle 12.95. If you click here you can see more pics of the actual watch, but it seems later Radio Shack got the rights to release it in the US and did so as a handheld in 1986..... 

Here's a competition to win the Galaxy Invader 1000 and Puck-man games we saw an ad for earlier. You won by navigating that maze in the bottom right corner, sending it off and hopefully getting picked from the bag of entries...

And here's another competition to win Tron goodies, including the Tomytronic Tron game! These "Personality Plus" pages from Eagle would make a good blog post themselves, as they feature such quality British celebs as Cannon & Ball, Big Daddy and Prince Charles!

Here's a look at Tron in action....

It appears that there was at least 17 million competitions to win an Atari 2600 in 1982/83, maybe because they'd become really cheap due to the big video game crash in the States? Here's another one being run by Wall's Ice Cream. Really makes me want a Dracula lolly now.....

And here's one being run by Weetabix, featuring those Titchy-Breakfast beating Weeties! Keep an eye on the blog for more about these crazy edible-entities soon.... ;-)

And finally a competition to win a ZX Speccy from the Whiz Kids book range! With the amount of competitions being run, I'm surprised it took me so long to actually get my hands on a proper computer or console! They were handing them out everywhere!!

Hope you've enjoyed this post. I'll be sticking some more up about toys and retro food soon, as like I said I've found loads of memory-stirring stuff! Later, stuffers! ;-)