RIVALS OF CAPTAIN COMPANY (PART 1)

Most of us Monster Kids measure the wealth of ghoulish goodies from the good 'ol days by the amount of product sold by WARREN PUBLICATIONS' Captain Company. Remembered fondly for its cool inventory of monster goodness and not so fondly for its frequent slow service and sometimes screwed up orders, what was not to like about anticipating (albeit sometimes for weeks) a package wrapped in plain brown paper direct from the pages of FAMOUS MONSTER OF FILMLAND?

Warren's mail order company was not the only game in town, however. Numerous other FM knock-offs and competitors vied for a spot on the monster madness food chain that at one time stretched from here to Karloffornia.


This week MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD will take a look at some of the alternative sources where rabid fans of monster toys, models, books, make-up supplies, magic tricks, and fake barf could order to their rapidly-beating heart's content.

Even one-shot mags like 3-D MONSTERS took a stab at grabbing some extra dough from some sideline sales. Somewhat thoughtfully designed as a kind of theme, their mail order offering was a single-page ad mainly for plastic models from AMERICA'S HOBBY CENTER. It is most likely that the space was sold as an ad spot and that the title was not a beneficiary of generated sales like Warren was of his Captain Company. Amazingly, AHC is still in operation since opening in 1931. It stands to reason that they jumped on the monster bandwagon when it was rolling merrily along. The monster ad is from 3-D MONSTERS and the model airplane ad is from a 1969 issue of AMERICAN AIRCRAFT MODELER magazine.