Sunday, January 4, 2015

The First Kellectible of 2015! :)

Howdy Everyone!

I finally captured a Kellectible I've been chasing since I first became interested in Jack Kelly and Maverick :


It's a cardboard display box which once held 24 "Mounds" and "Almond Joy" candy bars. I've actually had several chances to buy items like this one, but the cost was always pretty steep for an empty box. I finally found one for a "sweet" price. :)

Why is Bart Maverick on the box? Because the Peter Paul company sponsored Maverick during its 1961-'62 season. A blurb in the 6/26/1961 issue of Sponsor (a TV/radio advertising trade publication) explains:


Here are a couple of Mounds and Almond Joy commercials from 1961:


 


Can you believe these candy bars were only $.10 back in the day? The last time I got a Mounds out of the vending machine at work it cost $.95!


But, they are still "indescribably delicious":


By the way, the gal on the box with Bart is "Pinky Pinkham" (Dorothy Provine) from The Roaring 20's series. You may remember Bart and Pinky dancing a mean Charleston in this previous TDS post.

11 comments:

  1. I didn't know Peter Paul sponsored Maverick....thanks for sharing your find and the information, too, Bartista! I do remember Dorothy Provine in The Roaring Twenties.
    -Janet T.

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  2. That's a great drawing of Kelly on the candy box. Wonder if the great Dan Spiegle, who drew the comic books, did it. His drawings of Garner sometimes verged on photorealistic but his versions of Kelly, Moore, and Colbert only ever-so-faintly resembled the actual actors. He met Garner at the beginning of the series since no publicity photos existed yet for him to go by, and he took great care with Garner's likeness as a result.

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  3. Dorothy Provine also co-starred with Roger Moore in "The Alaskans" if memory serves, which used recycled Garner "Maverick" scripts, giving Moore a jump start on replacing Garner as Maverick later.

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  4. Dorothy Provine also co-starred with Roger Moore in "The Alaskans" if memory serves, which used recycled Garner "Maverick" scripts, giving Moore a jump start on replacing Garner as Maverick later.

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  5. "The Alaskans" remains the definitive "forgotten television series" among Warner Bros shows, which seems odd considering that Roger Moore was the lead. I've never seen so much as a clip from it since its original airing. I remember watching new TV shows as a child with my father, wondering how he could so often guess what would happen next. Decades later, I found out about the recycled scripts. Mystery solved!

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    1. Hi Michael - There are four episodes of "The Alaskans" on YouTube right now, uploaded by a user named Duke Beers. I haven't watched them yet, but they look interesting. Yes, Warner Bros. did recycle scripts, sometimes sneakily crediting the screenwriter as "W. Hermanos" ("hermanos" is Spanish for "brothers"). I've read that's how they sidestepped the writers' strike in 1960, which is why James Garner sued them for breach of contract--they had stopped paying his salary during the strike claiming they had no scripts to produce.

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  6. The script quality had steeply declined for the most part in that 5th half-season (behold "The Money Machine," for example) but the episodes' casts remain spectacular in retrospect.

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  7. La Bartista, this is a sensational website. Were you around for Sandra's Maverick website back in the '90s? I believe it adjourned into a secret site for Kelly fans to rhapsodize together and compare notes. Do you (or anyone reading this) know what became of Sandra? I used to correspond with her back in the 20th century and have often wondered about her. Her mildly Kelly-centric site was wonderful. Now there's a new site entitled "Maverick Trails" that's so strange I don't quite know what to make of it myself.

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    1. Michael, thank you for your kind words and comments. I see what you mean about "Maverick Trails". It does go down a different path (pun intended). It somewhat reminds me of "The Game" played by some Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts. They maintain that Holmes was real, his exploits were chronicled by an actual Dr. John Watson, and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was merely Watson's literary agent.

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    2. Also, I came a bit too late to the Kelly party to enjoy Sandra's website but it sounds like it was a lot of fun.

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  8. If you're unable to imagine a Maverick website that you can't quite relate to, have a look at "Maverick Trails." Perhaps it'll click for me in the future and I'll like it better, though.

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