The first thing I thought when I saw this on eBay was that this was probably a bootleg. How many Marvel Comics characters have products with Batman, Hawkman and Green Arrow on the side that are legit? The auction description listed it as "DR STRANGE * MARVEL UNIVERSE * SKILL GAME BOX ARGENTINA", so perhaps this was one of those foreign companies that licensed a bunch of American characters for their products and tried to make as much money as they could off of a few pieces of production art they were sent to work with. Bootleg or not, the entire "skill game" package is bizarre.
The box, which is a bit smaller than a pack of playing cards, contains the following: un-assembled miniature Rubik's Cube blocks, a small screwdriver, and some stickers in multiple colors to attach to the blocks when the cube is assembled. These stickers have Dr. Strange on them, so it's a "Make Your Own Dr. Strange Rubik's Cube Kit"!
I worked for Marvel for a short while. At one point, I went to the licensing guy (Nelson Yomtov) and said; "Nelson, I saw a Ben Cooper "Dr. Strange" costume out there and they made his face look evil." He looked at me for a second, went through his book and said; "Ben Cooper doesn't have the right to MAKE a "Dr. Strange" costume!" I never saw how that one ended.
ReplyDeleteI have that Ben Cooper costume and the mask does make him look evil! Those things were basically cheap masks and sweaty trash bags with color images of the characters printed on them for kids to wear at Halloween. The cheap production values really made Superhero Underoos so much more desirable when they hit shelves a few years later. It doesn't surprise me they got that costume into the stores without Marvel's blessing. Ben Cooper also put out a plastic Dr. Strange "jiggler" toy around the time of the Dr. Strange TV pilot. I wonder if that was also made and distributed without going through proper channels.
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