[Updated January, 21] Images from Model Retailer magazines • Collecting General • The Acaeum

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[Updated January, 21] Images from Model Retailer magazines
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Alexander
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:12 am

Hi guys. I have started to peruse again the stack of Model Retailer magazines and they have a lot of interesting photos (well, interesting for me at least). I plan to insert the links to Flicker so you can see them without slowing the forum (I'm scanning them at 300 dpi...). I didn't insert this in the TSR Kitsch thread because many images will have nothing to do with TSR...

Here is the first - a photo from Gen Con XII (1979) from Model Retailer November 1979:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2201731752/

And a (rare) TSR ad for the 'new' D&D Boxed set from the same issue:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N ... 740129764/

Last edited by Alexander on Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:00 am, edited 2 times in total.

Plaag
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:44 am

Pretty cool seeing the Judges Guild booth

ShaneG.

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Mars
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 9:59 am

So who are the guys working the booth?

Alexander
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:13 pm

Some more images from the February 1980 issue:

Another TSR trade ad for the Gateway to Adventure campaign inviting retailers to visit them at a couple of trade shows:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N ... 740129764/

Metagaming ad announcing to retailers it has no more a magazine (sold to Steve Jackson) and so 'demonstrating' its low interest for mail order business (a sore point already!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N ... 740129764/

Ad for Different Worlds magazine with retailers' discounts (note that Chaosium is still The Chaosium and not Chaosium Inc.):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N ... 740129764/

Avalon Hill ad for the 'dealer rebate' program - customers shop for AH games in stores, send AH a proof of purchase (I guess a store receipt) and get some AH goodies. Still another way to address the problem of mail order discount houses (replace these four words with 'eBay' and/or 'Internet discounters' and the situation has not changed very much!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N ... 740129764/

Plaag
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:52 pm

Mars wrote:So who are the guys working the booth?

It appears to be Paul Jaquays http://www.acaeum.com/jg/ModPhotos/Book ... sI1st.html

Which also fits with the release of Dark Tower that was stated in a Journal/Dungeoneer (can't recall which I seen it in). Not sure if Chuck Ansell was there or another wrote the introduction in the magazine I'm thinking of. I don't believe I have pictures of everyone who worked for Judges Guild, but I'm always on the lookout for them.

ShaneG.

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sauromatian
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 8:04 pm

Alexander1968 wrote:Metagaming ad announcing to retailers it has no more a magazine (sold to Steve Jackson) and so 'demonstrating' its low interest for mail order business (a sore point already!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N ... 740129764/

Weird. I really should better research the whole end-of-Metagaming story. I know the basics, but since I'm here in Austin, I should examine the primary sources of this epic tale. The "no magazine" gaming company, the relatively miniscule Interplay, Some Turkey Games, the disappearing Golden Unicorn, followed by the disappearing CEO.. someday it should all be made as a movie.

Imagine the scene where Howard Thompson treks across the desert to remove the Golden Unicorn token before some kid can claim the prize. What, in this fictionalized semi-documentary speculation, should happen next?

a. Thompson falls into a crevice in the wilderness, leaving the token still out there somewhere to find, to this very day [plus you get to keep his desiccated corpse].
b. A plucky group of young early 80s gamers solves the puzzle, heading out to find the token at the same time as Thompson. It becomes a race, with all manner of hijinks as the kids outwit mean old Mr. Thompson's efforts to sabotage them.
c. Thompson finds a real live unicorn in the desert, which comes to symbolize inner peace & reconciliation.
d. All of the above, plus an army of scantily-clad Drow chicks who live in a hidden underworld.

Badmike
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:09 am

sauromatian wrote:
Weird. I really should better research the whole end-of-Metagaming story. I know the basics, but since I'm here in Austin, I should examine the primary sources of this epic tale. The "no magazine" gaming company, the relatively miniscule Interplay, Some Turkey Games, the disappearing Golden Unicorn, followed by the disappearing CEO.. someday it should all be made as a movie.

Imagine the scene where Howard Thompson treks across the desert to remove the Golden Unicorn token before some kid can claim the prize. What, in this fictionalized semi-documentary speculation, should happen next?

a. Thompson falls into a crevice in the wilderness, leaving the token still out there somewhere to find, to this very day [plus you get to keep his desiccated corpse].
b. A plucky group of young early 80s gamers solves the puzzle, heading out to find the token at the same time as Thompson. It becomes a race, with all manner of hijinks as the kids outwit mean old Mr. Thompson's efforts to sabotage them.
c. Thompson finds a real live unicorn in the desert, which comes to symbolize inner peace & reconciliation.
d. All of the above, plus an army of scantily-clad Drow chicks who live in a hidden underworld.

Thompson apparantly still holds the TFT copyright...someone should bootleg a few copies and see if it brings him out of the woodwork. He was an unusual character, to say the least.

Mike B.

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g026r
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:32 am

So, being fairly unfamiliar with Metagaming (outside of knowing that it's where SJ got his start) what exactly was this Golden Unicorn thing?

"Reader, Carthegena was of the mind, that unto thoſe Three Things, which the Ancients held Impoſſible, there ſhould be added this Fourth ; To find a Book Printed without Errata's."

Alexander
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 6:47 am

g026r wrote:So, being fairly unfamiliar with Metagaming (outside of knowing that it's where SJ got his start) what exactly was this Golden Unicorn thing?

It was a contest. Metagaming said that in one release, Treasure of the Gold Unicorn, you could find clues to the location where a SOLID GOLD unicorn miniature was hidden and then you could claim a $ 10,000 reward (in CASH) after recovering the mini. But this contest was virtually months before Metagaming closed its doors and various people accused Thompson of having never placed the gold mini in the first place and so the reward was never paid

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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:42 am

They did have a silver 'what ever it was' buried though and found a year or two before the golden unicorn right?

ShaneG.

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Zenopus
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:14 pm

Alexander1968 wrote:Some more images from the February 1980 issue:

Thank you for the great pics and I look forward to seeing any more interesting ones that you find. This is my favorite type of Acaeum thread!

Zenopus
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:26 pm

Alexander1968 wrote:It was a contest. Metagaming said that in one release, Treasure of the Gold Unicorn, you could find clues to the location where a SOLID GOLD unicorn miniature was hidden and then you could claim a $ 10,000 reward (in CASH) after recovering the mini. But this contest was virtually months before Metagaming closed its doors and various people accused Thompson of having never placed the gold mini in the first place and so the reward was never paid

I've never heard of this particular contest, but it sounds like an RPG version of the book 'Masquerade' (1979, Kit Williams):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_%28book%29

Masquerade is a children's book, written and painted by Kit Williams, which sparked a worldwide treasure hunt by concealing clues to the location of a jeweled golden hare, created and hidden somewhere in the British Isles by Williams. It became the inspiration for a genre of books known today as armchair treasure hunts.

This contest also ended in ignominy:

[In 1988] The Sunday Times exposed the winner of the Masquerade contest as a fraud. The winner, "Ken Thomas", was revealed to be a pseudonym of Dugald Thompson. Thompson's business partner, John Guard, was the boyfriend of Veronica Robertson, a former live-in girlfriend of Williams...While living with Williams, Robertson had learned the approximate physical location of the hare, while remaining ignorant of the proper solution to the book's master riddle.

sauromatian
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:27 pm

A silver dragon. The concept was based on this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080523 ... -4&seller=

Masquerade by Kit Williams, which my sister had & which we both spent many hours examining to find the prize, an elaborate golden rabbit hidden somewhere in Britain. She concluded it was in Falmouth [wrong].

Years later I noticed the whole isle of Albion resembles a rabbit, with London the anus. From which it follows that Londoners are e. coli bacteria, & the QEII an especially sizable turd.

Alexander
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:09 am

You can find all the details in the last issues :cry:

of The Space Gamer. The SJG one, not the unworthy successors of that great magazine

And more pics coming today - noting the number if visits, it seems that conventions and TSR ads are the biggest draw (wll, ne real surprise here

).

Here we are:

A TSR ad for its 'profit formula':

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2209210061/

Yaquinto ad for the album games (games sold in a record package - do you remember the time when SJG attempted to use VHS cases as a cheap box? I guess to know where they got the idea first...).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2210003642/

An Avalon Hill ad boasting about 'huge orders'...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2210004806/

A SPI ad for the new Dragonquest RPG:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2209212519/

A zany ad by Martian Metals (designed by Steve Jackson) for their miniature line and the MARS

system:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2210005922/

Another ad from Yaquinto, this time for the Dallas game license:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28697569@N00/2210006080/

Last edited by Alexander on Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Alexander
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:12 am

zhowar wrote:
Thank you for the great pics and I look forward to seeing any more interesting ones that you find. This is my favorite type of Acaeum thread!

Thanks! Just a way to give something back to the great, great Acaeum community :wink:

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