It looks like I'm not quite finished with my comic book ad obsession. I've found so many of these on so many sites, I feel glutted and overwhelmed.
I'll be using a few of them, of course, once I figure out which ones are my favorites (most bizarre, most unlikely, most tasteless, most unrealistic, and even most aesthetically pleasing: some of these are damn beautiful!). For now, I played around with the Mystery Horse, free inside every box of Wheat Honies.
I remember cereal box prizes. Oh yes, I do. In fact, I still have cornflake dust up to my elbow. I never waited until we used up all the cereal. Oh no. Did anyone, except some idiot with time to waste? I rummaged around with my grubby little paw until I got to the very bottom of the box, then grabbed the little red fire truck ("made of sturdy plastic!") or the submarine that you filled with baking soda so it would perform miracles in the bathtub.
The Mystery Horse is not some poor unfortunate beast who was cut off at the knees. He was one of those little walking toys with a string and a weight. You sat him on the table with the weight just over the edge, and as it slowly moved towards the floor the creature would "walk". I remember a yellow walking camel that came in the Chee-tohs bag, highly prized. (How I wish I had kept some of this stuff!).
When I tinker around with these images, which is probably highly illegal (but so were all those scans I found on the comic book sites), strange things happen. Colors spring out at me that aren't really there. This time, when I reversed the colors into a negative, it created an eerie 3D effect that I've never seen before.
I want a Mystery Horse. I want a horse that walks along on its knees, a horse made of sturdy plastic. I want to go back and back, to that time before I made any really serious mistakes. I want to be a child again, but this time happy, and aware it'll all go away so lightning-fast that I'd better enjoy it with all my might.
