The one thing that Heavy Metal has been consistently on the ball about was their merchandising. From the second issue, they have sold the back issues on mail-order pages. They sold binders and t-shirts. They had an entire line of collected editions of stories that had first seen print in the magazine’s pages.

Here, Heavy Metal rings the merchandise bell with three different ads in the same issue – to coincide with the release of the movie. A movie soundtrack is still de rigeur. What I find intriguing is that they sold two different art books – a collector’s edition movie souvenir book and a whole book about the art of animation. Two different mailing addresses, which probably means two different fulfillment companies. It’ll be interesting to see which one shows up the next month.

(Heavy Metal issue #54, September 1981 – Page 4, Inside Front Cover & Inside Back Cover Heavy Metal merchandise ads)

#house ad