X-Entertainment: DC and Post's Create-A-Villain Contest

While there's some iconic hero/villain characters that have sprung from the merits of comic books alone, the DC Superheroes found more success in becoming kid pop role models by having several cartoon shows. In fact, their popularity surged so much from these toons that by 1983, their combined starpower was strong enough to warrant a cross-promotional co-brand experiment with Post Cereal. It was called the 'Create-A-Villain' contest - a chance for young cereal-eaters with an artistic inclination to trade in their talents for fabulous wealth and prizes.

Of all the promo contests I've seen, this is one of the best. Even if you didn't win, you still had a lot of fun crafting your entry. The idea was simple enough - children would bring their own personal vision of a great villain to life by drawing it on the supplied 'white space' on the back of specially marked Post cereal boxes. Three grand prize winners won trips to Hollywood, where they'd get to have lunch with a bunch of really miserable people wearing costumes patterned after everyone's favorite superheroes, like Batman or Wonder Woman, or Speedball the Masked Marvel. The extra special super bonus? The villain you created would also be there - DC and Post paid for the winners' design to be represented by another miserable soul in a silly costume. Come on, that's great stuff. I'm sure the winner was treated to one of the best and most memorable days of their life, and I can only hope that there's no long-lasting emotional damage attached to a child having turkey sandwiches with a big, burly guy wearing gray pantyhose and oversized snow boots.

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The real coup was drawing all the villains, though. Doodling imaginary monsters and costumed crooks was something we'd usually get in trouble for at school, but now everyone had the chance to make their ill-timed hobbies pay off. Even the kids who didn't want to enter got a prize all the same - they got to watch commercials featuring Batman and Robin acting like Price is Right showgirls, smiling and pointing to different breakfast cereals. These are guys who lead such unrelentingly violent lives that they're forced to spend any free time they have washing their bloodstained hands in puddles of their latest catch's sick. And every little boy wanted that kind of glory for himself. So how to you become a superhero? Emulate the existing ones! Kids didn't know how to fly or how to sew capes, but they could certainly eat the same cereals as their magnificent idols. See? Post was pretty smart. Cereal sales were up 50%.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You remember all those contests you entered as a kid. You remember the church fair raffle tickets, you remember getting that small LP featuring only half of the stupid McDonald's song, and most importantly, you remember the absolute and total depression you felt when you didn't win. Regardless of how fun it was to create your own villain, you might feel like all these contests are evil by design. Kids don't understand the natural laws about their odds of winning, so unless they take home a prize, they're gonna be sadder than a guy who spent his life savings to produce bootleg XFL t-shirts. Don't worry though - Post and DC Comics got ya covered. While only three entrants received trillion dollar trips to Tinsel Town, everyone who entered got a little reward in return...

Puffy stickers!! Check out Robin's feigned excitement. He knows that puffy stickers aren't exactly chart-topping prizes, but it's still pretty nice of them to give this much back when they really didn't need to do anything at all. You can't say that the point was to collect a mailing list, since they were gonna get fifty-seven thousand names and addresses just by offering the free vacation anyway. No, they really cared. Well that, and the fact that the XFL t-shirt guy's grandfather mistaking believed that every one of the planet's four billion people would want to stuff DC Comics puffy stickers in their holiday stockings. One government auction later, and Post had quite a runner-up prize to keep kids who couldn't color inside-the-lines happy.

Do you think the comic artist who brought this commercial to life had to privately animate Robin taking a hot shower in a symbolic gesture of washing his sellout sins away? I have no idea who originally came up with the Robin character, but I'm sure the last thing they had in mind for the guy was a cereal commercial appearance where he had to peddle puffy stickers while telling the world that Fruity Pebbles helped him fight crime. That aside, free puffy stickers are fun puffy stickers, and I probably would've sent in entries from every family address I could think of so I could rewallpaper my bedroom in bulbous Batman logos.

The fine print insists that the contest is only open to children between the ages of 6 to 14. Huh? So how would a parent explain to their tv-watching five-year-old that they were too young to enter a contest where they had to draw humanoid beetles with furred brows? It's not like that footnote helps the contest's legitimacy, anyway. Anyone could draw the thing - you just had to make sure there was someone in the proper age group around to take credit. This probably explains why the winning entry looked a lot like the Fonz with devil horns tacked on.

To help kids sort out the myopic puzzle that was the Create-A-Villain contest, they added in some animated examples of made-up villains. Now kids would know what direction to go in...

Wow, those are some pretty idiotic villains. They look more like those Furries the Internet loves to lampoon than the type of guys who'd be able to take Superman down. Speaking of taking Superman down, one of the only comic books I've ever really read was The Death of Superman. Am I wrong in thinking that there should've been someone a little more important and a lot cooler than Doomsday to put the final nail in his coffin? I mean, was the guy even in a comic book before killing Supes? Where did he come from? Why was he the only one powerful enough to do the impossible? And why did they choose to demonstrate his evil capacities by having him crush a tweety bird with his bare hands? I'm not a big Superman fan, but you don't need to be one to know that the guy deserved a better death scene. They would've been better off having him die from ball cancer. Oh well, at least the comic book came with a free memorial armband a few faux postage stamps.

Notice that none of the villains eat Cocoa Pebbles. Just Fruity Pebbles. That's because they're racist, and racism is evil. I understand why they felt they needed to go there - a man cannot be judged as evil by the merits of his eye-mask color alone. Cereal profiling is way more indicative.

The lovely Wonder Woman shows off your canvas - a large, blank cardboard block on the back of certain cereal boxes. You were allowed to draw up to three different villains in this space, which both upped your chances of victory and saved your parents money when you screwed up the muscle tone on one of your characters, forcing you to cross him out. If we were only afforded one chance per box, I probably would've gone through thirty-six boxes of Super Golden Crisp before having an entry worth mailing in.

Oh yeah, the stakes were raised with this announcement: in addition to the three Hollywood vacation grand prizes, there would be several second-prize winners who got free bicycles. They didn't really explain what kind of bicycles were being offered, but considering the commercial's motif, I'm sure there wasn't a kid out there who didn't think they had a shot of winning some kind of souped-up Bat-bike. Now that the rules and regulations were clearly defined, the only thing left to do was create your very own super-villain.

Pfft, come on. That's nowhere near a true representation of what the entry formation process would've been like. I don't argue that three kids of mixed backgrounds could agree to draw their characters together, but there's no way they'd be smiling and all carefree-like while doing it. There was a HOLLYWOOD VACATION at stake. And BIKES! These kids should be at each others' throats, quietly spying on their competing entries to make sure theirs were a cut above the rest. Where's the mindless violence? The tactful destruction of any kid's entry deemed a dangerous contender? Where's the good old-fashioned competitive spirit? Unless these three kids share some kind of sick adhesive fetish, I don't think the 'puffy stickers guarantee' would be enough to keep their happy-go-lucky demeanors smoldering.

Susie is proud of her entry, and confident enough in her impending victory to show it off without fear. I would've been a little worried about a copycat incident, but there's no tracing paper in the house and her friends don't know how to do the mirror/sunlight trick. Her entry looks interesting enough from afar, but it's certainly not screaming 'champion' as far as I'm concerned. Still, she seems content with her work. Slacker. She asks to see her brother's creation, and this opens the floodgates for a lot of jealous bickering.

James: Look at mine! He's half lizard, half man! I call him 'Lizard Man!'
Susie: Lizard Man is okay, but check mine out! Cal-lee-for-nyah here I come!
James: You just drew an orangutan covered in police tape! Why would you use low-budget props when you're just drawing the friggin' thing?!
Susie: It's called art. I'm the 20th century's Edvard Munch.
James: There is no way they're gonna pick that over my Lizard Man! That's it, I'm not your brother anymore.
Susie: Heh. You never were, kid.
James: What are you talking about?
Susie: Oh nothing...just a certain little wicker basket someone left on our doorstep when I was three-years-old. I remember it like it was yesterday. Your real parents dressed you with newspaper clippings detailing their murderous rampage.
James: You jerk! I'm telling Mom!
Susie: If you want to tell 'Mom,' you're gonna have to hire a private detective to stake out Guam. I hear that's where she's hiding.
James: I hate you! If Lizard Man was here, he'd make you stop saying things like that!
Susie: Lizard Man hates bastard orphans, James. You'd have better luck summoning my killer orangutan, whom I've just named 'Oranguterrible.'
James: That's actually a pretty decent name. I hate to admit it, but that's a lot better than 'Lizard Man.'
Susie: Don't feel so bad. The ability to create a cool name is in my genes. You just missed out on the good genetics, you stork package.

But, believe it or not, it was James' entry, 'Lizard Man,' who took home top honors in the commercial. To the victor go the spoils...

Hey, you know, he actually doesn't look too bad in animated form. Batman doesn't look very threatened, though. But I guess I'd become a little desensitized and jaded too if crimelords dressed like clowns kept killing my sidekicks. For some reason, I remember taking part in this contest. It seems like it would've had to have been just a little before my time, but I can't shake this image of me trying to color in a bad guy using just three crayons. I can't remember who or what I drew, but if I had to take a guess, my villains would've looked something like these four. Click the thumbnails to see the full-sized image and explanation...

All in all, a nice promotion that helped two completely separate merchandising mediums to advertise their stuff while keeping kids happy at the same time. Nothing wrong with that. I wish they'd do a contest like this these days. I need something to do on Friday night.

Click here to watch the Create-A-Villain commercial!

Click on the above picture to go to the commercial's download page. It's definitely worth watching if you've ever fantasized about Robin eating cereal. Come on, let's see some hands.