hulk hogan literature & dracula jokes

also santa.

hey. hello. welcome to my weird little manic blog/newsletter about weird vintage shit i find while hyperfixating and stumbling around the internet. i don’t really intend for there to be any kind of theme on any given week— just a mix of horror, scifi, wrestling, etc that made me laugh or i thought was interesting. it’s just for fun we don’t have to overthink it.

hulk hogan keeps the belt

i don’t have a good reason why i find this 1986 story book “hulk hogan keeps the belt” so funny. the power of the hulkster was so strong in the 80s they’d smack his ugly dumb face on anything. anything. it’s part of the charm of a breathing cartoon man who sucks in such a specific way. “hulk hogan keeps the belt” appears to be a sequel to 1985’s “hulk hogan wins the belt” … and aside from some ebay listings, there isn’t much out there about these.

who wrote these? dan stain is credited on “wins the belt” — his only other credit appears to be “teddy bears halloween party” by the same publisher. “keeps the belt” is jill wolf. wolf has a number of other titles including a “back to the future 2” story book, “the teddy bears’ night before christmas” and “ballerina bunny’s easter egg hunt.” i’ve found the page of another writer by that name… but i’m not convinced it’s the same person. am i sending them a message to ask? you bet!

“wins” does have a page on goodreads… i’d love to know everything about whoever was discerning enough to give it three stars. they liked it, thought it was solid, but just couldn’t be moved to 4 or 5 stars.

i’m less interested in hearing from someone who owned one of these books as a kid than i am an 80s parent who had to read it at bed time.

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creature feature trading cards

"You'll Die Laughing"

these are so lame they circle back around to being great. these cards would be way more fun if they featured original art instead of simple stills from universal monster movies… but they make up for it with the addition of massively lame quips. it’s almost like they’re an earlier, worse mystery science theater 3000.

weird thing: any non-monster actors have their faces replaced with topps employees. i can’t think of a great legal reason because i am a dumbass and not a picture law man. my guess is they were just having fun? maybe?

you can see the collection here. the captions seem to usually fall into one of the following categories:

• this monster is ugly and no one wants to date him.

• this person/monster is skinny because diet pills.

• this is a woman and she must be stopped from having rights.

on the back side is the phrase “you’ll die laughing” and another joke. the former is why collectors tend to refer to this entire set as “you’ll die laughing” cards. the jokes aren’t much better than the ones on the front, they’re often just… normal lame jokes, made spooky by saying it’s a monster delivering them. example:

baby dracula: why did the chicken cross the road

dad dracula: i do not know son also i am a dracula

baby dracula: to get to the other side!!!!

and so on. these were published again in 1980 with some changes like colored borders on the cards.

this 2004 tripod page is where i learned about these. they say that “almost every non-sports trading card company dabbled in [monster cards]” … I’d love to find more. unopened packs of these types of things are going for $15.

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1910s - 1940s

here’s santa claus hawkin’ cigarettes. pretty rad, huh?

if you love this vibe but wish santa was naked in a barrel and also the cigarette is his penis and you can take his penis off and smoke it, these are going for $15 on Amazon which is a steal if you ask me. ¹

1. this isn’t any kind of affiliate link i just know about this and now you have to too.