"Wambo"

Here's a kids shirt from 1990. I used to have an entire binder full of this crappy WB licensing art from the 80's. I'm sorry that I threw it away back in 2001. It would have made for some great posts. This is one of the tamer images.

"Scooby-DooDoo"

I don't know what looks worse - Scooby gnawing into a guys ass or Scooby crawling out of a guys "mangina".

Is this design or character assassination? No pun intended.

"From China with love"

These hand painted wooden dolls from 1994 were made in China for .02¢ a piece and were sold by the WB Store for $20.00 each. Although they were advertised as posable, the old string that held their limbs together would snap easily at the slightest touch. But that wasn't the least of the WB Store's problems - they were taken off the shelves after a customer found a syringe inside one of the straw filled packages. I think that if I had to live and work in a Chinese factory making wooden dolls all day, I'd be a heroin addict too.

"McNightmare"

Before Patrick Dempsey became McDreamy to his many Grey's Anatomy fans, he was just another actor in between gigs modeling in the 1999 WB Store catalog.

Dempsey had been in a series of films since the 80s (the film "Lover Boy" from 1989 was a starring role and one of my favorite comedies from that era) but he almost fell off the map had it not been for 2005's Grey's Anatomy.


In the early nineties, it was not uncommon for the WB to use T.V. celebrities in its catalogs but by the late nineties no real celeb would've been caught dead wearing this stuff. It's nice to know that there is life after the WB Store. It's called Disney.

"The stuff that dreams are made of."

In 1991, the WB Store commemorated the 50th anniversary of The Maltese Falcon by offering a limited edition sculpture.

The sculpt was by Ron Lee, in my opinion, an over-rated sculptor that dipped his sculpts in gold in order to give them value.

I have to give the WB Store credit for trying. Although, maybe they tried a little too hard.

The sculpt is solid pewter on a marble base and sold for almost $200. The one on the bottom I picked up at an old bookstore and not only is it more accurate in size and likeness to the one in the film, but it only cost about $20.

I would have killed for it....

"Gumby?"

Everyone old enough to remember will know that Star Wars kicked off a licensing era in the late 70s that is still resonating til today. The hunt was on for the next big money maker. During the mid eighties, it was The Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles, a little comic book turned cartoon, that kept the money flowing. Disney had a string of flops for at least two decades. But Warner Bros. struck gold in 1989. That's when Warner Bros. released "Batman the movie" and its first WB catalog.

If you were an executive working for the waning WB Consumer Products Department, then you were at the right place at the right time. Not only was the film a huge success, it also put the WB licensing division on the map. Which then led to the creation of the WB Stores. Ten years later, in 1999, the WB celebrated and gave thanks to the 1989 Batman movie . . .

. . . by ignoring it completely.

I'm not suggesting that alone closed the WB Stores, but from a business point of view it was a missed opportunity, not to mention a slap in the face of the movie that made a lot of undeserving people very wealthy. Next year is the 20th anniversary. I wonder if Warner bros. will bother to make a big deal out of it.

As for Gumby . . .

The $300 bronze Batman statue by Kent Melton would be a cool thing to have, but I think I'll pass on the freaky looking $500 Joker in the box.

"Imagine, that."

The WB Store didn't just sell Looney Tunes and film items. Back in the eighties and early nineties, music was a big part of their offering. Something that had been forgotten during it's self declining years.