1970s summer comics nostalgia with Thing and Vision, Episode III

Back in July 2012, I featured DC Comics' Batman hawking Twinkies¹ in a comic-book advertisement. Today, in the interest of giving equal time to Marvel Comics, I am presenting portions of the Twinkie advertisement "Thor Meets a Glutton for Gold" from the May 1978 issue (#39) of "Marvel Two-in-One."

The full-page advertisement features a little mystery involving Thor and Asgard's disappearing stockpile of gold.² But gold-thief Gudrun the Golden³ is foiled when Thor sets a trap involving the Hostess snack cakes.⁴ And when Gudrun is captured, Thor exclaims, "Thy taste for gold has entrapped thee!!!!!!" (Yes, with six exclamation points. This is the comics, after all.)

Meanwhile, another Asgardian exclaims, "The creamed filling, too, is worthy of the gods."

Here's the triumphant final panel of the advertisement.

In 2009, Teague Bohlen⁵ wrote an article titled "The 10 Dumbest Comic Book Hostess Ads" for The Robot's Voice. His (slightly edited) summary of the advertisement is as follows:

"So let me get this straight: Gudrun the Golden is stealing the gold from Asgard. Thor’s brilliant plan is to hook him instead with golden-hued Twinkies, so he leaves the real gold alone. Which works. But then at the end, Thor and Sif are talking about how Twinkies are preferable to real gold ... so didn’t you just completely [screw] Asgard over, Thor? Nice work, God of Blunder."

Actually, I'm going to side with Thor on this one, Teague. The love of gold is one of the roots of evil. If nobody — on any planet, real or otherwise — hoarded or coveted or overvalued gold, we'd have a lot fewer problems. And much more time to eat Twinkies and read comics.

Footnotes

1. Fun fact: In Mexico, there is a version of Twinkies called Submarinos. And they even come in different flavors.
2. It's really depressing to imagine that the love for, hoarding of and fighting over gold spreads even to other (imaginary) planets.
3. Gudrun has his own bio page on the Marvel Wikia. It's kind of sparse, but here are some highlights:

• Powers: Asgardian physiology
• Weaknesses: Golden Hostess Twinkies Snack Cakes
• Unusual Features: Moustache and beard

4. I didn't know that Hostess delivered to Asgard. I wonder if the Asgardians like Ding Dongs, too.
5. I don't know if "Teague Bohlen" is his/her real name, but that person also wrote an article titled "10 Very, Very Strange intellivision Games." Among the 10 are Frog Bog, Kool-Aid Man! and Microsurgeon. It's possible I had two of those games.