The world of comics is littered with examples of shameless cross-promotional product tie ins. These range from the beloved yet corny one-panel Hostess Fruit Pie ads to the Crest Cavity Fighting Team, which probably came in the same baggie you dentisted gave you with the free toothbrush and floss. And then there were Alex and Shanna: The Tandy Computer Whiz Kids. I think I received one of these notoriously cheesy comics when I was in grade school. Together, these middle school ragamuffins fought drug dealers with their awesome array of Radio Shack products. (Radio Shack doesn’t even sell half the stuff shown in the comic anymore. The Tandy, the kids’ namessake, is a defunct computer brand that’s now best known as Strong Bad’s first and worst computer. Heck, the last time I went to Radio Shack, it was to get some ethernet cables. One shudders to think how the secret war on drugs turned for the worst when Radio Shack began to reduce their product offerings.)
And, of course, there ae the comic books handed out by your local electric company or water waste treatment facility urging kids to turn off the lights or save a billion gallons a day by turning off tap. It’s all pretty innocent stuff … except the PETA comics, which tells kids that their dads are vicious psychopaths for going on that fishing trip.
The Simpsons payed homage/made fun of these comics in their episode “Worse Episode Ever,” where a naive Milhouse purchases 1,000 copies of Biclops (presented by Lenscrafters) for the comic book store. It was only a matter of time before the much mocked genre made its way into webcomics.
Enter WICKEDPOWERED (cap letters intended). WICKEDPOWERED is a shameless webcomic on Keenspot.com to sell products made by the site’s main sponsor, Wicked Lasers.
Or … is it?
