Comics-Ads: The Incredible Hulk Vs. The Roller Disco Devils

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Ah another classic comic ad. Back in the day, Hostess® bakery, makers of Cupcakes, Twinkies, and Fruit Pies, decided to reach the kiddies through comic book ads. The ads ingeniously used all the popular superheroes of the day in full page spreads in the hopes that it would lure the little rag-a-muffins into reading them. The villains usually had to be one-shot villains with incredibly lame themes: ergo the Roller Disco Devils. These z-grade super-villains were mostly defeated by distracting them with the glorious taste of delicious Hostess confections. However this wasn't always the case, there were exceptions... such as this, rather extreme, exception.

Lets break down the actions here... A lame street gang with a disco and rollerskating motif are terrorizing the town merely by skating up and down the street listening to their favorite disco tune, ("Yeah! Yeah! Baby! Wo! Wo! Rock! Roll! Yeah! Yeah!" - artist unknown).

Some kids are whining about being trapped in their apartment by their moms who won't let them out to buy Hostess® Fruit Pies, not because they don't want them eating junk food, but because of the ruckus being raised by the Devils. Speaking of which lets take a closer look at them for a moment...

A gang of about seven badly dressed, out-of-shape, over-grown juvenile delinquents who are out to prove that they're still cool and that disco isn't dead. Wearing loud flashy clothes and roller-skates, they like to boogie-woogie all night day long. Look at that fat one in the green leisure suit... pathetic! Pay close attention to what becomes of their yellow-shirted leader.

This looks 'shopped...

All this noise wakes up the Hulk! Jumping out of nowhere, he isn't just upset by this, he's very upset! Hulk hates disco so bad that he handles this in the only way he knows how... by brutally murdering them in the most gruesome manner possible. He rolls them up in the asphalt like a bloody Ho-ho® cake! Remember that devil in the yellow pirate shirt? He's being wrapped around his own spine. They are all surely dead! The only thing missing is the sound effect of every last bone in the Devils’ bodies being crushed and shattered.

With the streets now safe and quiet, everybody celebrates, entirely ignoring the dead bodies presumably bleeding out beside them! Its time for delicious Hostess® Fruit Pies for everyone... Everyone that is, except the Hulk, who is left wondering why humans can't be as nice as those fruit pies.

That pie fits perfectly in Hulk's mitt!

Wait a minute! How come the Hulk can't enjoy a tasty fruit pie with the kids? It certainly looks like the artist intended for the Hulk to be eating a fruit pie in that last panel, what with his mouth full and his hand in a slight grasping position, pinky out and all. Yet there is no sign of an actual fruit pie... Well, it's because of this rule, strickly imposed on the artists by the editors to protect their particular brand of heroes. Apparently, actually consuming the confections crosses over into a full-fledged endorsement. Somehow that would be really bad and we can't have that. Sure, Hulk can brutally execute seven men over a mere noise ordinance violation, but he can never ever eat that pie, so it was clumsily erased out of his hand!