Comic Ads: AAU Shuperstar takes on the Dirty Hippie Sneaker

Here we have a unique oddity from the late 1970's, a comic ad from the Intermark Shoe Company for their AAU brand of sneakers. This ad had me mesmerized as a child and seemed to be everywhere. In fact it only appeared on the back covers of DC comics dated November 1978 and features AAU's hero-spokesmodel, the AAU Shuperstar, battling... well... pretty much just a scroungy looking hippie known as The Dirty Sneaker. See, back in the late 70′s a unique superhero appeared on the back covers of comic books... the AAU Shuperstar, a pun-spouting “shoe”-perhero (get it?), all decked out in a garish blue tracksuit and armed with a good solid kick, he defended the world from vile footwear-related villains.

Let's try to figure out what is going on here:

An un-kempt super-villian, looking suspiciously like John Lennon and known only as The Dirty Sneaker, has decided the whole world must be destroyed with an explosive death ray. Located in his filthy, foot-rot infested sneakers, ironically, said death ray is set to activate when the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" comes on! The Shuperstar, on the other hand believes Dirty Sneaker is only trying to crash the "boogie contest".

Shuperstar claims to have divined the villain's scheme using "shupernatural" sleuthing. But as you can see, Dirty Sneaker is blabbing his secret plan out loud. Anybody nearby can hear him, so its painfully obvious Shuperstar merely overheard the villain's loud boasting. So, with a well-placed kick to the his dingy derriere, The Dirty Sneaker is propelled into orbit in outer-space and most assuredly, a painful death by space exposure!

As the AAU Shuperstar bids forever farewell to The Dirty Sneaker, declaring the dead hippie's body to be so much space garbage, everyone returns to the disco to boogie-woogie-oogie all night long.

With a pair of AAU sneakers, maybe you too can kick smelly hippies into outer-space and disco all night long with the ladies!