{"id":3819,"date":"2011-10-10T04:44:10","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T09:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=3819"},"modified":"2019-11-25T20:14:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T01:14:05","slug":"comics-jewelry-full-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/10\/10\/comics-jewelry-full-dirt\/","title":{"rendered":"Wear the Dirt of Dracula!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Not just any dirt!<\/strong><\/em> No!<\/strong><\/span> This tiny coffin shaped charm contains one gram of actual earth<\/em> from the grounds of Castle Dracula<\/strong><\/span> in Transylvania. It comes with a Certificate of Authenticity GUARANTEEING<\/strong> you that the dirt is real and it’s really from Romania. I often wondered how they got the dirt past customs of a then Communist bloc country. Maybe it was easier back then. Hand over half-a-dozen pairs of blue jeans and a couple Beatles records, and you could have probably waltzed out of the country with the very bones of Vlad the Impaler<\/strong> in a backpack.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The ad was from the back inside cover of Creepy #131<\/strong> which came out in 1981. I bought it for the Frank Frazetta cover which was probably not the first time that Warren Magazines ran with that cover image. Inside, there was a werewolf story that had nothing to do with the cover and 5 other self-contained stories in a horror vein all printed in black and white.<\/p>\n

Creepy was one of the Warren family of comics and magazines that were all in a magazine format and did not have to submit to the Comics Code Authority which oversaw the content of comic books. They didn’t do much without the restrictions outside of featuring bloody mono-chromatic murders and showing the occasional nipple or bare buttocks. The stories were generally stupid and fairly grim trying desperately to mine some of the ground that EC Comics had already picked clean decades before. The art was nice but printed cheaply and recycled endlessly. I was never sure if the Warren comics were old or new material that was published years before much like the recycled Frazetta cover.<\/p>\n

The magazine was also packed with wall-to-wall ads of Star Wars toys, Don Post rubber masks, 8mm versions of old horror movies and a warehouse full of other science fiction related junk. That was half of the fun of the Warren books – the ads.<\/p>\n

Warren’s stuff was usually sold in the same racks that had the cheesy true detective magazines and other cheap publications with lurid covers. I always felt dirty looking at them, and I was afraid to pick them up and peruse them lest I would draw the judgmental attention of the lady behind the counter of the drug store.<\/p>\n

As far as the ad is concerned, I used to get Famous Monsters of Filmland<\/strong><\/em> in the mid to late 1970s. I swear I saw this same Dracula dirt ad in Famous Monsters<\/strong><\/em> years before the ad pictured here only they were priced somewhere around $40 to $50. Obviously, the guy had a lot of the pendants left and priced them to move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not just any dirt! No! This tiny coffin shaped charm contains one gram of actual earth from the grounds of Castle Dracula in Transylvania. It comes with a Certificate of Authenticity GUARANTEEING you that the dirt is real and it’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[335],"tags":[446,725,9,723,497,721,719,718,720,400,722,724,498],"class_list":["post-3819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-miss-about-comics","tag-446","tag-coffin","tag-comics","tag-communist","tag-creepy","tag-dirt","tag-dracula","tag-frazetta","tag-gold","tag-jewelry","tag-romania","tag-vampire","tag-warren"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ed1x-ZB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":41180,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2023\/08\/11\/friday-flashback-draculas-dirt\/","url_meta":{"origin":3819,"position":0},"title":"Friday Flashback: Dracula’s Dirt!","author":"Joe","date":"August 11, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/10\/10\/comics-jewelry-full-dirt\/ This is an interesting post from a while back featuring an oddball piece of jewelry in the form of a necklace with a small glass coffin charm containing a small sample of earth from Transylvania! This was sold by the mail-order arm of Warren Publishing known as the Captain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blast from the Past"","block_context":{"text":"Blast from the Past","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/blast-from-the-past\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39189,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2022\/10\/05\/flying-a-kite-at-night\/","url_meta":{"origin":3819,"position":1},"title":"Flying a Kite at Night?","author":"Joe","date":"October 5, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I was flipping through an old comic when I came across this advertisement which made me think of the truly terrible 1979 version of Dracula starring Frank Langella as the count and Laurence Olivier recycling his awful accent from A Little Romance as Van Helsing. What reminds me of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Halloween"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/halloween\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/dracula-kite-1979.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/dracula-kite-1979.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/dracula-kite-1979.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3660,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/08\/19\/how-much-is-that-doggie-in-the-coffin\/","url_meta":{"origin":3819,"position":2},"title":"How Much is That Doggie in the Coffin?","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"August 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another panel from the VCI home video brochure from the dawn of the home video revolution. Back then VCRs were thought of as devices to tape the game or show so that it could be watched later. The idea of owning pre-recorded movies on tape was an odd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blast from the Past"","block_context":{"text":"Blast from the Past","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/blast-from-the-past\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/VCI-wolf-dog.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/VCI-wolf-dog.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/VCI-wolf-dog.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8561,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2012\/06\/25\/the-last-thing-i-remember\/","url_meta":{"origin":3819,"position":3},"title":"The Last Thing I Remember…","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"June 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"...was laughing hysterically at this guy's hair-do. Besides ads for practical jokes and opportunities to get paid in cash or prizes for selling newspapers\/greeting cards\/seeds, a lot of ads in comic books were aimed squarely at the 98lb weakling tapping into adolescent power fantasies and the possibility of becoming so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "What I Miss About Comics"","block_context":{"text":"What I Miss About Comics","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/what-i-miss-about-comics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Count-Dante.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Count-Dante.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Count-Dante.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":36776,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2021\/11\/09\/countess-dracula\/","url_meta":{"origin":3819,"position":4},"title":"Countess Dracula","author":"Joe","date":"November 9, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Erzs\u00e9bet B\u00e1thory (1560-1614) was a real life Hungarian noblewoman and purported serial killer who may have engaged in vampiric activity. Her victims were female servants and minor noblewomen who had come to her for training and education. I'm not sure what training or education the noblewomen were seeking, but maybe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Doodle Tuesday"","block_context":{"text":"Doodle Tuesday","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/doodle-tuesday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Lady-Bathory-outline.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Lady-Bathory-outline.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Lady-Bathory-outline.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":15361,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2014\/01\/28\/yecch-looks-feels-real\/","url_meta":{"origin":3819,"position":5},"title":"YECCH!!! Looks, Feels Real!","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"January 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Finger Factory? Was it a cottage industry or was there a brick and mortar building where workers punched a time clock to crank out life-like severed fingers? I have so many questions: How many people worked there? Was it an assembly line? Did the Finger Factory have a human\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "What I Miss About Comics"","block_context":{"text":"What I Miss About Comics","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/what-i-miss-about-comics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/severed-finger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/severed-finger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/severed-finger.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}