My favorite starts at 1:30
Still don't know what to ask Santa Odin to put under your Saturnalia evergreen? Check out this semiotic mashup with these great old ads for Planet of the Apes action figures, which were manufactured by the now-defunct Mego Toys.
This YouTuber strings all the old 70s ads together, which all have fascinating little subplots: time travel, mind control, the military-industrial-religious establishment, forbidden archaeology, class warfare, solar ziggurats, and on and on.
Strangely, they also feature the main theme from 1968's other ape-starring blockbuster, 2001: A Space Odyssey, "Thus Spake Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss. Which in turn was based on Friedrich Nietzsche's rant on the death of God and the rise of the Overman.
And Zarathustra brings us to Mitra, who brings us to Mithras, who brings us to the Freemasons, who bring us back to the astronauts.
Nice and tidy, just the way I like it.
UPDATE: Speaking of astronauts, here are the Mego Star Trek ads, which have the strangest background music I think I've ever heard in a commercial. It actually kind of reminds me of Jimmy Page's soundtrack for Lucifer Rising.
This is all from my era, but I'm not even remotely nostalgic for this stuff. I remember when my boys were young feeling incredibly jealous that they had such great toys to play with and we had frickin' Mego. It can't be said enough, America hated its children in the 70s.
My proof?
Oh, how about a Six Million Dollar Man Christmas record, which doesn't have Lee Majors doing the voice? What kind of miserable old clock-watcher thought this was entertainment?
I guess we'll just have to make our own entertainment, and ponder what type of symbolism was at work with a post-humanist astronaut (with an all-seeing eye), whose most famous episode had him fighting a proto-hominid. Hmm, a hidden allegory to the Annunaki? A prophetic warning of the coming struggle between post-humanist cyborgs and conscientious objectors?
Maybe Lloyd Pye can tell us...
