Cleverly Disguised Radio Trick Revisited
Chris Wood, Publsiher
Packerland Titletown USA
Another Super Bowl has come and gone and the Packers gave it an excellent shot before coming up short in the NFC Championship game against Atlanta in the Georgia Dome, Sun., Jan. 22.
After rebounding from an ugly 4-6 start two-thirds into the season and running the table, they won the division and knocked off their first two foes in the playoffs. The Packers were peaking at the right time and had just beaten the number-one seeded Dallas Cowboys in a last-second thriller, despite injuries that had gone from very bad to even badder and ultimately, the worst!
It didn’t help that they ended up playing one of their two worst games of the season in the championship round and when your best receiver is playing with broken ribs, you know – or certainly hope – it’s gotten about as bad as it can possibly get (i.e. it can’t get any worse)!
However, it finally caught up with them and all came unraveled in the NFC Championship game versus the Falcons. They unceremoniously exited the season with a 44-23 thrashing in that contest which was no contest, in the final to be played in the Georgia Dome.
But moving on and in the interest of producing at the level of the team we all know and love, there are a couple of “loose ends” we’d like to tie up from the end of last year and the beginning of this one.
The first is the reference made in the December “Inner-View Interview” column related to the half-page ad Denver radio station KBPI took out in the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s “Super Bowl Week” special section a week before Super Bowl XXXII.
Since there has been so much information generated and put out there this past season about the Super Bowl (and understandably so with very good reason, here in Packer country!), we wanted to clarify more of the specifics on what that was really all about for those of you who have indicated some interest. This could be considered one of those little-known stories about something that quietly took place in the world of Packers fans before what was their second Super Bowl appearance of the modern era against the Denver Broncos.
The ad contained what we had characterized as a “cleverly-hidden nasty message” to Packers fans in the December column; while appearing to champion the Broncos with a “GO BRONCOS; BRONCOS ARE #1” theme on the surface.
The piece was done in the style of the MAD Magazine Al Jaffee “Fold-ins” back in the 60s, which appeared every month on the inside back cover and had a political theme on a current event (like black power or the war in Vietnam, just to mention two).
When you folded the page vertically in the two designated areas as instructed, the namby-pamby three-line message that appeared at the bottom of it changed to a very irreverent (if not downright insulting!) and altogether different one. Of course, the image was transformed along with it in similar fashion having actually been an image within the original image on the page.
We are reprinting Denver radio station KBPI’s newspaper ad here along with an image of one of the original MAD Magazine “fold-in” covers. It demonstrates what the original concept looked like for those of you who are interested but didn’t have the opportunity to see it “back in the day” for whatever reason (like perhaps you weren’t yet born!).
We’re not going to show you what the transformation of the actual newspaper ad itself looked like per se because we are, after all, a G-rated family-friendly publication!
However, we’ll give you the instructions for doing it on your own, if you so choose.
The original image as it ran in the Monday, Jan. 19, 1998, Super Bowl Week edition of the Green Bay Press-Gazette is reproduced on the page immediately following this article with the instructions for making the conversion directly below it.
Secondly, on another item we’ve enlarged the images from the NCAA’S “Football Centennial Edition” album jacket and “The First 50 Years” of the NFL album cover that appeared in the January/February issue of Packerland Titletown USA and are running them here again. This will enable you to read the actual type on those original album covers, as it appeared when they were released with the records in them nearly 50 years ago.
A few of our readers expressed an interest in reading about just what was said in that too-small type and we’re only too happy to accommodate their suggestion to make it more legible.
In the meantime, Happy Collecting and GO! YOU PACKERS GO! in this case into a productive, happy and enjoyable off-season!
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INSTRUCTIONS FOR FOLDING PAGE VERTICALLY IN THE TWO DESIGNATED AREAS FOR NEW IMAGE WITH A NEW MESSAGE BELOW IT:
The original MAD Magazine had two small marks on the top of the page, designated by the letter A on the left and B on the right. Additionally, there were two small marks on the bottom of the page designated again, by A on the left and B on the right, to indicate where to place the folds.
In this case, the first fold would be placed immediately to the left of the letter K on the “KBPI” call letters in the tiny type on both the top and the bottom of the page, as the fold would be in a vertical, straight line running from the top to the bottom of the page. The fold itself would be made inward, toward you.
The second fold would be placed to the immediate right of the numeral 7 on the “106.7” dial numbers listed in the tiny type on both the top and bottom left side of the page. In this case, the fold would be made outward, or away from you.
You should end up with the fold on the right having the following letters showing to the right of it: CK in the top line; E in the middle line; and ERS!! on the bottom line. You should also end up with the fold on left having the following letters showing to the left of it: FU in the top line; TH in the middle line; and PACK in the bottom line.
If nothing else or you’d rather not ruin the page in your copy of P T U, you can see it easily enough by reading over the two previous sentences right here.
In fact, I bet you already have!