“An extremely rare group of four children's 45 rpm records of songs & stories, featuring Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, and Hulk, presented in die-cut sleeves, from the 1966 Marvelmania craze. We have never had the opportunity to offer a set of these insanely cool records, and this set is in excellent condition. The group would make a great addition to any good Silver Age collection.”
That was the description (cut and pasted) from an auction house that recently sold four of those children’s records for a whopping $2,000 gavel price. What makes those 1966 records rare? Who knows? But whatever the reason, they are rarely sold as a set.
The records are 45s so there is about six minutes maximum on each side. For each of these records, Side A contains a song about the superhero and Side B contains an audio drama. The good news is that the stories and the songs are purely original so for fans of the comic books, these are worth seeking out. For the “Captain America” record, as an example, a song about the superhero is on Side A, while a thrilling drama titled “The Bomb Bombs Away” is on Side B. For Thor, Side A has a song about “The Mighty Thor,” and “Thunderbolts and Violets” is the title of the drama for Side B.
Of particular note was the Spider-Man record. I expected the cartoon theme song but instead it was an original song about the web-crawler.
A friend of mine had four of them and he was kind enough to lend them to me to transfer to digital format. The link below (provided for one week only) contains the transfers of the four records pictured above.
This is my Christmas gift to you.
Enjoy!
