I refuse to do a Throwback Thursday blog post tonight about the “Back to the Future” movies. Yes, they were fun in their time, but I doubt they merit inundating the Internet today with images of their scenes and actors.

Behold instead the 70’s-tastic glow-in-the-dark “Creature From the Black Lagoon” poster that adorned the door of the room I shared with my older brother as a very young boy. In case you didn’t read the preceding sentence, IT GLOWED IN THE DARK. It did so pretty brightly too. I remember my brother quite intently and methodically waving a desk lamp in front of it and, when the lights went out, that thing just SHINED LIKE A CRAZY DIAMOND.

My brother put it up there. I would have been in kindergarten or first grade, I think. I was so fascinated with this poster that I just couldn’t feel scared by it — kind of like the snakes I indiscriminately snatched up in the woods at that age. (I’m thinking maybe Darwin would have frowned on that particular boyhood avocation.)

Believe it or not, there are actually collectors out there who not only also remember this, but who have collected all four posters in the set. (I am still amazed at how information like this can so quickly be yielded by Google.) There is some conflicting information about the posters’ origin and their first use as promotional materials circa 1975. At one time they were offered as prizes inside Super Sugar Crisp Cereal. I have a feeling that’s where my brother got ours. For the full skinny, check out this neat article over at Retroist:

http://www.retroist.com/2013/10/29/1975-wolf-man-poster-sugar-crisp-universal-monsters/

Man, when I was little, I loved all things glow-in-the-dark. Many years later, I had a poster of an advancing black panther about to pounce on the viewer. (I’m talking about the animal, not a member of the Black Panther Party.) Because that’s what fascinates an 11-year-old. That poster actually didn’t glow in the dark. I remedied this with two small dots from my glow-stars set. (Yeah, I had those too.) I put one luminescent dot in each pupil, and that bastard’s eyes glowed like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?