Jawsmania bites back: The top ten JAWS 2 merchandise
By the time Jaws 2 hit US cinema screens forty-five years ago, on June 16th 1978, Universal’s marketing machine was already biting chunks out of fans going wild once again with Jawsmania.
The original movie had a mind-blowing array of merchandising in its wake, including beach towels, posters, inflatable pool toys, jigsaws and toy rubber sharks. Jaws 2’s merchandising may not have been on that scale, but here–and in no particular order–are ten of the best tie-in souvenirs you could have scored in ’78:
1 Topps’ Movie Photo Cards
Trading card star Topps released a set of 59 gum cards (or ‘Movie Photo Cards’), and 11 stickers (one per pack), in the traditional wax paper wrapper and, to this day, they’re great. The cards feature artwork or stills from the movie (many odd, alternative shots from different angles or deleted scenes, and some perhaps snapped in between takes). The titles of each card are suitably lurid too (“Stalked by the Killer Shark”, “The Devil from the Deep”, “Plunge into Death!”).
Each pack contained a stick of gum, and who doesn’t remember opening up their wax packet to savour the lingering sweet smell of that stuff? The reverse side of the cards featured a jigsaw-style poster image of John Solie’s alternative artwork of Tina & Eddie in peril on the sea (used on the soundtrack album), or a series of fifteen ‘Movie Facts’ relating to the making of the sequel.
On sale, they’d be displayed in a box with a fold up standee front decorated with Lou Feck’s water skier poster.
O-Pee-Chee were licensed to distribute in Canada, and these cards are nice because, while essentially the same, they carry a dual English-French title caption.
2 Craft Master Colouring Poster Art
A very rare item which is just superb: Craft Master made a series of movie colouring-in poster sets with six felt marker pens (others included Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica). The 17.5x22 inch monochrome artwork for the Jaws 2 set in question was really stunning: one of the standard Lou Feck water skier poster (complete with a trio of extra sharks swarming around the title at the foot of the page), and a second with John Solie’s Tina & Eddie art, but with added montage details of Brody in his tower, a buoy and seagulls, a lighthouse, and divers. There were also helpful colouring hints provided, lest you give Bruce II the wrong hue.
3 Activity Books
A set of four adventure-colouring-activity books, two of which are credited to author Mallory Callan, published by Elephant Books (Grosset & Dunlap, NY). They look and feel pretty cheap, have some fairly tenuous artwork, but are nice to collect thanks to the cover art (utilising familiar stills or artwork from the movie). These would have been standard fare on beach vacations in the summer of 1978, with their dot-to-dots, word searches and picture puzzles, and demand for blue crayons must have been through the roof as the colouring book with Roger Kastel’s artwork on the cover is thick as a door stop!
4 Marvel Super Special Comic
A true fan favourite and very much worth seeking out if you have any curiosity over what might have been if the Dorothy Tristan/John Hancock version of ‘Jaws II’ had happened. Marvel released an impressive range of movie tie-in comics between 1977 and 1986, which included Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Dragonslayer (a stand-alone comic release for The Deep was a separate release from this series).
The Jaws 2 comic brings vividly to life much of that Tristan/Hancock alternative vision: a run-down Amity Island, traumatised Chief Brody, and change in the dynamic of the teenagers (variations on the Jackie and Brooke characters, Andy as a bit of an oaf, Larry Jr as no-good ‘Reeves Vaughan’, and Bob as the intriguing ‘Sideburns’. The comic was written by Rick Marschall, illustrated by Gene Colan, and coloured by Tom Palmer. The fantastic cover art of a skin diver about the swallowed was painted by Bob Larkin, who produced the poster art for Piranha (1978).
5 The Jaws 2 Log
Do you even get movie special books these days? Are they ‘packed with exciting behind-the-scenes images,’ as they once were? Ray Loynd’s The Jaws 2 Log (published in the US by Dell with a blood red cover) had big shoes to fill, coming in the wake as it did of maestro Jaws scribe Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log. It’s a decent read though and has many interesting chapters, particularly on the kids of Amity, the technical aspects of making Bruce II function, and the issues with violence and ratings―the changing fate of Marge, and Bob’s second chance at life―is covered in fascinating detail. Oh, and it comes packed with exciting behind-the-scenes images too.
6 The Game of Jaws
Not strictly a piece of Jaws 2 merch, but Ideal’s The Game of Jaws was on sale well into the early 1980s, and even later with a rebrand to ‘Sharky’s Diner’. An exciting (well, it was back then) variation on Buckaroo!, itself developed by Ideal Toys, TGOJ involved fishing junk out of the shark’s mouth with a gaff hook before the jaw (very reminiscent of Bruce II’s underbite) slammed shut. The gameplay had to be inspired by Hooper finding the Louisiana license plate in the shark’s belly!
Originally (with Universal 1975 copyright stamp) in battleship grey, the shark was later manufactured in blue (the junk pieces also changed colour), and its eye sticker decals changed over the years too (gradually getting angrier it seemed?) Ideal for devouring Star Wars figures, but no so great as a bathtub companion. The box art, faithful to Roger Kastel’s poster, was sensational.
7 Collegeville Costume
I think kids’ fancy dress costumes were a little less elaborate in the UK, perhaps due to Halloween trick or treating not being such a big deal as in the States; in any case, film and TV has been a rich ground for costumes and awful cracking plastic masks that start to smell very bad very quickly, with snapping elastic to slap the unwary child in the face. In 1975 Collegeville made a Jaws costume (along with Hagar the Horrible, a terrifying Little Orphan Annie and countless others) and in 1978 duly came out with a Jaws 2 follow up. The plastic mask was the ascending shark, and the ‘flame retarded’ rayon and vinyl costume―a sleeveless vest and pant combo―was, well, the rest of the poster? The two-colour printing had the water skier’s bikini in red for what it’s worth.
8 Coca Cola Cup Set
Themed concession stand slurpee cups and movie souvenir programmes, ah! A trip to the cinema in the good old days! In 1978, The Coca-Cola Company was licensed to produce a set of five plastic cups featuring nice but rather cartoonish illustrations of scenes from Jaws 2... They included ‘Bert & Ernie’, Orca wreck divers, soon to be attacked by the shark; Terri water skiing (and soon to be attacked by the shark); Tina & Eddie (yes, you guessed it); and the Harbor Patrol helicopter. The latter is my favourite as it features Larry Jr’s Sizzler catamaran with its distinctive flame paintwork. In all but the more generic fifth cup (which features a design more akin to the original’s poster), you just see an ominous black fin in the artwork.
9 Commonwealth Toys Soft Shark
Universal licensing really went to town on the wave of Jawsmania for the original film, even putting out Jaws hipster and bikini briefs in luxurious nylon. Of course, plush toys are always going to sell, and why not a cuddly, stuffed Great White Shark that possibly has a plush Alex Kintner or Marge in its belly?
For Jaws 2 the plush shark was an upgrade on the ugly Jaws grey or white versions. Complete with plastic bead eyes, felt mouth and teeth, grey fur and with a licensed Jaws 2 card label.
10 Jaws 2 Cookbook
Another of the rare items in this list, the Jaws 2 Cookbook was more of a promotional item than a piece of merch, but it’s a curious one. Somewhere in there is a marketing executive’s great idea for humans getting revenge on the shark, by eating them. The 15-page book, subtitled ‘Turnabout Is Fair Play’, contains cartoon illustrations and such recipes as Shark Amity, Jaws Ole! and Jaws Lorraine, and the cover illustration features a shark divided into filet and fin cuts, and a crazed fisherman with a huge fork! A tasty piece of memorabilia if you can catch one.
Words by Scott Dingley aka @Jaws2Archivist
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