"A PROMOTIONAL and advertising campaign to boost the SWORD range of space-age toys from Century 21 Toys Ltd. is being launched throughout the country during November.
The campaign will embrace trade, provincial Press and children's comic advertising, advertising on millions of bus tickets and competitions for both retailers and consumers."
The above quote comes from Toad's fabulous blog post on SWORD's November 1968 advertising campaign. You can read the full snippet here.
I was intrigued by the word provincial and thought I'd seen it elsewhere in the blog archive. It appears in the final line of this clipping supplied by Darth back in 2008, when we first discussed SWORD advertising campaigns. The clipping is undated but we know that 2001 A Space Odyssey, which it refers to in the past tense, premiered in London on 10th May 1968 [imdb - which cinema?]. Could the advertising campaign mentioned in the top article found by Toad be the same as that described here? The dates seen to fit with it all centred on 1968.
If you've looked back at our 2008 discussion refered to above you'll have seen another trade clipping about SWORD campaigns, also found by resident detective Toad. For convenience it's re-posted in full below with the relevant SWORD bits blown up below.
This article, also about the 2001/ SWORD tie-in, is dated June 1968, after the London premiere of 2001 in May. Despite trying I can't find a list of UK cinema showings for 2001 except for those in Cinerama, which includes Birmingham 19th January 1969 [ref. in70mm.com].
So in conclusion, is it possible that all three clippings found by Toad and Darth refer to one single SWORD advertising campaign, albeit in different parts, during the summer and winter of 1968, centred on the London release of 2001 and spinning out to the provinces from there into shops and onto buses?
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