Why was there never a...

[Den82]

Alice Cooper doll made by Mego. I think he would of been perfect.

[Nostalgiabuff]

not exactly child friendly for the time

[cjefferys]

I wish...that would have been great!

[The Toyroom]

Here's a custom one: Alice Cooper

[Dark Shadow]

Imagine the sales pitch between Shep Gordon & Marty Abrams:

Abrams: Alice Cooper? Sounds familiar...could you tell me some more about her?

Shep: Well actually, she's was a band, but now she's a he...a solo artist. His stage name was obtained from a Ouija board session during which a spirit made contact and claimed to have been an 17th century woman named Alice Cooper who was a witch. Alice is a very popular performer who has a very unique stage act. He wears eye makeup, blurs the lines of sexuality, chops up baby dolls, uses mannequinn parts to simulate sex acts, makes love to a frozen corpse, beats women, commits murder, performs various forms of execution reenactments (hangings, beheadings, firing squads, electrocution) and then comes back to life to start the cycle all over again. He-he, on one tour he mugged Santa Clause every night and stole all of his toys...it was a real hoot!

Abrams: Uhhh

Shep: And his songs...the living end! He's got wonderful little ditties about tooth decay, cross dressing, excess, booze, greed, nightmares, revenge, insanity, spousal abuse, rape, murder, death, dead babies, Hell, grave robbing & necrophilia!

Abrams: We'll be in touch, thank you for the call.

[samurainoir]

not exactly child friendly for the time

You can imagine how odd it was that this was a regular newsstand marvel comic. Comic code approved.



At least the kiss one was a magazine format, thus arguably aimed at an older crowd. Using the Mad and Warren precedences to dodge the code. Plus... The bands blood mixed into the ink.


After the Howard the duck appearance of course.

[cjefferys]

I was thinking of that Alice Marvel comic too when I first opened this thread. By the time that comic came out, Alice wasn't really in a "blood and guts" phase anyway, he was doing really different albums like "Lace and Whiskey" and "From the Inside" (both of which I do like, and the latter album is what the Marvel comic is based on) and trying to become more "Hollywood". So a toy crossover at that time would have made more sense.

Man, those two KISS comics totally ruled. I still got them, but they've been read to death. Great stuff!

[Dark Shadow]

Lace & Whiskey the album was primarily a confessional of alcohol abuse & the pitfalls of excess. (Not to mention the ode to transvestites). The Lace & Whiskey tour included classic dark staples in the setlist (Only Women Bleed, Sick Things, Billion Dollar Babies, Devil's Food/Black Widow, I Love The Dead, Wish You Were Here, Go To Hell)

From The Inside, the album...not typical blood & guts Alice?
Aside from the obvious alcoholic recovery theme, there's:

The Quiet Room: explicit suicidal yearnings
Nurse Rosetta: the sexually explicit unflowering of a holy man
Jackknife Johnny: the horrors of shell shock, includes explicit references to drug abuse (white coats, needles, morphine & meth)
For Veronica's Sake: the love that dare not speak it's name.
Millie & Billie: homicidal lovers (you with your pick axe & scissors/you with your shovel & gun...all sliced up & sealed tight & baggies, guess love makes you do funny things).
Inmates (We're All Crazy): We just burned down the church, while the choir within sang religious songs...We just played with the wheels of the passenger train that cracked down the tracks one night...We just dug up the graves where your relatives lay in old forest lawn.

Not much of a stray from Alice's core. Actually, Muscle Of Love, which preceded Welcome To My Nightmare is the only album released in the 70's that didn't really dive into the darker side of the human condition.

[cjefferys]

Sorry, maybe it's just me, but I see the whole period from "Lace and Whiskey" to "DaDa" as not "typical" Alice, musically, image-wise, and lyrically. But I do find this period very interesting, and think there were a lot of good, underrated songs recorded during that time.

[Dark Shadow]

I share your appreciation for that particular era, and I appreciate most of his work. However, I don't really see anything from 1969 through 1979 that can typify the character of Alice. Each album/tour had it's own direction (or misdirection) and personality. The Alice "image", IMO, is the sum of all of those pieces.

Pretties For You is completely incohesive compared to Easy Action which is worlds apart from Love It To Death which differs vastly from Killer which is a significantly separate mindset from School's Out which is an entirely different animal from Billion Dollar Babies which does not jive at all with Muscle of Love.

Then we're tossed into the darker conceptual full blown theatrical trip of Welcome To My Nightmare which led us directly into the more Broadwayesque surreal sequel attempt Goes To Hell which reared back into the more real world feel of Lace & Whiskey which ultimately crashed into From The Inside.

The departure from the tortured & conflicted character started with Flush The Fashion (hence the title) and continued through DaDa. Once truly sober and paving his way to a comeback (1985 ish), that is when Alice's image was solidified into a cohesive caricature drafted from some of his dalliances of the 70's. Up through 1984, Alice was all over the map and I enjoyed the entire journey.

[DocDrako]

I'd love an Alice "Mego".

I found Alice in the 80's, with "Flush The Fashion". That of course led to finding his earlier stuff which I also liked. But Flush The Fashion, Zipper Catches Skin, & Dada are three of my favorite Alice albums. Ever since I started collecting Megos, I've wanted to do a good Alice custom, but my custom skills just won't allow that. I keep hoping for an Alice Re-Mego.

[samurainoir]

[generic]

not exactly child friendly for the time

He was on the Muppet Show!

[jimsmegos]

And now all we've got is Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber

[Den82]

I thought at first he was no more wild than Kiss, but yeah...I seem to forgot songs like "I Love the Dead" and "Cold Ethyl".

I never saw that Marvel comic.