I know I just did a post on PIZZAZZ, but I needed to explore one of the greatest things about the magazine - the covers! Check out the one above. It's like it was designed by a team of 1970s pre-teens - Spock, Vader and the Close Encounters fetus thing, with stories on baseball, KISS, UFOs, comics and Peter Frampton.... does it get any better than this?!?
Read on, to take a quick tour of some more wonderful covers of PIZZAZZ.
YES!! Look out Doc Oc, here comes Spidey on a little 70s style skateboard. I'm diggin' the hand gesture. Rock on!
Man, Santa is a drag. Skip the "Ho-Ho" jive - put on your damn helmets!
The very first issue, and it started out with a bang. Sure, the joke is horribly cheezy; but, it's Star Wars. Kids back then ate up anything that even hinted at a relationship to Star Wars. Is Artoo swearing?
Can you identify everyone in this picture? I know I can: Spidey, The Fonz, Hulk, Kate Jackson, Cheryl Ladd, Jaclyn Smith, Shaun Cassidy, Kristy McNichol, Thor, and Parker Stevenson. Please, hold your applause.
Eegad! It's Sigfried (or is it Roy?) and he's wearing a leopard like a shawl (possibly the same one that would take a bite out of Roy's neck). Not exactly a cover that would appeal to 70s kids - at least there's references to Fonzie and The Commodores to lure kids in. But overall, not one of the better PIZZAZZ covers.
Spider Man again. He was everywhere back then, even on the Electric Company.
Even more omnipresent than the webslinger, was Shaun Cassidy. For a couple years, you couldn't open your eyes and not see Shaun somewhere. His little album was quite popular among kids riding the schoolbus, his show (The Hardy Boys) was extremely popular, and his mug was plastered over every magazine on the rack - from CREEM to Tiger Beat. And then, sometime in 1979, POOF! he was gone.... and you never saw him again.
God, what a disaster this was. It was so hyped up, and it did NOT deliver. Even with every major celeb and musical act popular at the time, it still couldn't get anyone to go see the movie or buy the record. I still remember the bargain bins at the record store overflowing with Sgt. Pepper double albums going for peanuts.
Here's a few more...
I've saved the best for last, folks. The greatest cover in magazine history.
