I was reading the WCW 2000 blog (where he reviews every WCW Nitro, Thunder, and PPV from 2000!) and in his review of The Great American Bash I saw this Hulk Hogan inflatable raft that you could get for FREE* just by sending in your cable bill!
*Unless you count the cost of the Pay-Per-View and the postage it cost you to send your cable bill in).
As you can see, we only have a conceptual drawing to go on, but I bet the real deal (not to be confused with The Real Deal) is so hideous that even The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island …
…would’ve said “Nah, we’d rather be marooned on the island and face starvation and certain death rather than risk being seen by a passing ship floating around in the ocean in that tacky thing!”.
UPDATE: Bryan over at WCWWorldwide.com put up a blog post saying that one of the rafts turned up on eBay and sold for just under $200!
It would probably be more dignified to be seen on this Giant Ducky Raft!
Of course, since this is a freebie giveaway item, the thing is probably only big enough to hold one of your WCW action figures in the first place.
This offer reminds me of those comic book ads for Sea Monkeys that show you an illustration of magnificent creatures frolicking around smiling and as happy as can be…
…and what you end up with are a couple of lame brine shrimp who are most definitely not smiling and frolicking!
“They can even be trained”?
Sure, if the only command you give them is “Swim around aimlessly and then die within a few days”.
Oh well, even if the Hulkster’s raft probably sucked, at least all you were out was the postage it cost you to send in your cable bill (oh, and the $29.99 the PPV set you back).
So that’s great, you had to suffer through yet another miserable, disappointing, mind-meltingly stupid WCW Pay-Per-View, and all you had to show for it was a thinner wallet, a tiny cheap raft, and a look of extreme sadness and disappointment in WCW’s booking on your poor face.
Did any of you Crappers actually send in for this raft? How big was it? Did it spring a leak the instant it touched water like a swimmer with bladder control issues?
Maybe WCW should have saved one of these rafts for their own use- then maybe they could have stayed afloat a little longer than they did!
Get it? Raft? Afloat?
(The Sea Monkeys comic book ad comes from the fantastic Tomorrow’s Heroes Comic Book Ads page chock full of awesome vintage comic book ads! Be sure and check it out!)
Was that joke at the end written by Wrestlecrap’s resident hobo, Blade Braxton?
No, this one was funny. 🙂
(Just kidding, Blade).
If the Crickets appear, it’s not funny
The crickets just hate me is all. 🙂
I just canoe there’d be a bad pun at some point. Maybe if Brother Bruti had this instead of the parasail his career wouldn’t have sunk. But I may just be flapping my jaws so I better float away. They should have pooled their resources and put a Thunder in Paradise logo on it not that would have been a real life perserver.
I so wish I would’ve thought of these puns. 🙂
Sadly I saw this PPV live. No raft offer for sending in my ticket stub.
I’ll never forget the event that would change wrestling forever – a lame Goldberg heel turn…
::crickets chirp::
Just…. sail….away…
Somehow I just know WCW lost money off of this.
Yeah, but I think making money off the raft itself wasn’t the idea- it was just to get people to buy the PPV.
Perhaps, but you can easily picture multiple warehouses full of these things because one of the ‘geniuses’ in charge greatly overestimated the buy rate
Oh yeah, I imagine a lot of them weren’t actually sent out.
So I have this raft. Sealed in package with the envolope it was sent in.
You should put it on eBay!