So years ago these poor artists created spider queen for a terrible guy who didn't pay them and now you are stealing their creation to make money off it yourself. I mean I'm sure it's in public domain so you were able to steal both things but damn. Talk about"not sitting right"
Back in the day, I would slam a whole six pack of koobas at the arcade before a game of Polybius. They advertised the hell out of the soda in Sinbad’s “Shazaam” movie!
There's something funny to me about lifelong scammers like that. Like at a certain point it's gotta be easier to just run a legitimate business but nah, keep that grift wheel going.
It hasn't been easy to run a legitimate business for at least a hundred years. Sounds like you just call a corporation a "legitimate business" instead of a grift, and that's why your little brain can't handle the fact that people with successful grifts keep doing the successful grifts instead of switching to some other business.
Moxie still exists and yet somehow tastes like it was made 100 years ago and was recently found in an abandoned factory and delivered to the nearby gas station.
@@ColeHrusovsky yep and I can't get enough , I literally have ordered their drink holder and had 12 cans from Ohio delivered half way across the nation
That coupon thing was actually really clever. If I was a tiny kid and I saw the coupon had expired, I’d just think “oh, better get the next issue to use that coupon”. Then I’d pick up the next issue, notice the coupon had expired, and then the cycle would continue.
With the logo I assumed that it would be some sort of subliminal marketing for KOOL cigarettes in childrens' magazines that they were either barred from or would look bad on them. The truth is far funnier than I could've imagined. Great video and straight to the point!
Okay, genuine question. If the name "Kooba Cola" is in the public domain now (which I'm assuming it is), could someone hypothetically sell a real soda and call it "Kooba Cola"?
@@BenoHourglass I’m not totally sure what you mean by “anyone else” unless you just mean that multiple people can do this. If so, good. I don’t want anyone to have a monopoly on this brand name. I want options.
@@BenoHourglass I wasn't hoping to corner the market. I don't personally plan to mass produce Kooba Cola and I never did. I was just wondering if the possibility of Kooba Cola becoming real exists at all.
Edit: The sticker is now real! It's here! :D Could we possibly also get a Kooba Cola sticker in the merch lineup? Responsibly, I shouldn't buy more graphic tees for a good while, but I would LOVE to add a Kooba sticker to my collection. :)
It would be great to make a cola that didn't contain phosphorus. Coke etc. is made with phosphoric acid, and _some people_ have serious dietary restrictions against phosphorus.
Usually uncolas, like Sprite, use citric acid instead. Root Beer also uses Citric acid or Malic Acid, as do orange and grape sodas, etc. so there are a lot of sodas out there that don’t use phosphoric acid. Sadly, Dr Pepper, like the Colas, does use phosphoric acid
@@RLucas3000 I think some root beers might be phosphoric acid, others citric, but I'm not super sure about that? Anyway, make sure to read the labels carefully if you have dietary restrictions -- even the 'same product' can be slightly different formulations in different form factors, like the canned vs bottled vs fountain versions of a soda, to say nothing about regional variations or changes over time.
Pfft - didn't exist in your dimension, mayhap! *Takes a hearty swig of refreshing Kooba Cola - easily the most popular soft drink, here on Earth #23-alpha-pumpkin* Aah, delicious - you can really taste the extra vitamin B1! ^_^
It's comedic now, but for the first several decades of their existence, soda was mainly treated as a health drink. For one thing, carbonation was associated with mineral water (ie natural carbonation) and considered healthy for you. For another, sugar's negative health effects were almost completely misattributed to overeating, so its connection with medicine as a way to cut bitterness made it appear healthy by association. The "Dr" in Dr Pepper isn't just a cute flourish, they pushed that shit as being literally good for you.
Austin, are you planning on joining the World Beard and Mustache Championships? Your 'stache is coming along nicely, and I wouldn't be surprised if you'll make a video out of it in a year or two.
If the guy went legit and made his own soda and advertised it in his own comics, he would have two revenue streams. But no, greed and stupidity blinded his chance.
I am very slightly disappointed that you didn't play any audio from the Blue Beetle radio show. It is (as far as I can tell) out of copyright, it's widely available on old-time radio forums, and it is absolutely UNHINGED. I downloaded some episodes because I was a fan of the lead actor, Frank Lovejoy, who also starred in a great noir series called Nightbeat. Imagine a man with the perfect voice for a hardboiled detective trying to voice a hyperviolent superhero when nobody has any idea what the script is going to do next ...
@@austinmcconnell Oh my God, PLEASE do. If you need someone to laugh hysterically about how weird it is compared to other radio of the time (The Adventures of Superman is a good point of comparison), I will happily gush about my most obscure fandom to one of my favorite RU-vidrs. Same handle on Twitter and Tumblr.
Linkara's Blue Beetle retrospective introduced me to Kooba Cola. Everything about Fox Comics, from the history, the guy in charge, and the comic books themselves are very entertaining to hear about and I would like to see an Ed Edd n' Eddy style comedy inspired by this company.
I thought that Austin would be launching his own kooba cola by the end of the video lol Also, am I the only one that for a moment I thought it was koopa cola and that this would be a great name for a super Mario soda drink?
@@jamesknapp64 koopa cola, the newest alcohol based soda from Nintendo, power up beyond any 7 ups that Mario can get, in a trip bigger than any super mushroom available until now. Feel the wonder with Nintendo
The Kooba Cola logotype and bottle look pretty darn good; too bad it never existed or that any bottles were manufactured. I do think someone should be making t-shirts and other clothing with this logo...maybe stickers as well. "5c - Big Enough For Two!"
About 15 years ago I was searching online for information about Kooba Cola. I found an interesting post on an old message board; not a comics related forum. A guy said he had been a sidewalk peddler for one summer in Secaucus New Jersey circa 1940. He would pick up soda at a local bottling factory in the morning and there was a brand he had never seen before or since; it was called Kooba Cola. The guy didn’t mention Fox Features or anything about comics or advertising. The story seemed credible to me.
Fascinating. He could be misremembering, or there might have coincidentally been a local soda with the same name, since there were countless brands back then.
@@z-beeblebrox Possibly a case of not really fully remembering what it looked like/was pronounced like, trying to think back to it, and his brain filling in the blanks from an ad campaign he'd seen for a very similar looking/sounding product -- the Kooba Cola ad campaign.
Um, they weren't "literally a dine a dozen." That would mean you would have gotten 12 comic books for a dime. As you clearly pointed out, they were a dime for a single one. They were figuratively a dime a dozen, meaning they were cheap. Adjusting for inflation, ten cents in the mid-1930s would roughly be about $1.90 in today's money. So yeah, that's pretty cheap for a comic book. ;)
Austin, DC only owns the trademarks and later copyrights for Blue Beetle, hence why they rarely if ever use the Dan Garret/Dan Garrett version. he’s in a legal limbo, his comics before Charlton are in the public domain but he can’t be used by anyone because DC has the rights to print under the name Blue Beetle he’s not alone in that gray area as Shazam/Captain Marvel is as well since his oldest works are public domain yet he’s pretty much impossible to use by anyone but DC
If I had a nickel for every time I found out that a major comic book company that originally created characters that now belong to one of the major two companies was actually a front for fraud, I'd be able to afford two bottles of Kooba Cola
Fun fact: Sweden has had a brand of Cola named Cuba Cola since 1953. It's actually pretty good - less sickeningly sweet than Coke or Pepsi, and has a slightly higher caffeine ratio.
I am now heavily invested in this Victor Fox. He seems like a notable guy that did a lot, yet there's no wikipedia page on him (he has a section in fox comics but not his own page). I am very curious on this man and will probably be doing a deep research dive now. For the record, this man is a bit of a ghost.
So I have to ask, in each video it feels like your mustache gets a little bigger. Are you planning to enter a mustache competition or do something with your mustache like your juggling video where you try and beet some record, or is it just for fun?
Something kinda funny: Linkara, of AT4W, brought up Kooba Cola in his Blue Beetle retrospective, and subsequently used it as an ad bumper for his in universe event, the Contest of Champions, which is broadcast to a mulitverse. The bumpers basically just have a tagline of trying the possible taste of this hypothetical soda, or something to that effect.
I really like your videos on the golden age of comics. I always feel like I'm learning something new and the stories are interesting. Please keep them up!
You know the funniest thing is that, if he really wanted to, Fox could've probably made Kooba Cola a reality. He certainly had enough money, and soft drinks thmeselves had somewhat of a boom too like his comics, he just needed to actually invest into making a real product and boom REAL Kooba Cola. Also, printing fake coupons that are conveniently out of date long before they are published sounds like something that would be illegal even by 1940s standards.
Austin one of these days you need to do a video about tieing someone to rail road tracks dressed as a classic villain in a cape and top hat to go with that mustache for you to twirl
AustinMcConnell is beginning his slow transformation into HEAVILY Pinning his entire Internet Channel on 'Talking about the Earliest Comic Books' that will aid in his Bargin Bin Cinematic Universe since the earliest Comic Books will go Public Domain in a Decade from now. -provided the worst doesn't transpire with his medical issues-
Bought a pint glass. This will be my soda glass. No matter what sort of soda I drink, it will be Kooba Cola. Coke? Pepsi? Orange Crush? 7-Up? It's all Kooba Cola in that glass.
I could've sworn there was a reference to Kooba Cola in your Spider-Queen novel, but I checked again, and it wasn't there. I think this should be part of the lore of the Superzeroes Universe.
2:43 "Victor Fox spent his early days as a con man routinely starting random companies ... and then filing for bankruptcy as needed" - these days we call that the _Trump Maneuver_ .
My grandfather was a printer and ran his own printing shop he never dealt with comic companies or printed comics but he did say when it came to getting paid from companies who filed bankruptcy or getting paid in general he said, “They always paid the printer last. Every time, Kid.”
There is a brand of cola in Sweden called Cuba Cola. In Swedish that's pronounced very close to Kooba Cola. It was introduced in Sweden shortly before Coca-Cola made its way here.
@@Igarappappa It was my favourite cola drink, unfortunately when Spendrups bought it out they seem to have changed the formula and now it tastes really generic. The re-design of the brand looks nice though.
While there are still a few people around who were kids in that era, someone needs to hurry up and actually make Kooba Cola just to mess with their heads. Besides, somewhere out there is at least one person who never found out it was fake, and has spent his or her entire life wanting to try it, if only once, and I love the idea of putting a smile on their face when they walk into a store and there it finally is.
You missed a golden opportunity to put an ad at the end of your comment. :) (This comment on your comment, meanwhile, is advertising Raid Shadow Legends. Play it today!)
I caved. I bought the Spider Woman book. I'm excited to read it and see what life you've given to a pulp golden age character! I'm enjoying the content immensely. Keep it up! Hope your health is improving!
@@austinmcconnell have you ever heard of OK cola? They manufactured some cans of it, but it never reached full distribution before it was discontinued.
