From Strange magazine, a very cool looking watch! Just send $19.95 plus shipping and handling to some guys in Van Nuys! No sightings of this online nowadays, but there are plenty of other zodiac watch options out there.
And another sighting of the Cybertronic Destiny Wheel, now on offer alongside its mate the Cybertronic Detector and a half dozen other gewgaws. Take 'em all home for just $59.95!
Edit: check the comments for some more info on the Destiny Wheel, including patent information! Thanks, TK!
But just what was Strange magazine all about? It's an obvious Fate knockoff, and would you believe that those cheap manjacks at Popular Library have simply raided their copious backlog of Brad Steiger's Strange paperbacks to give us 31 more-or-less thrilling reprinted tales of the unknown? We also get a handful of tales copied over from Steiger's Strange Powers of E.S.P. from Belmont Books, such as the mini-skirt psychic, Rommel's ghost in the sand of El Alamein, and a seance attended by the Beatles. Other familiar Steiger standbys include Olaf Jansen's tales of the Smoky God of the inner earth bundled up with those damnable Deros, the man who records voices from outer space, and scads of ghost stories! Some of these are tales that Steiger did in fact source from Fate, with full credit given, making this even more of a ripoff volume. Some of the stories are better than others, but the good ones make up for the filler. His "Smoky God" chapter on Hollow Earth ideas - reprinted from New UFO Breakthrough from Award Books - is a standout, with more than enough goofiness to make up for some lame poltergeists and coincidences in other chapters. An interesting detail: some of the stories are credited to Steiger's birth name, Eugene Olson. Also worth noting that Strange had a far higher percentage of generic self help ads compared to Fate, which maintained a good rate of occult flavoring in its adverts.
Finally, here's an ad for another compilation mag - this one swipes the cover art from Steiger's The Occult in the Orient, which is pretty cool to be fair.
As for what the hell this guy's doing, I have no idea ...
From Strange magazine, Volume 1 - Number 3, 1971. Courtesy Popular Library.
The "Cybertronic Destiny Wheel" was patented by Louis F. Grein and John L. Du Bois in 1972: US3669453A, "Rotatable pointer driven and indexed by the rotor of an electronically controlled motor having permanent magnet poles", https://patents.google.com/patent/US3669453A/en
ReplyDeleteIt seems, though, that their "Paraphysical Cybertronics" business did not bring them much success, as they ended up moving east and founded Thermalogic Corporation, a concern involved in electronic temperature sensor manufacture and such-like.
Love the background info, thank you!
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