MADness #20: New NASCAR Rules!

We continue our inane and pointless wandering through my appearances in MAD Magazine with my 20th contribution, a return to the world of sports with “MAD‘S Proposed Rule Changes for the Upcoming NASCAR Season”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and appearing in MAD #427, March 2003. This piece was unique in that I was told to draw a caricature of someone in it that was part of an advertising/promotional campaign. This surprised and shocked me actually… coming from a magazine that very famously not only refused to carry ads for many decades but had dedicated many hundreds of pages on features ridiculing advertising and its deceptive practices. The times, they were a’changin’.

Back in 2002 DC/Warner Bros/MAD started a promotional campaign with the South Beach Beverage Co. aka “SoBe”. SoBe was producing a new chocolate flavored energy drink called “Love Bus Brew”, and for some reason MAD was partnering with them to promote it. I have no idea what a “Love Bus” or a chocolate flavored drink had to do with MAD Magazine, but they had several tie-ins worked up. Some of bottle caps of the drink had “What, Me Worry?” printed on the underside, and if you sent three of these in you got a free “MAD/SoBe” T-shirt. There was also some kind of MAD subscription discount you could get via the bottle caps, but I can’t remember how that worked. Sergio did a two page spread ad that appeared as the center spread in MAD #418 and #419, and SoBe used Sergio’s art and MAD themed imagery for print ads and as part of posters, stickers and fake tattoos that were given away on a “Love Bus” tour they did the summer of 2002.

Another part of the promotion was a sweepstakes where the grand prize winner would get drawn into MAD magazine. The winner was selected from a random drawing, gathered from online and mail-in sweepstakes entries. The contest had actually taken place back in the spring of 2002, and I was provided with photos of the winner and asked to draw him into this piece. That’s him on the bottom left corner with the SoBe drink.

I can only imagine his disappointment that Mort Drucker didn’t draw him. This was not the only time I was asked to draw someone into the magazine for promotional purposes, but it was the first time and I think the only time it involved an advertising angle.

Interestingly enough, this wasn’t my first brush with the MAD/SoBe promotion. Back in the summer of 2002, I was hired to fly out to Cleveland and appear at the SoBe sponsored booth at the “X-Games”, where I drew live caricatures all weekend as was billed as a “MAD Artist”.

Toon in next week, when we take a look at my 21st appearance in MAD, a two pager lampooning the 2003 Best Picture nominees for the Oscars!