Comic books, at the end of the day, are a product trying to get sold. There wouldn’t be a comic book industry if fans didn’t purchase them, after all, but while these stories tell of upstanding heroes and unshakable souls, the companies that fund them are out to promote, promote, promote. Ads are what keep comics on the shelves, after all, but there’s always one step further than regular ads, and that’s exactly what Marvel and Eagle Snacks gave us back in 1996 with the creation of the unstoppable Combo Man. He was, of course, named for the CombosTM Baked Snacks, and his powers were based on that concept.
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Combo Man has made a grand total of two appearances, with his most recent in Ziggy Pig-Silly Seal Comics(2019) #1 being a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo. His debut in Combo Man was the ultimate collaboration between Marvel and Eagle Snacks, and not only did he have an origin that’s as wild as you can imagine from this type of product placement, but he became one of Marvel’s strongest heroes of all and averted a world-ending disaster. If you’re looking for the type of ad we’re talking about, it’s about ten times crazier than this Got Milk ad from 2000.
The Meta-Origins of Marvel’s Strangest Hero
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Perhaps fittingly, Combo Man actually appeared several months before his debut comic in a series of promotional ads. Kids could win Combo Man merchandise by correctly guessing the fourteen heroes and villains who made up his different parts. The majority of these costume bits were easy, but there were some genuinely challenging additions meant to trip up all but the most dedicated of Marvel fans. The fourteen characters in question were, in top-down order: Hulk, Cyclops, Iron Man, Magneto, Punisher, Captain America, Sabertooth, Carnage, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Century, Human Torch, Silver Surfer, and Gambit.
Now, Cyclops’s visor and Captain America’s star are simple enough to recognize, but the people running this contest really wanted to keep fans on their toes with this. Using Sabertooth instead of Wolverine, especially when both had yellow and brown suits, was definitely meant to trip people up. Gambit’s boots aren’t exactly iconic, either, and Daredevil had just changed his costume, so hardly anyone had gotten used to his new look. Of course, the biggest secret in plain sight was Century. He’s definitely obscure by today’s standards, and he can’t have been much better known in 1996, but he was new. He’d debuted just a year earlier in Force Works #1, which was formed to make up for the West Coast Avengers disbanding. Either way, the public was prepped for Combo Man’s debut, which finally arrived in January of 1996.
Combos Are Greater Than the Sum of Their Parts
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Rick Wilder was a bullied student who, to get in his tormentors’ good graces, was peer-pressured into breaking into their school’s lab to steal midterm answers. He snuck in with nothing but his backpack full of Marvel comics and a Combos addiction. Seriously, he was in the middle of a heist and cracked a pack of Combos. Unfortunately for everyone, he stumbled onto AIM Soldiers pressuring his professor into handing over a device meant to expand human potential. Rick made a distraction for his teacher to escape, but that made the soldier chase him when he stumbled into the room with the professor’s ray, which promptly exploded in a burst of light.
Naturally, after escaping a massive explosion and almost being shot, Rick’s first thought was to eat more Combos, and then he emerged from the smoke, transformed into Combo Man. With newfound powers that mimicked those of every hero who made up his design, he easily dispatched the AIM goons, only to be met with the Super-Adaptoid. Rick knew just how powerful he was, but was also aware that if the Super-Adaptoid mimicked his powers, then it would become practically unstoppable. After all, he had Magneto’s magnetism, Spider-Man’s precog, Daredevil’s senses, Sabertooth’s healing, Century’s teleportation, and the Power Cosmic, on top of everything else. Adding the Power Cosmic to any of these characters would be absolutely bonkers, but giving it to someone with Magneto’s power set might as well be a universal threat.
Just then, Rick turned back to normal. He realized that eating Combos triggered his transformation, so he popped some more and became Combo Man once again. He managed to defeat the Super-Adaptiod before it could mimic his abilities, meaning that he saved the Marvel Universe from an absolutely endgame-level threat. With that, he flew off, confident that peer pressure was something he’d never fall for again. Although this is an anti-peer pressure narrative, it was the peer pressure that geared him towards getting powers in the first place, which is more than a bit ironic.
This story, obviously, is insane. Rick is a Combos-addicted kid who stumbles into godhood, and then those powers immediately become a threat when the Super-Adaptoid nearly copies them. There’s a strange trend of deep-baked irony to the fact that bullying is both spoken against and rewarded, and Combos empower Rick to save the day, but the biggest threat stems from that power itself. That’s not even getting into the beautifully ’90s dialogue that caused me at least a little bit of pain. Screaming “Oh Cheese!” when something goes wrong is a fantastic idea to adopt.
At the end of the day, this is a hilarious piece of Marvel history. Is it a good comic? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Is it fun, dumb, and everything product placement should strive to be? Absolutely. Combo Man is the literal byproduct of an age that has passed, but if Marvel one day decided to return to letting companies make their own overpowered original character, it wouldn’t be good, but it would be hilarious enough for me to be down to read it, without question.
Which Marvel ad campaign do you remember most fondly? Let us know in the comments below, and remember, kids, if you ever get caught in an explosion, be sure to keep your Combos on hand!
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