Hostess Heroes versus Cats and Dogs

Batman in Catman on the Prowl
Sounds like Catman's recently found himself single again. And it's up to Gotham's own Dynamic Duo to cockblock this swinging supervillain's plans for injustice!

I'm not much of a Batman fan, but I have to admire his cool demeanor and steely resolve - under assault by a pair of panthers and another vicious predator cat skirting his immediate vicinity, and Batman's still got the time to piece together the subtle clues involved in his predicament, and to adroitly put the finger on his feline foe. You can just imagine his laser-quick mind in action ... "Let's see, I'm under attack by jungle cats ... it's late at night ... Robin's just hanging around over there for no reason, instead of helping ... I see Catman standing on the ledge with even more giant cats ... WHO could be behind this? Why, the answer is obvious!"

Of course, there's every chance that we only joined him just as he happened to be saying Catman's name out loud, and before that, he'd gone through a laundry list of other possible culprits. "I see that ... Anarky breaks all the rules tonight!" And then a pause, and then "No? Okay, I see that the Calendar Man has made today a red-letter day." Pause. "Anything? Right, who's next..." And luckily, Cat-Man's pretty early on in the alphabet.

Whatever the case, Batman's got that clear thinking Catman only wishes he had; the dude doesn't seem to have picked exactly the right theme for his villaining. "I sure do love darkness and dark things, Batman! There's probably nothing I love more than big ol' dark darkness all the ding dang dark day. Yup, dark things are great. Anyway, here are some cats!"


Batman in The K-9 Caper
It's kind of a shame that supervillains don't use dog-themed names as often as they use cat-themed names; everybody loves cat names, they're the go-to of the comic book coterie. There's a Catwoman here and a Cheetah there (specifically, a few inches below, as a matter of fact), but when's the last time anyone was particularly menaced by the stubby-legged terror of THE CORGI? You could even call him Death-Corgi, that might fly!

The Beagle, Black Terrier, Hound Dog, Iron Mutt, the Electric Airedale ... the possibilities are endless. Of course, if you got a villain named The German Shephard, it seems to ask more questions than it answers. Is he a villain with the powers and cunning of the dog known as the German Shepherd, or is he a villain with all the powers and cunning of a Shepherd, and he's German? Questions abound.

Anyway, there's only guys like Mad Dog, and I seem to remember a guy named "Pit Bull", and if I'm lucky, there's some sort of evil Space Canine Patrol Agency so there can be Terror Terrier and Darks-Hund and maybe The Irish Bloodletter or something. PS In this ad, Batman fights a retarded villain in a dumb costume and throws snacks at him. I know, shocking ...


Wonder Woman vs The Cheetah
There's an trademark and intellectual property suit brewing here, you can tell, and those are things which even Hostess Cup Cakes cannot solve. No, wait, what am I saying, the Supreme Court decided that Hostess snack foods constituted a perfectly legitimate legal recourse, in 1967's landmark Twinkie the Kid vs The Board of Education.

There's sort of a disturbing trend in this strip, where it becomes pretty clear that this panther can clearly understand Wonder Woman's every instruction. I don't like the idea that cats - however big or small - can pick up the nuance of human dialogue. I mostly expect they'll use it against us, possibly in courts of law, maybe in an effort to repeal Twinkie the Kid vs The Board of Education, which will be a real blow to progressive values in the United States.

Weirdest thing about this one - or not so weird when you take the Hostess ads ouvre as a whole and Wonder Woman's adventures specifically - is that The Cheetah MkII here doesn't appear to have actually committed any sort of crime. Matter of fact, it kind of looks like Wonder Woman just wanted to bring her a snack. If you read this strip carefully, it actually seems distinctly pleasant. "Bring this present to your mistress" ... "I'll take care of the Cheetah's pets" ... "Hope you enjoyed your Hostess Cup Cakes, Cheetah", she says, and the Cheetah replies "...They were delicious!" My goodness, what a civilized Hostess ad! We need more like this, or at least more less stupid than the Spider-Man ones, which are pretty much incomprehensible.