Wagon Wheels Adventure Club

When I was a kid, I loved joining clubs - I think it was the sense of 'belonging' to a group or something like that (yes, a terrible childhood, don't get me started!). ANYWAY, one of the clubs I joined was the "Wagon Wheels Adventure Club" from 1985 when I was 11. As I recall, the promotional material at the time promised an exciting club with the possibility of fantastic adventures with Indiana Jones! (this was hot of the back of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). What it delivered was a mixed bag of an experience, but still cool to have many of the things that came with the membership, and I'm very happy to be able to share them here.


Ultimately, what we have here is a good example of a mid-80s sales promotion. At it's corporate sales objective heart, the Wagon Wheels Adventure Club was designed to make kids, families and social groups buy a (somtimes staggering) amazing amount of Wagon Wheels in order to collect 'tokens' that could be redeemed for prizes. For those who don't know what Wagon Wheels are, they're two biscuits with marshmallow and jam in between, then coated with chocolate.

I often wonder about how successful the promotion was (with my marketing cap on). Let me take you through my recollections of the club.

Authentic Westons Wagon Wheels wrapper circa 1985 with 30 cent sticker.

Just for interest's sake, a comparison of the old packaging while the product was still owned by Westons and below, the current packaging as owned by Arnotts. Interesting to note Arnott's generosity of proving today's Wagon Wheel devotee an additional 3 grams of Wagon Wheel goodness!

Current Arnott's Wagon Wheels packaging.

Anyway, I digress! On the back of each Wagon Wheel wrapper were two tokens that you could then cut out and collect as below. These tokens were then amassed and traded in for prizes.

Another promotional tie-in with the club was with TV Week, I don't have any issues of these, but would love to collect them from the dates below. It appears that there was a regular exclusive competition plus the opportunity to claim bonus tokens.

Page from the Wagon Wheels Adventure Club Annual with detail on TV Week cross-promotion

I don't recall the process of actually joining the club, or where the membership form was found. But that doesn't matter - what I do recall is receiving the envelope in the post!

Authentic Wagon Wheels Adventure Club envelope! My old address of course is ancient history.

So, what was inside?? A welcome letter:

I don't have the Indiana Jones poster any more as mentioned in the letter, nor the glow in the dark stickers =/ but I do have my membership certificate!!

Also enclosed was the "Trading book", chock full of great prizes that could be redeemed from Wagon Wheel tokens. I did manage to redeem for one item, the first page that could be torn out. I don't remember what it was now, but it would have only been 20 tokens or so.

Wagon Wheels Adventure Club Trading Book

The prizes increased in their token cost and value, with a total of 24 items to choose from. Some examples are below:

Wagon Wheels Adventure Club - Rubber Torch or Magic Ball Puzzle

... through to....

...and this....

... to the ultimate prize ....

I calculated that you would need to organise the purchase of 5000 Wagon Wheels to get this! And at 30 cents a pop, you'd need to spend about $1500 to get your hands on this for your school, scout group or whatever!!



For the complete set, visit my flickr slideshow here

Awesome! So I was ready for "fun and excitement as I get caught up with Indiana Jones' daring adventures" (quote extracted from their welcome letter). All I needed to do was wait for the "Adventure Club Annual".

And it arrived.... I could taste that Indiana Jones goodness...

But, what's this? WHO IS THIS? WHO THE HELL IS THIS "IKE PRESTON?" I WANT INDY GODDAMIT!

Turns out Ike Preston was a former commando who served in the Vietnam war.

This was a total let-down as a kid.

Sure, the 'annual' (I only received one) had some interesting stories, artwork and puzzles....

BUT it wasn't Indiana Jones. If you're interested in seeing the whole magazine, you can view it here.

So what happened? My only guess is that something went horribly wrong with the licensing and George Lucas got greedy so they hastily replaced Indy with Ike. Judging from the lack of interest I had in completing the puzzles, I can only guess that I got bored and frustrated with inability to collect the tokens I needed to get something remotely cool from withtin the Trading Book plus the fact that Indiana Jones had disappeared I lost interest in it and stuck it all in a drawer.

Happily, I still have it to this day to share, and the kids get a kick out of it - I hope you did too!

The Sega Master years...

I finished school in 1991, I had NO idea what I wanted to do. At the time, my big brother worked for Sega Ozisoft, creating instore displays for latest game releases. Thanks to him in a way, he suggested that I call the Sega Hotline manager for a possible job on the hotline. I thought, well, I like games - why not?

And so it was, my first job out of school was working as a 'Sega Master' on the Sega Hotline, where people would call up and ask for help with whatever game they were playing a the time. It was a golden time in my life!! Paid to play video games!! Out of all of the calls for help, I'd have to say the most frequent was for 'Alex Kidd in Miracle World' - the game that was built-in to the console itself. All someone would have to say was 'I'm stuck in a room with boxes on the ground..." and we'd pipe-up with 'Sun... Waves... Moon..."... to which the panicked caller would ask what we were referring to... to which we'd explain... and they'd run off for a pen and paper. It's certainly handier to have youtube these days!!



Following from my Sega Master days, I wrote reviews and appeared on 1990s Video Game show (produced by Sydney based Beyond Productions) "The Zone". More on this later!

RainbowVision Atari 2600 Games

This text is lifted / adapted warts and all from my original Australian Classic / Retro Video Game website found here now, resurrected for reference and enjoyment of all - I like the artwork too on most of them! Sadly, I no longer have these games, they were sold off many years ago. Today, I'm always keeping an eye out for them as would love to start again. I could get them from Ebay, but don't want to pay crazy collector prices, and it's a lot more fun finding them 'in the wild' I gotta say!
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Hi, welcome to the Rainbow Vision Cart Archive.

Rainbow Vision carts were distributed only in Australia by the Rainbow Music group.

I'm not entirely sure of when Rainbow distributed these titles, but at a guess, I think it was the very early 80's. From my own info and  VGR's list, there seems to have been 20 titles in the series that was released, below is a table that outlines the known range. (The last 3 columns indicate if I own the game). If you are aware of the three oustanding titles, please let me know!!

Rainbow Vision carts are pirate rip-offs manufactured in Taiwan. For a laugh, I have included the "Game Descriptions" directly from the instruction manual for each game (if I have it), you'll find them next to the full size images. Somehow, somewhere, something was lost in the translations, and the resultant English is at times really bad - I have made sure that they were transcribed word for hilarious word....they're great!

The artwork isn't too bad on most of the carts, anyone know the source?

The following is a list of the carts I used to own:



Random Notes on Rainbow Vision Atari 2600 carts:

• - Rarity - One thing I have found over the past couple of years from collecting carts, is that these titles are pretty rare. I don't have duplicates for any of these titles. :P
• On the back of the boxes, it states "The home version of one of your favorite Arcade games"
• Also stated is "A quality product from the Rainbow Music Group. Distributed in Australia by Rainbow Products Limited, Sydney Australia.
• On the back of each cartridge are the initials S.S. (I think this stands for Star Soft?).

Atari 2600 Time Race by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Galactic by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Pac-Kong by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Pyramid War by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Tom Boy by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Netmaker by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Space Raid by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 The Year 1999 by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Bermuda by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Mafia by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Super Ferrari by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Bi! Bi! by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Catch Time by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Boom Bang by Rainbow Vision

Atari 2600 Curtiss by Rainbow Vision

Classic Video Games

Many years ago now, WAYYY back in 1999 I created a website that showcased my collection of Nintendo Game and Watches, Atari 2600 games (with a focus on Australian produced / distributed games) video game books and other items. Due to time constraints (ie. children!) and the fact that many of the games were sold on Ebay a long time ago, the site fell away and by 2004, when I no longer paid for hosting of the site, it disappeared into cyberspace... that is until I discovered that it lived on within the fabulous www.archive.org and the waybackmachine! The old site is accessible via the link here.

As part of this blog, I plan to ressurect elements of this website to place onto my blog, as a resource for collectors and to also make me not feel too bad about losing the countless hours of scanning and website creation in the first place! The first post of this will be on Rainbow Vision Atari 2600 games, and I'll continue to ressurect other elements of the old website over time. In any case, it feels good just to be able to give the old material a new life for me. I hope you enjoy!