Welcome back to another Fabulous Find! This week I’ve pulled out my copy of the 1965 flexible record entitled; “The Voices Of Marvel”. This was part of the 1965/1966 official Merry Marvel Marching Society membership kit. Unfortunately, I did not join up back then, and therefore I do not have the rest of the kit, but I did purchase this flexidisc in a comic book shop in Cleveland, Ohio a number of years ago. Here’s what both sides of the sleeve look like, the front:
Voices of Marvel Cover – 1965
And the reverse:
Voices of Marvel back
The record, or flexidisc, is single sided and features Stan Lee and Flo Steinberg (Stan’s secretary and girl Friday) speaking to various Marvel Comic book company personnel, like Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Wally Wood, Artie Simek, etc. Steve Ditko is mentioned, but his voice does not appear on the record! There is no real purpose to the record, but back in 1965, where else were you going to get to hear Stan and the Marvel bullpen speak, unless you lived in New York City and were lucky enough to make your way into Marvel’s offices!
As I said earlier, this disc was part of the first membership kit to the Merry Marvel Marching Society. The 1965 membership kit contained the following items; an official membership welcome letter, a white membership card, an official membership scratch pad, ten orange stickers, printed with “The M.M.M.S. Wants You!”, an official membership pinback, reading; “I Belong to the Merry Marvel Marching Society” and the 33 1/3 one-sided flexible record, entitled; “The Voices of Marvel”. Here’s a picture of the complete kit:
1965 M.M.M.S. membership kit
Sorry, I was not able to find a clearer picture of the contents. But here are a couple of close-ups:
1965 M.M.M.S. pinba
1965 M.M.M.S. sticker
And you received all of this for one dollar! That’s correct, for one measly buck you got all of the items I listed above! Pretty cool and quite a value for your dollar! I even understand that later on, the membership kit was discounted to 89 cents! Can you imagine?
Today, I’m sure you would be looking at, at least $ 19.95 and maybe more!
Anyway, I wish I was savvy enough to have ordered this back in the day, but then again, a buck back then would have bought eight comic books at 12 cents a piece! So if the question was, can I afford to buy eight comic books, or can I afford to buy the M.M.M.S. membership kit, I know I chose to buy the comics, with my hard earned allowance money, rather than splurging on the cool Merry Marvel Marching Society membership kit!
Oh, one more thing; If you’re not as lucky as I, to own this collectible, you can still here Stan and company, via the modern technological wonders of YouTube:
