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Middle Earth Discount Records and Tapes, Circa 1977
I found the photo at Michael Poulin’s Flickr and subsequently discovered the Middle Earth Records Memorial Page. The music store and head shop opened in 1969 and closed in 2007. Business card below.
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The Lord of the Rings T-Shirt (Tolkien Enterprises, 1978)
You’ll see a “Hip-O-Potamus S.F.” on the bottom left of the shirt. That refers to an influential San Francisco company founded in 1970 by Jeffrey Axelrod and Barry Anderson. Their first job, after...
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Middle Earth Clothing Ad, Circa 1967
The artist is Terre, who is closely associated with Haight Ashbury’s Straight Theater, which is identified on the middle left of the map. The exotic fruit hanging from the various branches, as well as...
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The Lord of the Rings Custom Vans, Circa 1978 – 1980
Old Man Willow holds the wet bar and TV, folks, and the bed is “upholstered in gold crushed velour.” Those are real tree stumps leading up to the bed. Here are two more specimens, with art and titles...
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The Lord of the Rings 3-D Paper Cut-Out Doodle and Play Set (Tolkien...
Also check out the AD&D Color and Build Castle from 1983.
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Gandalf’s Garden, Circa 1969 – 1972
Gandalf’s Garden was a shop and mystical community in Chelsea, London, that was active between 1969 and 1972. Founded by Muz Murray (a.k.a. Ramana Baba), now a “world renowned Mystic and Mantra Yoga...
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`Hobbit T-Shirts’ and `Come to Middle Earth’ Ads in Rolling Stone (December,...
The Quest of the Magic Ring board game, seen below, was published in 1975 by Land of Legend, the placer of the ad on the right. You can see more photos at Board Game Geek. The first board game based...
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The Lord of the Rings Vinyl Sculpture Banks: Gollum and Aragorn (Tolkien...
The fish! See here and here for other LOTR merchandise, and go here to check out the action figures.
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Heinz Edelmann Cover Art for The Lord of the Rings (Klett-Cotta, 1969/1970)
Heinz Edelmann (1934-2009) is most famous for his distinctive design and art direction on the Beatles-inspired Yellow Submarine (1968), but his Lord of the Rings covers—for the first German edition,...
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The Lord of the Rings Comic Book Adaptation, 1979 – 1981
There was no American or English comic book adaptation of The Lord of the Rings following Ralph Bakshi’s animated movie of 1978—the closest we got was the Warren Special Edition magazine—but there was...
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