I blame a lot of the popularity of pizza in the late 80’s/early 90’s to the Ninja Turtles. At least in the USA. When TMNT was at the height of its popularity, pizza was THE thing to eat! I didn’t matter what kind, even if it was microwavable. They knew what they had going, so they cross-promoted with food companies all the time, from grocery store products like Ellio’s to restaurant chains like Pizza Hut. That only made kids eat pizza even more!
I remember in 1990 when the TMNT live action movie came out, there was a promotion with Ellio’s. On the back of each pizza box was a card that showed a screen shot from the movie. The card was actually part of the box, so you’d have to cut it out with scissors. There was about 10 different cards, maybe more. If you collected them all, you could send in for a poster. I remember every week, standing in the grocery store, looking at the backs of all the pizza boxes to find a new card. Eventually, I got them all, and sent them in. You also had to send 3 dollars, which I remember enclosing in cash. I got a poster of Michelangelo as my reward. It was the live action Mikey holding a pizza. The poster remained on my wall for years to come.
I don’t have the poster or the cards any more, so I don’t have any visual evidence of this. This is the only image I could find that remotely hints to what I’m talking about. But the kind I remember wasn’t the round pizza, it was the rectangle square shaped kind.
My memory is a bit fuzzy after 20 years. It’s been fun doing Turtle Tuesdays and bringing back some old memories, but now maybe someone else can help me out. Anyone remember the cards/poster offer? If anyone has images, that would be awesome.
UPDATE: This site here has pictures of the cards. Those definitely look like the ones I remember. There were 17 of them!