In the 1970’s Chevrolet launched an ad campaign with a catchy jingle. “Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet” was a tune meant to convey to the consumer that owning and driving a Chevrolet was American as apple pie. Strudel might have been more accurate as the brand is named after its co founder, Louis Chevrolet. He was a Swiss-born race car driver who gained great fame in the early twentieth century when automobiles were in their infancy. From humble beginnings, after being established in 1911, Chevy is indeed an iconic and very successful global brand.
In the 1970’s another pioneer was carving out a space in what would become a media empire. Long before he established CNN, Ted Turner owned and operated an independent UHF television station in Atlanta known as Channel 17. The station that would eventually become WTBS had a staple of syndicated tv shows it aired as reruns as part of their portfolio of offerings. One of them was a Japanese import know as Ultraman. Created in 1966 by Eiji Tsuburya, Ultraman was a giant alien who could be summomed by Shin Hayata of the Science Special Search Party (SSSP) when needed to fight a giant monster. Hayata would punch a button on a beta capsule given to him by Ultraman and the transformation would occur. Much like in Shazam, Hayata merged into Ultaman when he summoned him. Hence a running question by others as where Hayata was during a confrontation.
The poorly dubbed English translations, campy theme song and obviously fake special effects endeared the show with audiences. It is still popular today and the franchise has continued with new and updated films and storylines that have continued.
The SSSP, often simply shorted to the Science Patrol was a group who protected Japan from all sorts of giant monsters. They had a nifty verticle take-off jet, a submarine, a giant headquarters and all sorts of weapons and gadgets at their disposal. Hence it might come as a surprise that their automobile was the humble Chevrolet Corvair. Indeed, in the 1966 version it was not even a new car but a 1961 version of the compact vehicle with an aircooled rear engine. Why an American vehicle was chosen for this Japanese production in unknown. Take Me to Your Lawyer reached out to Tsuburya Productions which maintains the rights to the franchise to see if there was any particular reason the Corvair was featured in the orginal series. However, no reply was ever received. Thus, the association is a mystery. What is not a mystery is that the orginal Ultraman show is still fun to watch both by adults and children. One can find it on different platforms from time to time such as Amazon and YouTube.
