Yes, there already is a cassette copy of the soundtrack represented here, but it’s the Canadian edition. Somehow I’ve managed to neglect to upload any of the other cassettes I’ve glommed onto, so here is a first step to rectifying that.

I also don’t know why it was that the US edition was the second one I found. There seem to be, or at least for a good long while there seemed to be, a lot of Canadian cassettes around compared to US ones.

The US edition, though, is far more elaborate than the Canadian one, which looks in comparison like a budget release. While it doesn’t reproduce any of the LP’s inside gatefold artwork or the back cover, it does have all the liner notes — so much text that it required both sides of the insert.

This specific copy sure seems to have been well-used. It makes me sad nowadays to contemplate the reasons why an item like this that obviously meant something to its owner ended up in the wild to find its way to me as a curio.

As best as I can tell, Tele Pop cards were a single series of pop culture trading cards featuring stars of movies, television and music, issued in Spain by Ediciones Este in 1980. I don’t know in what sort of package the cards were sold individually, but I’m pretty sure complete sets were sold in binders. There were 240 cards in the series, and card #189 was Robin Johnson, star of the hit film Times Square.

The curious thing about this is the train of throught that led to Robin’s inclusion in the set. I don’t know when in 1980 the cards were published, but Times Square came out in the US in October, and as far as I know it opened in Spain in April 1981. Someone at Ediciones Este had to be thinking quite a ways ahead when they were designing the cards to put Robin on one and describe Times Square as a hit, when it must have still been in the editing room at the time. Perhaps part of the process was to contact studios and find films that were currently in production, so the cards would come out more or less at the same time as then-current movies. However it came about, it’s still more evidence that everyone involved were convinced that Times Square was going to be massive, up until the moment it was actually released.

As always, I welcome the input of anyone who knows more than I do about any of this.

 
A week before Times Square opened, this teaser ad ran in the October 10, 1980 issue of BAM (Bay Area Music) magazine, taking up all of page 10. There isn’t really much else to say about it, other than that it’s more proof of the confidence the studio had in the movie’s success.

In celebration of its inclusion in the recently published 女の子が死にたくなる前に見ておくべきサバイバルのためのガールズ洋画100選 (100 Western Movies for Survival That Every Girl Should Watch Before Wanting to Die – as always, I welcome a better translation if you have one) by Kitamura Sae, a 2K projection of the 4K restoration of Times Square played at Stranger in Kikugawa from July 11, and Cinem@rt Shinjuku in Tokyo ending August 7, and those are just the theaters I know about thanks to the links provided by Alissa in her July comment. This re-release was accompanied by a new chirashi! I actually found this item before I knew about the 2025 screenings and thought it was a third one from 1981… but eventually I noticed the prominent “4K” on it, and I realized something was up…

The 1981 versions are here and here.

This post was made half-possible through the generosity of you Ko-Fi supporters. Thank you so much! Go Team RJ!!

This post was made possible through the generosity of my Ko-Fi supporters. Thank you so much! Go Team RJ!!

Here are two 11″ x 17″ sheets of readymade art to be inserted into your newspaper ad with the name of your theater and the showtimes alongside or below, These are essentially the same as the ad negatives and pages 7 through 20 of the AFD Campaign Pressbook, except they were distributed as individual loose pages. It’s interesting how many variants of the tagline they came up with to fit into the ever-decreasing space.

It’s also interesting that except for the two largest layouts, only the top two billed cast members are listed. Robin’s picture is there but not her name.

This post was made possible through the generosity of my Ko-Fi supporters. Thank you so much! Go Team RJ!!

Don’t worry, the site isn’t going anywhere… in the grand scheme of modern problems, this barely registers. However, if you would like to help me keep Robin’s legacy alive, and have some spare change to throw my way, you’ll have my everlasting thanks. Odds are it’ll go to buy me a coffee to keep me awake as I try to figure how to fix the whatever the latest site software update has broken… but if there’s enough it might end up going to acid-free storage boxes and mylar sleeves these magazines from Thailand and all those photos from England…

Either way… for every $20 we raise, I will immediately drop everything and post a new item. It’s hard to find the time nowadays to devote to sharing all the new stuff that keeps turning up, but for $20 I’ll MAKE the time.

If you’re in any sort of financial straits yourself, though, absolutely do not donate anything. Your own well-being is far more important than this bit of frivolity.

This Ko-Fi thing also comes with its own page, where I’m slowly reposting the items from here. It’ll take a long time to catch up, but who knows, you may find it more visually attractive or easier to navigate.

That show was broadcast in November 1980 as I recall, well before my family could afford a VCR. I recorded her appearance on audiocassette — I vividly recall her making a joke about the stage manager’s headphone-mic looking like night braces, and trying to make a joke she must have had prepared ahead of time about her flight to LA… I don’t recall the joke but I remember Merv stepped on her setup which was the word “Turbulence!” so she had to say it twice, in exactly the same way. Unfortunately, in the many decades since, I’ve mislaid that tape — that’s why it’s not already posted here.

This picture now gives us a better date for the color photo by David Loar, which was obviously taken at the same place and time.

Robin Johnson, signing autographs, late 1980

Did you know that before Times Square opened on October 17, 1980, before its big premiere on October 14, there were multiple sneak previews on October 3? Neither did I, until this turned up.

I wonder if the film the preview audiences saw was edited at all differently from the wide release…

This is an 8 x 10 inch black and white negative transparency, containing an approximately 9 1/2 x 6 1/4 inch image of the poster side of the two-sided promotional foldout designed by Seiniger & Associates, with the addition of the words “suitable for mature audiences.” That’s a description and as much as I can swear to being actual fact. Based on that, I’ll say that since this sort of transparency was used to print ads in newspapers and magazines, this was used to print an ad promoting Times Square in a publication aimed at movie theater owners and bookers. I don’t know of any such publication, but it’s hard to believe that such a thing did not exist, and may yet exist. So there may still be out there a catalog of all the upcoming movie releases for 1980 that you may want to run at your theater, containing an extra full page ad for Times Square before the poster design was finalized. Or maybe not, since until such a thing turns up there’s no evidence this ad actually ran anywhere.