Studies in Crap presents ’80s Action Heroes Where They Don’t Belong, Part One: Rambo Coloring & Activity Book!

Your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

Rambo Coloring & Activity Book

Author: Frank Stinga and Carrie Fink
Publisher: Modern Publishing
Date: 1985
Discovered at: Brass Armadillo Antique Mall, Grain Valley, MO

The Cover Promises: You expect and demand little of your children.

Representative Quotes:
“Rambo is a real freedom fighter.” (page 8)
“Rambo is a real woodsman.” (page 18)
“Ka-pow!” (page 14)

Not long after the extraordinary success of Rambo: First Blood, Part II, 1985’s R-rated orgy of torture, guerrilla warfare, and sensual moments spent tying bandannas beneath waterfalls, market research conducted for Carolco Entertainment revealed a surprising fact: The United States was now home to just enough terrible parents for a syndicated cartoon based upon Sylvester Stallone’s Vietnam-haunted ammo-fetishist to achieve profitability.

Of course, Rambo and the Forces of Freedom, the resulting series, eliminates the movie’s killshots and avoided First Blood concerns such as PTSD or Rambo’s wish that this country love its soldiers as much as its soldiers love it. Instead of smearing himself in mud and strangling Vietnamese soldiers, cartoon Rambo jumps over a motorcycle and then dispatches the driver with a cardboard box. (It does share with the movies a devotion to lingering shots of a half-dressed Rambo prepping for battle.) Any time spent with Rambo and the Forces of Freedom should scratch one theory about Sylvester Stallone movies: They’re not cartoons. Cartoons, at least, are inventive.

What’s not inventive is this detestable ancillary product, a coloring book created with such contempt for its audience that, somewhere, George Lucas must be jealous.