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Sam Petrucci

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Sam Petrucci
Sam Petrucci at GIJoeCon 2009 (Kansas City, Missouri)
Born(1926-12-22)December 22, 1926
Medford, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedSeptember 27, 2013(2013-09-27) (aged 86)
Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupations
  • Radio operator
  • Illustrator
  • Designer
  • Painter
Years active
  • 1960s–1994
SpouseLeona Petrucci
Children5
Websitewww.sampetrucci.com

Sam Petrucci (December 22, 1926 – September 27, 2013[1]) was an American artist known for his uncredited artwork on Hasbro's G.I. Joe and The Land of Ta stickers for Dennison.

Personal life

Sam Petrucci was born in Medford Massachusetts on December 22, 1926 to Salvatore and Mary Petrucci (née Dunn). He worked as a bellhop at the Ritz Carlton as a teenager. Petrucci joined the Navy at the age of 16; he became a radio operator on the USS Willard Keith. After World War II, he studied art at Vesper George School of Art. He married Leona Petrucci and together they had five children: Maureen, Ken, Lisa, Linda, and Steven. Leona Petrucci died in 2008.

Sam Petrucci died of natural causes on September 27, 2013 in Scranton, Pennsylvania.[1]

Career

Sam Petrucci's career as an artist began in the 1960s.[2] His early work was for the Hassenfeld Brothers Toy Company (Hasbro) where he illustrated board games for Superman, The Mighty Hercules, and The Banana Splits. He also illustrated the packaging for Mr. Potato Head. A 1978 Lassie lunchbox he designed for Thermos is displayed at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institute.[1][3] He did design work on the team yearbooks for the Red Sox and Boston Bruins in the 1960s and 1970s.[1] Sam Petrucci founded two design studios: Thresher & Petrucci followed by Sam Petrucci & Associates. He later worked for Gunn Associates in Boston where he designed packaging and company logos for at least 25 years.[4] He retired in 1994.[1]

G.I. Joe

Sam Petrucci designed the original logo and box art for Hasbro's G.I. Joe action figure toy line in 1964. According to his Gunn Associates colleague John Filosi, Petrucci turned down Hasbro stock and accepted a flat payment for his art.[4]

Petrucci was a regular guest at G.I. Joe conventions. He attended GIJoeCon in 2009[1][5] and 2011.[6] In 2002, he appeared in G.I. Joe Documentary: The Story Of America's Movable Fighting Man and created the original cover art for the documentary.[7]

Design and logos

Sam Petrucci designed packaging and logos for numerous companies, including Charleston Chew, Ocean Spray, Veryfine, Gillette, Newport, Titleist, Marshmallow Fluff, Converse, Polaroid, TJ Maxx, Prince Spaghetti, Salada tea, Bose, BASF, the World Wildlife Fund, Friendly's, Poland Spring, Smokey Bear, Sunkist, Dunkin' Donuts, Gorton's Fishsticks, the Massachusetts Lottery, Venus Crackers, Jose Cuervo, Boston College, Harvard, Liberty Mutual, and Hewlett-Packard[1][2]

The Land of Ta

The Land of Ta sticker sheet including Geedis

The Land of Ta was a short-lived series of fantasy stickers produced by the Dennison Manufacturing Company in 1981 to 1982. The first two sticker sheets titled The Land of Ta (1981) were illustrated and painted by Sam Petrucci, who was not credited. Sheet #80-218 featured original characters named Zoltan, Harry, Iggy, Tokar, Geedis, and Erik. Sheet #80-219 featured six more original characters: Hermann, Eris, Uno, Shimra, Radon, and Stefan. An unknown artist illustrated the third sticker sheet (#80-224) titled Women of Ta (1982); it featured female characters named Cecily, Astrid, Sybil, Amneris, Ursula, and Rimelda.[4]

Sam Petrucci did regular artwork for stickers produced by Dennison Manufacturing Company. This included sticker sheets for spaceships, cartoon baby animals, holiday stickers. Also in 1981, Petrucci did the artwork for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rub-down transfers produced by FNR International Corp.[4][8]

Geedis

The character Geedis (a horned, bear-like creature) of The Land of Ta became an Internet meme in 2017. Comedian Nate Fernald discovered an enamel pin of Geedis pin on eBay and tweeted on June 21:

"What the fuck is Geedis? I found this old pin. Google has no answers. Please help. I'm losing my mind."[9]

On August 1, a scan of The Land of Ta sticker sheet that included Geedis was rediscovered on a Flickr page. Speculation about the pins and stickers being merchandise for a wider media franchise grew but no further information about The Land of Ta or the identity of the artist was available on the Internet.[10] Fernald bought upwards of 80 Geedis pins from the eBay seller[4] and posted a video of his pin collection to his Facebook page on December 1, 2017.[11]

On Reddit, the subreddit r/Geedis was created on September 4, 2017 and became dedicated to solving the origins of Geedis. A June 3, 2019 post on r/UnresolvedMysteries[12] and a subsequent June 8 comment on an r/AskReddit thread[13] caused the r/Geedis subreddit to increase from 250 subscribers to over 15,000 subscribers.[14]

In 1990, Dennison merged with Avery International Corporation and became Avery Dennison. In 2014, the Framingham History Center in Framingham, Massachusetts opened an exhibition about Dennison after receiving the archives from Avery Dennison[15] This included The Land of Ta sticker sheets.[4]

The Reddit focused WBUR-FM podcast Endless Thread discovered the Geedis mystery from the growing r/Geedis subreddit. In their August 23 episode "Geedis: An Internet Mystery For The Ages... Gets Solved!", co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson interviewed Nate Fernald, r/Geedis Redditors, Framingham History Center staff, and former Dennison staff. The duo contacted former Dennison Art Director Tom Manguso and his son Bill recognized the Land of Ta stickers as the work of Sam Petrucci. Petrucci was a coworker of Bill Manguso at Gunn Associates and a peer of Tom Manguso at school. Tom Manguso was the one who brought in Petrucci to work for Dennison.[4]

Sivertson and Johnson discovered the 2013 obituary for Sam Petrucci and successfully contacted all five of his children. They met with Linda Petrucci in New Hampshire at the family lake house that was designed by her father.[1] There they saw much of his original artwork, including the pencil sketches titled The Fantasy Land and the final mounted artwork for The Land of Ta, which included his signature.[4]

In the interview, former Dennison General Manager Lou D'Amaro recalled a coworker regularly used the term "geetus"[16] as slang for money, giving a possible origin to the name "Geedis". Former staff members on a Dennison Alumni Facebook page claimed Dennison never produced enamel pins. The creator of the Geedis pins remains unknown.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Otnes, Mark. "Premier Artist and Illustrator of G.I. Joe Boxes, Displays & Packaging, Sam Petrucci, Dead at 86". Patches of Pride (The Joe Report). WordPress. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Sam Petrucci Illustrator, Designer, Painter 1926-2013". Sam Petrucci. The Petrucci Family. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  3. ^ "The Magic of Lassie Lunch Box". National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Sivertson, Amory; Lindberg, James. "Geedis: An Internet Mystery For The Ages... Gets Solved!". Endless Thread. WBUR. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  5. ^ "Special Guest". gijoecon.com. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  6. ^ "Special Guest: Sam Petrucci". gijoecon.com. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  7. ^ "Original Artwork Created Expressly for the GI Joe Documentary". GI Joe Documentary. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  8. ^ "Transfer:Advanced Dungeons & Dragon Instant Rub-Down Transfer: More Monsters". The Strong National Museum of Play. Google Art & Culture.
  9. ^ Nate Fernald [@natefernald] (June 21, 2017). "What the Fuck is Geedis? I found this old pin. Google has no answers. Please help. I'm losing my mind" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  10. ^ Grundhauser, Eric. "Join the Search for Geedis". Atlas Obscura. Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  11. ^ Fernald, Nate. "I AM KING". facebook.com/natefernald. Facebook. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  12. ^ "Geedis and the Land of Ta: The Fantasy Franchise that Apparently Didn't Exist". Reddit. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  13. ^ "What is the strangest subreddit you have encountered?". Reddit. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  14. ^ https://subredditstats.com/r/geedis
  15. ^ Petroni, Susan. "Framingham History Center To Unveil Dennison Manufacturing Company Exhibit". Framingham History Center. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  16. ^ Victor, Terry; Dalzell, Tom (June 26, 2015). The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Second ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 973. ISBN 9781317372523. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
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