The Professor Morlock lunchbox was the best-selling lunchbox of all time and may be the key to the series being continued.
The box depicted the famous climactic scene where ace investigative reporter Janet Lawton (played by Mara Marini) is tied up in her underwear in the professor’s laboratory while he prepares to transplant her brain with that of a gorilla. Pubescent boys of the era were so obsessed with the sight of Ms. Marini in her skivvies that they would insist on their parents buying them the box, which would immediately be confiscated by their uptight and sexually-repressed teachers when they were brought to school. The boys would come home and demand a lunchbox to replace the confiscated one and since their fathers liked the picture of Ms. Marini as much as the boys, they would sometimes replace the box six or seven times throughout the semester.
The success of the lunchbox was the deciding factor in the studio green lighting “The Return of Professor Morlack.” By that time, Ms. Marini was already committed to “Bikini Party on Waikiki Beach” (for which she would receive her first Academy Award nomination), so the budget was cut in half and Amy Ball’s role of Amanda Globe (known only as “Ghoul Girl” in the first Morlock) was beefed up and her costumes made more revealing. The rest is history.
Because of the huge amount of Professor Morlock lunchboxes that were manufactured to meet the demand, they are among the most affordable Morlockian memorabilia at about a buck each on eBay. |
