Abstract

This article focuses on a prize contest promoted as part of the Italian advertising campaign for the epic film Jason and the Argonauts (D. Chaffey, 1963). Sponsored by the American distribution company Columbia and the national children’s magazine Corriere dei Piccoli, this initiative is emblematic of the manifold ways in which the cinematic experience intertwines with forms of consumption developed in the years of the economic miracle. The article takes advantage of contemporary print sources on advertising practices as well as from previously neglected inserts from Corriere dei Piccoli, in order to examine the extension of the spectator’s experience beyond the movie theater.