Super Activity Book

Story by Dwight Jon Zimmerman
Design by Paul Richer

This book was published by Marvel Books with a copyright of 1986.

The scans live here: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/tf/books/coloring/super-activity/. Browse them at your leisure. "FC" and "RC" are the front and rear covers. You can use the super-activity-all.html file to load all the pictures on one page (will be slow -- there are 35 images totalling almost 6 megabytes). These scans were contributed by an anonymous donor.

I don't actually have much to say about this one. It is a downsized compilation of activity pages from other coloring books. I suspect that a sizable portion of the activities were created new for this book, though, unless there are way more coloring books than I think there are.

• Since the art was done by a cadre of different Marvel Book artists, there is no art credit. Instead there is the vague "design" credit. Zimmerman gets credited with "story" even though this book is simply a hodge-podge of puzzles and word games. He did write many of the books that these activities are taken from, though, and quite possibly wrote any new activities devised for this volume.
• On page two, Ratchet is drawn mostly as his toy, but with a head in place that looks a little bit like his head in "Decepticon Patrol".

• Jetfire appears twice, in jet mode, looking just like the toy. (That is, he's a super valkyrie.) It is very rare to see Jetfire drawn that way instead of in his "Skyfire" body, even when called "Jetfire".
• Page four is a Mirage-themed activity, and he is drawn in his "Decepticon Patrol" model. However, this activity does not appear in "Decepticon Patrol". Were these models used in more than one book, or was this bizarre artwork intentionally re-used? Maybe nobody cared?
• The copyright date is 1986, but there are no year-three characters in the book. It is strictly years one and two. In fact, at the time that I'm posting this book, it is the only coloring book I have which has year-two characters, aside from the year-three books.
• The cover image of Megatron is taken from the next-to-last page of "Decepticon Patrol".
• No connect-the-dots, strangely enough. There are a few mazes, and some "which picture is different?" things, but it's mostly word-based activities.
• Some of the activities are ridiculous. For example, "Prowl's Letter Basket" on page 28.

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