Remember the early ’90s? Sure you do. Those were some fun times! We were all being slackers and grunging it up and, if we could get away with it, committing the sin of the Lambada, the Forbidden Dance. It was also kind of an odd time when it came to environmentalism and superheroes, because there was a strange urge to combine the two. Remember Captain Planet? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Other organizations got into this environmentalism-via-cheap-cartoons game, including some organizations that probably were doing it for, let’s say, less than forthright reasons. Like oil giant Texaco. In 1990, for Earth Day, Texaco released a comic book featuring Captain WOW, which was an acronym for “Wipe Out Waste.” Captain WOW was a sort of environmentally-focused superhero who fought against evil forces (some alien named OW?) who sought to, let’s see, make recycling sound unappealing?
I think that was the basic plot. Anyway, there’s now someone on Facebook Marketplace selling what seems to be an offically-converted WOWmobile, based on a 1990 Pontiac Firebird:
Just so you can see the resemblance, here’s a panel featuring the WOWmobile, which can travel in space or drive with wheels on the ground. I suspect the one for sale on Marketplace can only pull off the latter.
…and here’s the WOWmobile venturing through the vast emptiness of the cosmos:
Here’s the big thing about this whole WOW business, though – Texaco was absolutely terrible environmentally. Even among other oil companies, which I think we can all agree don’t exactly have stellar track records when it comes to being good to the planet, Texaco was especially awful.
For example, they had operations in Ecuador from 1964 to 1992, and during that time Texaco dumped 18.5 billion gallons of toxic water into the rainforest, contaminating 2,000,000 acres of Ecuadorian Amazon land. Their time there is referred to as “Amazonian Chernobyl.”
At the time they published this comic, they would still be wreaking havoc in Ecuador for another two years.
With that in mind, I think all of this Captain WOW crap takes on an extra element of hypocritical crappiness.
The plot of the comic is hilariously weak; this alien comes in a big spaceship with a grand plan to … convince people that recycling is a waste of time. No giant trash-beams encrappifying Earth, no launching trash-missiles into national parks, just a poorly-planned information campaign to derail consumer recycling efforts. His big evil master plan for doing this is, let’s see, buying some airtime on a TV station:
He paid for five whole minutes of airtime! Oh no!
They do mention an “unknown middleman,” and the writers and artists were careful to include panels showing OW in makeup and getting used to reading cue cards. Riveting stuff!
It’s also worth noting just how deeply ugly the kids in this comic are. Look at that kid in the middle! Holy crap, what happened to his face? Also, I’m not crazy about “segregating” as a word choice for recycling.
Texaco is such a pack of hypocrites here; they even published these “15 Commandments of Environmental Stewardship” while they were still, it’s worth remembering, dumping millions of gallons of toxic water into the rainforest.
Texaco’s dumping was about 30 times the amount of contaminant that poured into the ocean in the Exxon Valdez spill, to give some perspective.
Anyway, maybe you really want to drive an artifact of all this cynical mess? If so, the car does look pretty fun:
Very spaceshippy. Especially around back, where the “engines” are:
The dash seems to be a slightly modified version of the Knight Rider car-star KITT’s dashboard, with a very similar-looking steering yoke and control panels:
It does have WOW decals in the middle there, so you won’t forget what you’re driving.
Is this actually an official Texaco-blessed Captain WOW car? The seller hasn’t gotten back to me to answer any questions, but just think about how infinitesimally low the odds are of any private person choosing to spend their own time and money making a replica of the WOWmobile. Who would do that? Nobody, I say.
I mean, I hope nobody would. Who even remembers this ridiculous bullshit, anyway? Well, if you decide you’d like to rep Texaco’s half-assed attempt to paper over some atrocities, and you have $17,500 to blow, boy are you in luck.
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