The Krypto Golden Biscuit Sweepstakes was announced like it meant something. Two lucky fans would find a special sticker inside a reprint of Adventure Comics #210 and win a trip to the Superman premiere. Sounds like a throwback to the kind of marketing that used to get people excited — cheap nostalgia dressed up as fan engagement. The problem is, the people this was aimed at didn’t care, didn’t notice, or didn’t exist.
The sweepstakes is over. The premiere happened. And there hasn’t been a single winner named. No press release. No social media brag. Nothing. Either the stickers were never found, or they were tossed out with the packaging. This wasn’t a celebration of Krypto or Superman. It was a quiet, disposable ad campaign tied to a comic that barely moved any units. A marketing ghost.
The odds of winning were one in 62,500. Statistically possible. Practically worthless. A person would’ve had to open tens of thousands of sealed copies just to tilt the odds in their favor. Retail, that would’ve cost almost $250,000. At wholesale, around $47,000. And the prize? A $3,500 trip. Flight, hotel, premiere tickets, a few rides across LA. It reads more like a radio station giveaway than a cultural event.
This whole thing depended on people rushing out to buy a polybagged reprint of a 1955 comic book. In 2025. When comic shops are shrinking and more readers have shifted to digital. Even among collectors, facsimile editions don’t draw crowds. At best, this was a niche item. At worst, shelf filler with a promo sticker nobody remembered to look for.
And the deadline to claim the prize? One week. Seven days from the release date. No buffer. No breathing room. Just a tight turnaround in a medium where books often sit in pull boxes for a month before anyone touches them. Combine that with the odds and the limited appeal of the comic itself, and you’ve got a contest that was designed to die quietly.
The kicker here is that Krypto turned out to be great. The movie handled him well. He wasn’t annoying. He wasn’t a gag. He worked. Gunn knows how to make audiences care about characters that shouldn’t work. Krypto fits right in with Groot, Rocket, and King Shark. He’s sharp, funny, and delivers some of the most memorable beats in the movie. The audience reaction says everything. People want more of him. He’s going to be a hit.
But this sweepstakes didn’t come from that. It came before. It launched without context, before anyone had a reason to care about the character. No one knew Krypto was going to land. No one had seen the movie. So instead of pushing interest, it just sat there, disconnected from the thing it was meant to support.
Holding off a year would’ve made more sense. Let the movie build interest. Let kids and families connect with Krypto. Then do a promo. Reprint the comic. Make it part of the lead-up to Supergirl. Tie it into something the audience already wants. But this wasn’t about building momentum. It was a line item on a schedule. A box that got ticked. And when it flopped, they moved on.
There’s a version of this where it works. Where someone posts the winning sticker on Instagram, gets flown to LA, meets the cast, writes a thread about it, and people actually talk about the comic for more than five seconds. That didn’t happen. The whole thing evaporated.
There’s a weird poetry in that. A promotional stunt meant to spotlight a character who ended up being the breakout star, but nobody saw it happen. The sweepstakes missed the moment completely. And now it just sits there, like an unclaimed raffle ticket stapled to the back of a comic nobody opened.
Krypto earned his spot. He deserved a better rollout. This wasn’t it. The biscuit was stale before it hit the shelf.
Hollywood After Dark 