Boris Karloff used a ring to bring down his victims in the famous 1933 movie The Mummy. Carl Barks picked up on the idea and wrote his first complete story "The Mummy’s Ring" (Four Color #29, 1943) which was a smash hit to comic book collectors. A red ring played a major role in the 1994 film The Shadow. In baseball collecting, the Pennant and World Series rings are highly prized and are on collectors’ want lists. Price guides exist on antique rings of a generic nature and are quite popular. It only seems reasonable that our industry should have a guide on comic related rings, both premiums and store bought.

Beginning in the 1930s the premium ring was an early device given away to children to trace consumer response to various products. The producers were quick to use words like "mysterious, mystic, scarab, lucky, cosmic, ancient, dragon, Egyptian, Aztec, secret, magical," etc. reinforcing this ancient belief that rings truly do possess magical and secret properties.

Cereal companies, sponsors of radio and television shows, beverage companies, food producers, movie studios, comic book companies, toy producers, sports promoters, etc. gave away many different types of premiums including rings to survey what type of products their customers were buying. At the same time, the first comic books and Big Little Books began to appear.

The earliest premium ring is the Lone Wolf Tribal, made of sterling silver, which was offered in 1932 by Wrigley Gum (the sponsor of a popular radio show) to test listener response. Soon after this historic first, the famous comic strip character Little Orphan Annie got her own nationally broadcast radio show. Now known as "Radio" Orphan Annie, dozens of premiums began appearing on the market, including some of the rarest rings ever offered anywhere. The ROA Altascope (only 7 known) was the last ring offered before the radio show was canceled and is the rarest of the ROA rings. The ROA magnifying and initial rings are the next most difficult ROA rings to find. Other popular characters’ rings from the 1930s included Buck Rogers, Tom Mix, Frank Buck and Melvin Purvis. The Tom Mix Deputy ring from 1935 was very difficult to acquire and today is one of the 10 rarest rings.

Box tops, candy or gum wrappers, coupons, etc. were required in most cases to receive the premium. The radio advertisers believed that the amount of response each product received was an indicator of its acceptance level. The responses could even be used as regional indicators by offering certain premiums exclusively to certain geographic areas. Some rings were only offered in a small area while others, like the Kix Atom Bomb, exploded all over the country.

The earliest rings were made of metal and usually exhibited excellent quality in design and material (some were even gold plated) and are highly prized by collectors. Most of the early metal rings were made by the Robbins Company. In recent years there was a very exciting "archive find" of rings and ring parts from this company which included complete rings as well as a few one-of-a-kind prototypes and different ring bases only.

During the 1940s the sponsors of popular radio shows such as The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Sky King, Green Hornet and Superman offered premium rings to listeners. The Lone Ranger Atom Bomb, also given away through Kix cereal in 1946, was the most successful premium ever with over 1 million produced. Today this ring is still revered as one of the most beautiful and desirable because of its breathtaking design and eye-catching gold, silver and red colors.

The most valuable of these rings is the Superman of America membership ring which was shipped to 1600 winners of the Action Comics contest in early 1940. Only 12 complete examples of this ring are known to exist, with all but one in less than near mint condition.

Plastic first appeared in 1907 (bakelite) and was followed by Catalin and Plaskon which were in common use during the 1920s for radio tube bases, appliance knobs, dial windows and other poured molded items. The phenol plastics were in use by the 1930s and polystyrene showed up in 1938. Tupperware first appeared in 1942. Rings using plastic made their appearance in the late 1930s (see The Majestic Radio ring and 1939 World’s Fair rings) and by the 1950s the number of rings made of this cheaper material rivaled the metal ones and soon surpassed them.

Television (a new concept of combining radio with movies) was invented in the 1920s and saw limited broadcast use as early as 1933, and by 1938 was being commercially broadcast in several of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Among those who saw its potential in the 1940s was William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd who specifically retained control of the TV rights to the cowboy movies he made in the 1930s. His vision reached fruition by the late 1940s when he became a regular TV star.

After World War II, TV broadcasting exploded resulting in a huge expansion of the audience for premium offers. Soon, many premiums were being offerred through popular television shows. No one could have predicted the impact this new entertainment medium would have in such a short period of time. By 1950 the first television comic book, Howdy Doody, was published. The Howdy Doody Jack in the Box ring is the rarest plastic item from this era. Just as in radio, the premiums were used to test viewer response.

Western comic books jammed the stands in 1948 and science fiction comics began to appear in 1950. The most popular characters from the movies were marketed to the public in comic books, on radio and eventually on television. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes, Hopalong Cassidy, Space Patrol, Captain Video and others had their rings too.

During the 1960s dozens of plastic rings of television show celebrities abounded. Addams Family, Dark Shadows, Beatles, Davy Crockett, Munsters, Tarzan, Batman are just a few. Cereal personalities such as Quisp and Quake also had their series of rings. In fact, the Quisp figural ring is the most valuable
after 1959.

The 1970s saw rings from Star Wars (film), Star Trek (TV), McDonalds (hamburger chain), Huckleberry Hound (TV), Captain Crunch (cereal), etc.

Companies continued promoting their characters during the 1980s with G.I. Joe, Gumby, Marvel Comics character rings, Lucky Charms (cereal) and others. One of the most ambitious ring programs ever initiated was the 1990s Ring Raiders with an amazing 68 rings in the set!

Today, the comic book companies are producing high quality rings directly for the collectors market. Spawn by McFarlane, X-O, X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman, Green Lantern, Teenage Mutant Turtles, G.I. Joe and Diamond Comic Distributors’ promotional rings such as Batman, The Shadow, and X-Men.