Sabrina's Brochure Spotlight: Six Flags Over Texas 1968

This week's selection is not a mere brochure, but a work of art. In place of the standard array of stock photos depicting ice cream-covered tots and cheesily clad parents grinning from ear to ear, you're about to be treated to an artist's rendering of Six Flags Over Texas as it appeared in 1968.

Note that I made no guarantees regarding the--shall we say--mental state of this particular artist at the time he or she put this creative vision on paper! After studying this brochure cover for some time, I'm fairly convinced that the central image depicts the park's Astrolift (a sky ride) gliding through some clouds. As for the text surrounding it, your guess is as good as mine.

Ah, well this explains it. That text on the cover was intended to be "the sound of fun"! (Apparently fun really sounds like gibberish sometimes.) Fortunately, there's no shortage of intelligible text here. This copy provides a great overview of all the rides and attractions that greeted visitors to Six Flags Over Texas in 1968, and some of the descriptions are quite colorful.

Among the "magical, mirthful" rides featured in the renderings are the Runaway Mine Train, the El Aserradero log flume, the Six Flags Railroad, the Astrolift (again), and the uniquely bizarre Sky Hook. In case you're wondering, the Sky Hook is the one that resembles a giant crane with cages full of giddy park patrons dangling from it...and that's pretty much what it was. Google it! This would actually be the last year that the Sky Hook operated at Six Flags Over Texas.

Attention all you fact and figure junkies: This left panel is for you. That is, if you don't mind your information being slightly outdated. A true sign of the times is the fact that 91.10% (not one tenth more or one tenth less) of all guests who visited Six Flags Over Texas in 1967 "could not find anything they didn't like". I challenge any park to reproduce that figure today! Park patrons have evolved into a much more critical species through the years.

You've gotta love the primitive "map" on the back of this brochure. I don't know about you, but that wouldn't help me find much of anything in Texas. Then again, with a park admission ticket costing only $4.50 a head back then, I think I would have thrown all my energy into figuring it out!