I love this. As a gullible child I either bought or wanted almost all of these.
Ads that make us cynical
(I dunno, it is mundane and pointless, but it is kind of CAFE… I’ll leave it to a mod to decide.)
Here’s one I scanned in from an issue of Extinct Comics. Good times. 
Meh. Nothing but “Top X whatever” linkbait articles on the Cracked site.
No doubt I would have wanted one of those too! I was a sucker for glow-in-the-dark stuff (still am actually) and I enjoy being kissed too.
No mention of SeaMonkies?
Charles Atlas and his bodybuilding system made a lot of us cynical.
I agree. They should’ve included the brine shrimp (… of doom!) in that list.
The Charles Atlas ad was the first one I thought of too.
Did anybody else send away for greeting cards? I did, when I was 9 or 10. Sell the cards, make lots of money. The catch is that you have to pay for the cards when they arrive, not after you sell them. Mom made me send them back.
Now that I think about it, I’m surprised they didn’t want money before shipping the cards. This was in 1955 or thereabouts.
Yep, I did that too. Was gonna be rich!
I remember ads talking about how much money you could make either selling or delivering* a nationwide newspaper called Grit. I don’t think I ever heard about Grit anywhere but in those ads.
*It was forty-plus years ago, so my memory is a bit foggy.
I found 20 Websites From Before the Internet was Invented hilarious. Jesus H. Christ’s Facebook page & Anne Frank’s LiveJournal are great, but the #1 entry … well, I won’t spoil it
I never knew anybody who fell for the ads, but when I grew up, I asked some weight lifter friends about it.
Atlas really did build himself up, and it was by using isometric, rather than isotonic exercises. I think, but it was long ago, that he called them “dynamic tension.” They do work, but probably take far longer to increase bulk than weights. Also, more effective in building strength than bulk.
One friend said that the York Barbell Co. made money by selling iron and Charles Atlas made it by selling paper.
Sea Monkeys, Sea Monkeys, Sea Monkeys.
My 6yro self thought they’d have crowns, and a castle, and cute little outfits…and got…fish food. In green water.
The filter at work won’t let me open it, but I['ve always wondered about Grog Grows Own Tail:
Grit was a real newspaper. There was a kid in my town that would peddle it door-to-door. My parents bought a few copies.
Yep. I lived in Williamsport for (too) many years and the townsfolk mourned when it shut down. (OK, the old-timers did.)
So which ones did you send away for? Any positive experiences from sending away for stuff advertised in “funny books?”
Here’s the main thing I wanted to write about.
I was fairly old when I came across the “money-making” gimmick, and I’m not sure what I would have thought about it if I were younger. Maybe I would have thought that it was supposed to actually print a dollar bill. Maybe I would have realized that such would be nothing but trouble if it actually worked and one tried to use one for cash.
But actually I just assumed it was a bit of amateur stage magic and that since no new bills were actually produced it was harmless. And I just figured that everybody else, at least excluding those with serious shortages of brain-power, would realize it as well. (At least kids my own age, if I thought about it that far!) In hindsight, it seems that this would be prosecution-worthy. After all, it is about selling stuff to kidlets.
It also seemed obvious to me that selling green rocks was just that! One would either feel it worth it to shell out the dough for the amusement or not. I may have just assumed that the green paint was luminescent, and if not, I was wrong. But it’s moot. At that age I simply was not interested. At an earlier age, before some marketing genius had come up with MY! IDEA! :mad: I simply made my own Superman-killing stone with a green crayon-- with perhaps a layer of aluminum foil in between.
The X-Ray Specs ad is very cleverly written, and refers to an optical EFFECT that really works, and asks rhetorical questions about whether you are really seeing through things. <<Is that really your bones you see through your hand?>> (paraphrased) Even though I was young at the time I was clever enough to “see through” what it was all about and would never have sent in the money even if I had any (insert violin strings here).
Did anyone ever send away for the 99+ little magnets that make one big one? I’d like to think that that was not a rip-off, since that was the one thing I really wanted. sniff
- TBJ
Edited to add “paraphrased” to the paraphrase. - Me
Yes. Thus the use of the term by Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Frank: He’ll do press-ups, and chin-ups. Do the snatch, clean and jerk. He thinks dynamic tension must be hard work. Such strenuous living I just don’t understand. When in just seven days, oh baby, I can make you a man.
Frank: I don’t want no dissension. Just dynamic tension.
Janet: I’m a muscle fan!
RR
I so wanted the x-ray specs but not for the bones in my hand.
I also always wanted the 5000 piece army/navy set but another kid told me the were tiny bits of cardboard with a blurry picture on them.
Here’s a fascinating page I came across some time ago – Comic Book Flats
http://home.att.net/~1.elliott/comicbooktoysoldierflats.html
It’s all those “100 Army Men”/“100 Revolutionary War Soldiers”/“100 Confederate and Union Troops”/“100 dollls” that they always advertised in the backs of comic books (“They come packed in their own Footlocker!”)
I never knew anyone who actually ordered these, so I was interestee in what they actually looked like.
By the way, I have an article about those “Now! You can Draw like an aretist! Even if you Can’t Draw a Straight Line!” ads in an upcoming issue of Optics and Photonics News. I just approved the layout.