# 12 comic book ads that taught us to be cynical **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 26, 2008, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643 "2008-05-26T12:47:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/21 "2008-05-27T14:03:28Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] Here’s a fascinating page I came across some time ago – **Comic Book Flats** [http://home.att.net/~1.elliott/comicbooktoysoldierflats.html](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. [/QUOTE] That is utterly cool. I grew up looking at those ads, and always wondered what the toys actually looked like. ---
**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/22 "2008-05-27T14:19:53Z")
Here are many many more of these ads: [http://tomheroes.com/Comic%20Ads/comicads.htm](http://tomheroes.com/Comic%20Ads/comicads.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/23 "2008-05-27T15:12:39Z")
The submarine ad at the top of that article - is that a spoof, or a real ad? If real, what was the product like? (I’m guessing some kind of inflatable dinghy). And yeah, seamonkeys - I remember some of my school classmates excitedly telling me they had ordered them and they were just like little people, that live in water. Man, they must have been crestfallen when the package arrived. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/24 "2008-05-27T15:19:09Z")
> [@](#): > > The submarine ad at the top of that article - is that a spoof, or a real ad? If real, what was the product like? (I’m guessing some kind of inflatable dinghy). I can’t open the article here, but I recall those ads for submarines. Again, I’ve never seen one, but Dave Barry describes it in one of his books ( **Dave Barry Turns 50** , IIRC), as “being made of sturdy cardboard”. That would be pretty much what I’d expect. Nothing in the ad suggests you can actually put it in water. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/25 "2008-05-27T15:22:31Z")
You’re probably right - the things the ad conspicuously _doesn’t_ mention: water, floating. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/26 "2008-05-27T15:23:37Z")
there’s 2 pages to the article. the cardmarine is mentioned on the 2nd page. the ad mentions firing torpedoes. that’s an outright lie. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/27 "2008-05-27T15:30:46Z")
Ah! Page 2. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/28 "2008-05-27T16:38:27Z")
[QUOTE=True Blue Jack] … 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. … [/QUOTE] I wasn’t able to determine if you ever did see one of these in person from your text, so I’ll try to describe it: It’s a plastic frame that holds two rollers, like a small cloths wringer. The trick is that there is a long strip of black fabric (a few feet long), the width of the roller, rolled around the top roller and bottom roller. The fabric transfers from one roller to the other roller, similar to film going from one reel to another, with a crucial difference: the bottom roller turns in the opposite direction. Here’s what it looks like from the side, sort of: O / O You roll up some real bills in the bottom roll by running it backwards; they get rolled up in the coil of black fabric. Then you show it to your friends, feeding in a blank bill (on the left above) and watch their amazement as a real bill comes out the other side. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/29 "2008-05-27T16:41:44Z")
Sea Monkeys - got burned there. Army Guy Footlocker - next door neighbour took the hit for me. Remember the “_real_ laser gun” schematics your could order? (This was more _Starlog_ and _Famous Monsters_ than comic books, but same principle.) …and the SEVEN FOOT TALL MONSTER? “Terrify your friends!” (It was a balloon. A big balloon, yes - with a smudgy monochrome print of a monster on it. Everyone knows at least one balloonophobe, I guess.) ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/30 "2008-05-27T16:54:25Z")
I don’t know if they taught us to be cynical, but the [Johnson Smith](http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0792/bigad.gif) comic book ads were always a hoot. Here are the double-headed coins, the x-ray specs, the spy pen radio, and so many more. I never sent away for anything from them (so I never got burned if the stuff wasn’t exactly as my eight-year-old brain thought it would be), but I do remember reading these ads as intently as I read the comics in the books these ads appeared in. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/31 "2008-05-27T16:58:24Z")
I got my sea monkeys in person from a store. I wasn’t annoyed that they didn’t look like people – I was annoyed 'cause I couldn’t get the damned things to hatch (and because the tank was a really jury-rigged contraption). Years later I swam in the Great Salt Lake and got to see all the Sea Monkeys I wanted, up close. You had about a hundred of the damned things in every cubic foot of Salt Lake, looking like teemy little feathers with two black dots for eyes at one end. Nothing else can live in the Salt Lake, so they’ve got no natural enemies (except, I suppose, diseases). They eat algae, apparently. When you think about them, and the fact that you’re swimming among them, it feels extremely gross. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/32 "2008-05-27T17:22:48Z")
[QUOTE=Spoons] I don’t know if they taught us to be cynical, but the [Johnson Smith](http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0792/bigad.gif) comic book ads were always a hoot. Here are the double-headed coins, the x-ray specs, the spy pen radio, and so many more. I never sent away for anything from them (so I never got burned if the stuff wasn’t exactly as my eight-year-old brain thought it would be), but I do remember reading these ads as intently as I read the comics in the books these ads appeared in. [/QUOTE] [Johnson-Smith](http://www.johnsonsmith.com/) still sells junk. Sometimes when I’m bored I will send away for their catalog. then of course I get it for years and years, even though I never buy anything. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/33 "2008-05-27T17:28:05Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam] 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. [/QUOTE] Yup. I hit the streets one September afternoon peddlin’ my cards, quit when I hit 100 orders. These were the personalized cards, but I didn’t pay anything up front. They deducted the sales kit from my overall sales. As I recall, everything was on a really tight schedule – I had to sell the cards in September and submit the orders by Oct. 1, received the cards just before Thanksgiving, and had to collect and send the money in by Dec. 1 in order to get paid by Dec. 15. Something like that. It was a pretty fancy setup, too – 3-ring binder with some really classy card designs. I made enough to buy some pretty nice Christmas presents for my family – and by “nice” I mean, for a 10-year-old boy in 1961. I was going to do it again the next year, but that summer I got a paper route and it paid better with less work. I also knew a kid who sold Grit. Always rode a pretty nice bike, too, as I recall. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/34 "2008-05-27T17:40:44Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] 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!”) [/QUOTE] I actually ordered a set of those WWII-type soldiers, some time in the 1970s. I was extremely disappointed with them. The problem, of course, was that I already had a couple sets of little toy soldiers - Civil War guys in blue & gray, as well as “modern” olive-drab Army men - that were purchased from actual stores where you could see what you were getting (these all came in big, clear, plastic bags). So I was accustomed to fully-3D molded plastic, and was expecting more of the same when I ordered the 100 Army Men in Their Own Footlocker. Instead I got those flat things molded out of a very brittle plastic, which meant that most of the bayonets and quite a few arms and heads broke off or were already broken when they arrived. They were also much smaller than the “regular” army men I had. ---
**Author:** ![Tikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@Tikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tikki)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/35 "2008-05-27T17:48:58Z")
Regarding Grit: [QUOTE=Khadaji] Yep. I lived in Williamsport for (too) many years and the townsfolk mourned when it shut down. (OK, the old-timers did.) [/QUOTE] Our family had a subscription to it for several years, courtesy of our grandparents. Even though the target audience seemed to be really, really old people (from a kid’s point of view) my sisters and I, being voracious readers, would go through it each week anyway. Seems to me they had plenty of the grown-up versions of the ads discussed here. Though I can’t remember anything specific, I’m sure were always a handful of those “Make $1000s Stuffing Envelopes at Home!” ads in there. And “Lose Weight the EZ Way With Our Miracle Pills!” too. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/36 "2008-05-27T17:51:04Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] 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. [/QUOTE] Do you mean the think with a mirror that projected the thing you were supposed to draw on a piece of paper? That’s the only one of these I fell for. It jiggled enough that what I traced came out awful, and it didn’t come with a beautiful woman to draw either. My brother got the dollar bill thing from a magic store. Actually not a bad trick as cheap tricks go. He also fell for the greeting card scam - may parents weren’t happy about that. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/37 "2008-05-27T17:51:27Z")
[QUOTE=Khadaji] [Johnson-Smith](http://www.johnsonsmith.com/) still sells junk. Sometimes when I’m bored I will send away for their catalog. then of course I get it for years and years, even though I never buy anything. [/QUOTE] It really shouldn’t have surprised me that those catalogs were the same folks as the comic book crap. But it did. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/38 "2008-05-27T17:58:38Z")
> [@](#): > > Do you mean the think with a mirror that projected the thing you were supposed to draw on a piece of paper? That’s the only one of these I fell for. It jiggled enough that what I traced came out awful, and it didn’t come with a beautiful woman to draw either. Yeah – it’s called a _Camera Lucida_ and was invented about 1800 by Wlilliam Hyde Wollaston, because the poor guy couldn’t draw. (William Fox was so clumsy he couldn’t even use a Camera Lucida, and so became one of the inventors of photography). You can buy Cameras lucida today for a few hundred or thousand dollars, and they’re still used in art classes. The ones in the comic books sold for $1.98 (about as much as 100 Army Men!), and were dountless worth every penny of it. ---
**Author:** ![Tikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@Tikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tikki)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/39 "2008-05-27T18:02:45Z")
I meant to add that when I was a kid I remember that we had one of those money makers for a while. I remember TikkiDad showing it to us. He must have borrowed it from a friend or neighbor because I know he wouldn’t have bought it himself, though, with five kids to feed, it would have been nice if it really worked. In the 7th grade, my best friend sent away for Sea Monkeys. She was disappointed with what she got but she did try her best to keep them alive. Alas, I fear that brine shrimp (er, Sea Monkeys) don’t seem to live beyond a couple of months in captivity, despite the fact the good folks who sent them to you provide you with enough food to last them a year. **Cal,** they still sell cheap cameras lucida in craft magazines. ---
**Author:** ![Mikemike2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikemike2/32/305_2.png) [@Mikemike2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikemike2)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643/40 "2008-05-27T18:09:16Z")
This has been a fun thread. I wanted that Polaris sub so bad as a kid. I would daydream about it for hours. Of course I fully expected to be doing undersea exploration. The picture of it assembled actually looks better than I would have guessed. It could have been pretty fun in its own right. I bit on a number of things like the x-ray specs, the dollar making press, sea monkeys, etc. I used to study those ads over and over and considered ordering virtually every thing. I’ve actually ordered lots more stupid stuff since being an adult. I remember the x-ray specs the most. I was convinced I would see the bones in my hand, and be able to see what was in the fridge with the door closed. When I talked about ordering them with Dad he asked my why I thought hospitals spent $1000s of dollars on x-ray machines if they could just order these glasses. I had no good answer, but this did not dim my enthusiasm one bit. What did old people know? They could just read the ad to see what I was talking about. My confidence was shaken as soon as I saw the cheap plastic frames with **paper** lenses. Two paper lenses were sandwiched together with a small cutout in the centre. Inside there was a feather, so that you viewed thru the veins of the feather. It produced the blurry or double vision people were talking about, not a bad illusion, but you do get pretty close with squinting. I knew I had been had. I didn’t feel too bitter as it was not a large investment, but my cynicism did go up several notches. I enjoyed the fun I had daydreaming about all these wondrous toys and think current kids miss out. Still, kind off a shitty thing to do to a kid. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical/450643.md?page=3)