I remember seeing ads asking kids to sell Grit in comics of my youth, right alongside the amazing X-ray specs and Charles Atlas ads. Apparently, they were enough for Richie Rich to get started on his millions, but what about the rest of the teeming millions? Anyone ever sell these things?
And exactly what the hell was Grit, anyway?
I sold Christmas/Holiday cards from a company very similar to Grit in the 70’s and 80’s. That was addition and prior to my paper route.
Grit was just a special interest paper. An independent press.
I always thought of Grit as the Boy Scout paper. It was pretty informative and weirdly benign… Paste.
But what was in it? News? Recipes? The latest ramblings of Lyndon LaRuche?
I get Grit magazine! I really enjoy it. It’s something along the lines as Mother Earth News, but just not as popular, I’d say.
Grit magazine: Grit (newspaper) - Wikipedia
ETA: http://www.grit.com/
It’s a reduced size serving Southerners eat when on a diet.
Yes! Grammar school days (late 40’s) I had a “route” that I made one trip around before realizing I had been scammed! Ended abruptly thereafter. Very much like selling magazines to win silly prizes. Mama bought the only ones I sold.
Bad memories! 
Strangely enough, my wife’s brother-in-law used to write for Grit!
Wow - so did I as a kid and I did very well! Made quite a bit of money from those Christmas cards - it was a big deal then to have your name and short personal greeting printed inside, and people thought it was “classy”.
I got all kinds of cool gifts as well - even a small television for my room, a tape recorder, etc. I would be out there in August and September, getting orders for Christmas cards from local businesses and neighbors.
That company loved me and would send me the catalog even years later - I remember my mother telling me on the phone that the Christmas card catalog showed up again - and I was probably 25 years old at the time! Ha! (I stopped selling them at about age 14.)
Yow. It’s still being published!
That is damning with faint praise. I do loves me some Mother Earth news though. I think I am going to get another subscription tonight. The stated purpose to the Mother Earth News isn’t exactly as it plays out. It is really a magazine about the most eccentric and isolationist types that exist in North America and I plan to be one of them someday.
I know what Grit is from the ads of the back of Boy’s Life magazine but I don’t think I have ever seen an issue personally.
The Grit being published now has almost no resemblance to the Grit that was hawked in comic book ads; the original Grit was an actual newspaper that concentrated on upbeat/positive news and columns, like a neighborhood paper. By the early 1980s, when a church friend of mine sold it for a while, it had switched from a broadsheet to a tabloid format, but it remained newsprint. The current publisher merely bought the name and slapped it onto a glossy rural lifestyle magazine. (Comparisons of its current incarnation to Mother Earth News, incidentally, are apt; they’re published by the same company.)
<SLAPS runner pat WITH A WET TROUT>
Yes, I did sell the Grit weekly news paper. In '61 & '62. I sold/delivered on Thursday night and Saturday morning. It cost $0.15. I did make a little extra spending money. It was a great paper. I read it every week.
The rest of my time, not in school, I worked for my Dad. The one time I asked for pay, his answer was; “You get 3 meals a day, a roof and place to sleep. When you need something you get it. I will not pay you to earn your keep.”
You know, he was very correct in his evaluation of the subject. I got everything I needed and a lot of what I simply wanted.
Mule
BTW… A couple, or so, years ago I subscribed to the Grit Magazine. I is no comparison to what I sold. I was very disapointed.
So it wasn’t the true Grit.
Ban hammer! Ban hammer!
The “Grit” model of door to door sales makes little sense. Having kids deliver the local paper makes economic sense in densely packed areas. But selling and delivering a national paper whose peak circulation was only four hundred thousand? Especially when most copies were sold to rural residents?
I know the OP is four years old, but…
[nitpick]It was actually Richie Rich’s dad who got started on his millions by selling Grit.[/nitpick]
That’s why I will never rise to Richie’s dad’s level. 