A few weeks ago, I was watching Conan O’Brian and Jay Leno was the guest. Leno told this weird story ordering things off of the back of comic books. He said that when he was a kid (1960’s?) he ordered something called “monkey in a teacup”. He told a big, long, hilarious story about it, but didn’t seem to know what it actually was. From what he said, it was actually alive and ran around the house before his mother opened the door and it rushed out never to be seen again.
What? Was there some actual creature you could order through the mail (besides sea monkeys)? Does anyone know what “monkey in a teacup” actually was? Please answer, it’s driving me crazy!
“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true” -Albert Einstein
If I remember correctly they were squirrel monkeys that you could buy mail order from the back of comic books in the late 50’s and early to mid 60’s.
I wanted one but was never able to get up enough money.
Peace
t lion
" I Wonder What Happens When I push THIS Button? "
Sorry, this is a tangent…Alias, wanna hear something wierd? When I was a kid, and living in San Diego, my dad brought some toys back from Tiajuana. They were these tiny wooden dolls that shook their arms and legs rapidly and at random intervals. No battery, no wind-up mechanism. We finally broke one open after they stopped working that evening and found the power source. Dead flies. True story. Nasty huh?
“Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few.”
-Tao Te Ching
You could get squirrel monkeys and spider monkeys, I think. From what I’ve heard, half the time the things would arrive dead, and the other half the time they would wind up getting away like Jay’s did, or being given to the local animal shelter. A monkey is NOT an easy pet to raise. Even the tiny ones need a lot of room, will bite, are great escape artists, and are wildly destructive.
My monkey got away too but he didn’t get out the door. We looked every where. If it hadn’t been for my X-ray glasses i never would have spotted him behind th book case. There are some laws about BUYING animals thru the mail. But the adverisers have found a clever way around that I see in the current Boy’s Life that if you buy a 6 month supply of food they will send you a free Anole lizard. The ‘special’ food is meal worms.Mom will love it when they get into the pantry. ‘Sea monkeys’ aint nothin but your every day brine shrimp. If you go to your local Tropical Fish Store you can buy 1000 or so eggs for a couple of bucks. Mix up some brine in a mason jar sprinkle in some eggs and there they are. Feed um a bit of yeast or set a jar of fresh water outside till it turns nice and green and add a few drops of algae every day and you got your own hours of fun. they are boring lil critters but fish eat um like popcorn.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
When my wife and I got married and were thinking about children, we decided to move up the food chain first. We bought Sea Monkeys, thinking that if we could keep them alive we’d take a crack at a dog, then a kid. The Sea Monkeys died. But we went ahead anyway and now have a dog, cats, and a kid.
Sea Monkeys are worth it just for the little book that comes with them. It’s full of wild hyperbole like, “Sea Monkeys are no DREAM, but they are DREAM PETS!!!”
We killed ourselves laughing over the damned book, lent it to our friends for laughs, etc. For $6.99 it was worth it. The Sea Monkeys got flushed.
Reminds me of my first exploration of the Exploratorium in SF, in its early days. Someone had an experiment there with a fly pinned down with a mike or just an electrode or something in it, hooked to an oscilloscope, which showed the waveform of its buzz. . .for whatever that proved. Gave me creeps. Guess I’m strictly an inanimate electronicker.
I can’t help but think of that special magical moment for many kids when they finally got their Monkey in a Teacup in the mail and opened the package to find a decaying carcass. Ah, what lovely memories that would leave.
Kinda, but not quite. Mexican jumping beans are made whan a particular moth larvae eats it’s way into the center of a berry of a particular tree. The berry heals over the entrance hole and then (as the larva continues to eat) dies and hardens around the live larvae, until the grisly end. The larva can’t mature or escape on its own.
It’s just a couple species of trees that have this trait. The moths lay their eggs on all kinds of trees, and the rest don’t do it: elsewise there wouldn’t be any surviving moths today. - MC
