What did you order from the back of a comic book, and what did you receive?
The ones I know about:
Learn how to dunk: A 3 page photocopy of exercises to strengthen your leg muscles.
A real submarine: Stickers and instructions for making some empty boxes look like a submarine.
X-Ray glasses: Fuzzy plastic lenses that make things look like they have an outline around them.
Charles Atlas: My mom threw away the letter I received from them, so I have no idea what the original offer was, but for years after that I got letters telling me I owed them money.
Hovercraft: a set of instructions about how to take an old vacuum cleaner motor and make a hovercraft. Supposedly it works.
Sea monkeys. Never ordered them, because my parents pointed out that they didn’t look like the humanoid creatures in the ad.
As a young adult, I worked with a woman who did, knowing they didn’t look like that either, and got some brine shrimp that were several millimeters in length.
“Make money selling greeting cards!” I must have been 10 or 11. The big case of cards arrived – C.O.D. – $30, if I remember right, when $30 was a week’s pay for my stepdad. Mom sent them back.
I once ordered a device that promised to let me become a ventriloquist.
They sent me some kind of metal washer with no instructions whatsoever. It was completely useless.
I honestly thought that a ventriloquist could somehow “throw” his voice so that he could make it sound as if his voice was coming from someone who was seated several feet away from where he was seated. I was only 10 years old at the time. But the people who advertise this kind of stuff in comic books can take advantage of ten year olds and the kids stand no chance against them.
In any kind of fair and reasonable society, these people should never be allowed to take money away from children.
Then again, maybe it’s a valuable lesson for children to learn that the world is full of these kinds of “snake-oil” salespeople and they have to learn not to throw away their money. Seems to me that’s well worth the quarter that it cost me.
At the very least, it’s a good lesson for parents. They need to talk to their kids and educate them that these crooks abound.
I sold seeds one summer and earned an archery set, which was pretty cool.
The other thing I got was a 100 piece army set with soldiers, airplanes and boats. they were all olive drab, everything was a different scale, and the soldiers were actually two dimensional. I was so mad when I got them, I threw all the soldiers in the trash can and just kept the three dimensional toys.
I ordered a 7’ REAL FLYING GHOST when I was about 9.
What I got? A white balloon with a face on it and a big white plastic trash bag. Somehow you were supposed to blow up the balloon, attach it to the trash bag, attach the whole thing to length of fishing line (not included) and loop the line over the door. The ghost “flew” by pulling on the line to make it go up and down.
I wasn’t a happy camper. But it did train me never to order anything from the back of a comic book again.
Ha! Here’s a videofrom someone else who had the same experience
I also remember being annoyed by the GRIT ads (some kind of midwestern newspaper kids could sign up to sell) because once upon a time, the thing you had to fill out to do it literally asked “Are You a Boy?” Not that I wanted to sell GRIT, mind you, but I was pissed off that apparently I wasn’t allowed to because I wasn’t a boy.
I’m currently getting free issues of Grit, which is now a bimonthly gardening and homesteading magazine that, unlike many magazines of its ilk, is totally apolitical.
There is a book, “Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads!”
that contains pictures, ratings, and a description of all that kind of stuff. It’s an interesting read- bottom line is, you get what you pay for.
I got the sea monkeys - they came as a vial of freeze-dried eggs, and I never was able to get them to hatch. You can buy them in aquatics stores nowadays; I used to buy them to feed my fish.
I also remember selling seeds one summer - I think I made $19, which was a small fortune for an 8 year old at that time. My parents made me open a bank account with it.
Heh I sold seeds once, I gave up after I sold like 1 packet per hour of work.
Another one I remember (didn’t order it from a comic book, found it at the swap meet,) was the ufo/weather balloon. It was essentially a 6 foot hot dog shaped balloon made out of a black garbage bag type plastic. The black plastic got heated by the sun which caused it to rise. Bad part though was that it came with fishing line that was impossible to hold without cutting your fingers. The balloon generated maybe 50 pounds of pull force, so I was able to fly it for a few minutes before I had to let it go and it floated away.
Oh the ventriloquist thing you are supposed to put under your tongue and hum. Like everything else from the back of a comic book, it doesn’t work. I got mine from a magic shop.
Wow, it’s kinda depressing that I know the history of this stuff. The classic black and white, multi-ad page was made by one novelty company that went out of business. I purchased the entire run of Amazing Spider-man on CD and noticed that these ads stopped around the mid-80’s and were replaced by 1-2 page ads for Atari video games.
Today, their spiritual descendants are pop-up ads online and in-game banner ads.
