Those are in Mail Order Mysteries. While most kids felt ripped off and gave up, a few entrepeneurs say that it was the start of their careers.
OMG I can totally see trumpicans buying sea-monkeys. Especially if you market them as Patriot Monkeys.
“Daddy, why don’t my Patriot Monkeys look like the ad?”
“It’s all Biden’s fault.”
[Moderating]
This is FQ. Leave the politics out of it.
Did that gum that turned your mouth black work? Did anyone buy these items?
I was browsing through the first issue of Marvel Comics (a copy sold for $2.4 million a few days ago) and noticed an ad selling gamecocks, two for 10 cents (the small text isn’t readable, but it is the only image that I have).
Do they still do that? Shortly after the relatively recent “improvement” in mail service, there were reports of chicks arriving dead, because the mail was now taking a couple days longer to arrive. So I expected they stopped shipping them that way.
A quick glance shows me several companies still offering chicks by mail on the first page of Google results.
I don’t order chicks, but I order live plants by mail, and even these days they usually show up OK. Considerably more unpleasant to get a box of dead chicks than a box of dead bare-root strawberries or sweet potato slips, though. Especially for the chicks.
You can still order chicks by mail from Tractor Supply. You have give a phone number and the Post Office will call when they arrive. You have to pick them up at the Post Office.
Shipping live newborn poultry by mail started during the Depression, and there’s enough of a demand for it that it’s still done to this day. It’s actually very convenient for people who live out in the boonies. There’s GOT to be a Doper who has used this service.
It wasn’t just kids’ magazines that had those monkey ads. I recently saw one in an old copy of “Workbasket”, a digest-sized lifestyle and craft magazine aimed at women.
As for the monkey giveaway, I grew up in Des Moines, and Dean Studios was indeed a legitimate business. I see that they have closed (I don’t know when) but back in the day, they were the place to get banners printed, or in my family’s case, cheap copies of our graduation pictures to send out with Christmas cards.
One of the strangest monkey stories I’ve ever heard involved Jim Jones. He financed one of his early churches BY SELLING MONKEYS DOOR TO DOOR. One wonders how successful this venture really was.
This story, believe it or not, has been turned into a musical. 13 minutes in length.
Oh, and as for GRIT magazine, it’s still available, on newsstands no less. It’s a gardening and homesteading magazine nowadays.
Update: To my surprise, Dean Studios still exists - and they don’t have a website. Their official name is Multi Media Imaging.
Did anyone collect Bazooka Joe comics and cash them in for the prizes? I did and what you got was usually a piece of shit compared to what you thought you were going to get.
In the spring of 1970 when I was in 3rd grade I sent in a gazillion comics with no money involved for a pair of space radio phones that promised I could talk to friends in other rooms and such. I was going to be the coolest kid when I showed them off at show 'n tell at school.
Imagining a Star Trek like communicator I eagerly waited for them to come.
And waited…and waited…and waited…and waited… and waited!!!
All summer I waited. My friends were getting sick of me telling them about the space radio phones we were going to eventually play with.
Sonsabitches didn’t show up until September of that year when I was already in 4th grade and no more show 'n tell.
And all they were was 2 cheap pieces of metal and 25 feet of string.
4th grade me: A tin can telephone? That’s all it is? Jebus Kripes, I could have made this myself! I waited all summer for this garbage? Fuck!
Did you check if it was cosmic string?
This is so weird - just yesterday an acquaintance posted some photos to Facebook of the squirrel monkey her parents got by mail order and that they kept around when she was growing up. I never even knew that was a thing until yesterday, and then I see this thread.
I have nothing substantial to add, other than that I know someone who had a mail-order monkey.
The man who invented sea monkeys was like a weird character out of an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Given his proud membership in the Aryan Nation, I prefer to describe him as an evil genius.
Ah, that explains why the sea monkeys in the ads always looked so whitebread…
Never bought a monkey, but as a kid I bought a set of cars/trucks advertised in the back pages of Boy’s Life. Scouting magazine, so I must have been at least 8. Offered something ridiculous, like 10 or 20 toy vehicles for a buck. Picture showed vehicles similar to matchbox.
What came were 20 tiny 1-piece plastic vehicles. The wheels were molded out of the same plastic as the body and didn’t turn.
I’ve always thought that was a pretty effective cheap lesson.
I was always curious about the vacuum-cleaner motor hovercraft that they advertised.
Is this the one?
Mythbusters covered the hovercraft. You would in fact float up to an inch above the ground, rather like the puck on an air hockey table.