# Tropes you got confused with reality **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 27, 2022, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tropes-you-got-confused-with-reality/965225 "2022-05-27T18:39:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 39
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2022, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tropes-you-got-confused-with-reality/965225/39 "2022-06-01T13:28:28Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Be cheaper to just order an army of Sea Monkeys to back you up on the beach. Ha, Sea Monkeys were the only thing I ever bought from one of those comic book ads. Not for lack of wanting them-- I definitely had my eye on those x-ray specs. But not only was my meager allowance not going to afford much, I didn’t have the patience to wait 6 to 8 weeks. Anyway, talk about a letdown! I was only 6 or 7, though was still sensible enough not to expect them to be anthropormorphic and create a tiny undersea Altantis-style kingdom in my fishbowl, like the ad pictured. But the few ant-sized brine shrimp that hatched were _ **extremely** _ anticlimactic. All but one quickly died. The lone tiny brine shrimp held on to life and swam around until one day I accidentally knocked the fish bowl off my dresser when I pulled too hard on a stuck drawer. I remember the lone Sea Monkey swimming in a puddle on my bedroom floor until my mom unceremoniously wiped it up. I started to say- “mom, wait…uhhh, eh, never mind”. ETA: I started a separate thread: [Did you ever buy anything from those old 70s era comic book ads?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-buy-anything-from-those-old-70s-era-comic-book-ads/965505) --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tropes-you-got-confused-with-reality/965225)._