I had to rub my eyes in disbelief when I saw the item on this page. (It ran in Strange Worlds #2, 1959,scanned on the wonderful Pappy’s Golden Age of Comics.)
Here’s the blurb:
Hey, Ma, look! I’m a ten-year old junkie!
I had one of those as a kid in the early 1990’s. Bought it at a flea market. I kind of wish I still had it.
The throwing knife looks like loads of fun for kids too.
Why a junkie? Don’t doctors and nurses draw blood for legitimate purposes?
Those came in a medical play kit too. We just took blood samples, the candy pills were tasty though. Kids had chemistry sets back then so whats a fake syringe. The set I had included the formula for stink bombs that smelled like skunk and a smoke bomb.
I got in trouble once for using the itching powder. Looking back, I should got off light…
As a fifties kid, I’d just like to affirm that we were generally pretty clueless. I doubt it would have occurred to us that a “shotter” was used by anyone other than a doctor or a nurse. We knew about drunks and bums and (gasp) beatniks, but I don’t think we had much awareness of drug addiction or junkies.
I got hold of an atomic joy buzzer or a facsimile thereof at a magic shop a couple of years ago. Kids, don’t use these things on older persons. I almost gave a coupe of guys heart attacks.
I once got the hypno coin. I was going to have a blast hypnotizing my parents into raising my allowance, bullies into treating me nicely, and teachers into giving me good grades for goofing off.
The coin was a cardboard disk with a spiral printed on it.
Sure they do, but they don’t often inject themselves, and that illustration looks to me like someone injecting themselves. (Doctors and nurses use both hands when they inject someone, one hand to guide, one to push the plunger).
Anyway, it was a gag, it didn’t need over-analyzing.
I had a coworker once who would occasionally pretend to inject herself with the lead from a mechanical pencil for giggles. She would have had a lot of fun with something like that.
As do the snowstorm tablets. Just stick one on the burning end of a cigarette. What could possibly go wrong?
Kids did that and some stuck in a sewing needle. Instant retractable weapon nobody suspected until the first scream. That did get you into trouble with the adults. I didn’t do the needle bit, that was a couple bad kids that did that.
I remember getting allergy shots in the 60’s and the doctor giving me the needle to take home and play with (tip broken off of course).
I wonder why they don’t do that anymore?:dubious:
The OP’s item is really not all that unbelievable. They still make novelty pens designed like blood-filled syringes, that give more or less the same visual effect-- I have one myself, somewhere. Granted, they don’t sell them in comic books anymore; but then, they don’t really sell anything in comics anymore.
A blood-filled hypodermic, on its own, is just a gross-out effect (or perhaps an excuse to “play doctor”). But of course, that was the 1950s. By the 1960s things had gotten a lot more overt. Behold Hippy-Sippy! The sweet, sweet candy-filled hypodermic needle! Those wacky hippies and their needles! Comes complete with groovy counterculture button!
“Hippy-Sippy says I’ll try anything!”
I like the fact that there was absolutely no attempt to disguise any of this. Makers of Hippy-Sippy, you were SO HIGH.
Because lawyering used to be a profession, and is now a business. (I put this to a lawyer in his 60s once. The man looked about ready to cuff me one, which clued me that I had a point.)
I got my first one at age 12. Wound up owning at least a dozen of them by age 17.
“Guaranteed to stick.” Major come-on.
I had one. It scared the living s**t out of all the younger kids 
We had one in the 70s.
In the 60s I had one, too. I don’t remember an ad, though. I think I just saw it in a toy store and it was cheap enough to buy with my own allowance.