# Unbelievable novelty item from the 50s **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 11, 2009, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048 "2009-03-11T07:13:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/41 "2009-03-12T13:02:34Z")
> [@lieu](#): > > Remember the ad for the submarine that would go up and down in the water? I must have mentioned it once because Grandmom had it waiting for me when I next came to visit. It was much smaller than the picture and didn’t work as promised. We must have been doing something wrong. Certainly do! Had to put baking soda in it? About 2-3 inches long. Gray. Less exciting than watching paint dry. My biggest disappointment was that throwing knife, though. When the ad said “guaranteed to stick every time” I took that to mean that if I could hit something – a tree, a door, a bird, a wasp – this knife was going to do like the ones in the movies, and that was to be way better than any of the knives I had been throwing already, which was to stick up once every four or five tries. So in the week or more it took for mine to come, I was practicing with rocks to hit stuff I wanted to stick a knife in. When it finally came, maybe 10 days later, I had the sad awakening that you had to hold it just right and stand just so many paces away and have your arm straight and several other special moves in a just so fashion. And then it still wouldn’t stick up but maybe one in four or five tries. I hope somebody else mentions some of the other ripoffs in my childhood so I can relive the anger and frustration that I had managed to repress. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/42 "2009-03-12T13:26:55Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > The Sea Monkeys did not, in any way, resemble monkeys. They didn’t resemble kittens, either. I desperately wanted most of the items advertised in comic books back then. > > Today I see “electronic pest repellents” advertised in various catalogs, complete with an artist’s representation of how the (electric? ultrasound?) waves supposedly make rodents and insects flee in pain. I guess it’s the same thing, just for grownups now. I desperately wanted Sea Monkey’s, too! Mom said, " No." So, I saved 200,000 Dum Dum wrappers to trade them in for stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/43 "2009-03-12T13:38:30Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > As someone who was always tempted to send in for those, I want to know: so what did they really do? It was implied that you could see the bones in your hand, but also that you could see through women’s dresses. Neither is possible of course but what “illusion” did they create? IIRC they said “X RAY SPECS” on the frames/lenses, and had the hypnoswirls or whatever…hardly subtle, which would make a woman would run away rather than be ogled, but whatever. I had one of those as part of a doctor kit. It was a little like a crude diffraction grating (just recalling from childhood memory), and made everything imaged double. One image was fainter than the other, and where they overlapped, the object looked opaque; where they didn’t, it looked translucent. If you used your imagination and turned it on your hand, it did look like you were looking at bones (the opaque part) inside flesh (the translucent part). Of course it did the same thing with a tree, book or a refrigerator. I felt cheated, but at least I got it as a gift. I had one of the submarines, too, and it worked most of the time. It used baking _powder,_ not baking _soda._ The reaction with water caused gas to be formed (CO[sub]2[/sub]?), which made the object float to the surface, where it tipped over and released the gas bubble, then sank again to repeat the process. Hours of fun. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/44 "2009-03-12T13:44:52Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > I had one of the submarines, too, and it worked most of the time. It used baking _powder,_ not baking _soda._ The reaction with water caused gas to be formed (CO[sub]2[/sub]?), which made the object float to the surface, where it tipped over and released the gas bubble, then sank again to repeat the process. Hours of fun. :rolleyes: Thanks for the fix. Yeah, powder seems right, not soda. I just thought the little thing was farting. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/45 "2009-03-12T14:02:14Z")
One of those ads was for a plan to make loads of money by selling seeds door-to-door. Each pack was maybe 50 cents, and I got to keep maybe 10 cents from each one. I built my vast empire of 60 cents that way, and it only cost me $4! ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/46 "2009-03-12T14:08:53Z")
I had them three times. The first time, I was a kid, and was entirely convinced that they would look like monkeys and do tricks and stuff. They were quite the disappointment, but I liked them anyway. They came to a nasty end when I picked up the jar to look at them and spilled them all over my brother’s bed. He still gives me shit about that to this day. The second time, I lived with a woman who believed all the hype. I told her many many times that the hype was overblown, and that they really weren’t all that amazing. She wouldn’t believe me. She bought them, and failed to be amazed. She finally ended up dumping them out. The third time, a fellow Doper sent some to me. When they hatched, I was amazed at how many there were. It was quite spectacular. They all died a few days later. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/47 "2009-03-12T14:21:54Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Heck, I used those things on my husband, not all that long ago. Dear, if you tried that on me, you’d soon be enjoying the experience of having all of your worldly possessions tossed to the curb. I’m just sayin’. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/48 "2009-03-12T18:35:59Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > Dear, if you tried that on me, you’d soon be enjoying the experience of having all of your worldly possessions tossed to the curb. > > I’m just sayin’. I’m sure he thought about it. I did quit loading his cigs when he told me that he lit one up while he was in traffic, and said that it nearly caused an accident. I only started loading them when my doctor told me to either get him to smoke outside or divorce him. I have asthma, allergies, and I’m sensitive to cigarette smoke. The loads were just my little way of saying that the smoke affects me adversely. Drastic problems call for drastic solutions. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/49 "2009-03-12T19:52:18Z")
Cigarette loads are fantastic, I bought a litte tin of those and loaded up my Grandmothers smokes with a half stick, I cant even imagine what a full one would do…my Grandmother was quite the practical joker. what the hell is with the snow storm generator things? do I even want to know what kind of insane chemical would cause that kind of reaction? ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/50 "2009-03-12T20:24:37Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Today I see “electronic pest repellents” advertised in various catalogs, My Mother bought me one of these when my old apartment had roaches. The roaches found it to be a nice warm place to mate. I suspect the red LED light also helped set the “mood”. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048/51 "2009-03-12T21:58:59Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > As do the snowstorm tablets. Just stick one on the burning end of a cigarette. What could possibly go wrong? > [@](#): > > We report a rare complication of smoking, toxic pneumonitis, in an adolescent female who combined an over-the-counter novelty item, Snow Storm tablets, with cigarettes. [What indeed? :eek:](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3170309) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unbelievable-novelty-item-from-the-50s/489048.md?page=2)