From the link:
More recently, Sweet Shot.
It’s hypolicious!
Jeez, I remember that! What a blast from the past.
Syringes and needles just didn’t have those bad associations back in the 50’s and early 60’s. They were almost exclusively the tools of a respected profession, and if you wanted your kid to grow up to be a doctor, it made sense to give him relatively realistic toys of the trade.
A “fountain pen” was a device similar to an ordinary pen, but with a refillable ink reservoir so the pen could be re-used.
The “Exploding” fountain pen contained a noisemaker, which was triggered when the victim removed the cap. As the effect did not truly result in splattered ink and high-velocity jagged shards of plastic, the descriptor “exploding” is somewhat hyperbolic. This was common for comic book ads of that era, and was an important developmental experience which taught children never to trust advertising, or indeed authority figures in general. The X-Ray specs did not in fact operate via Roentgen radiation either.
Electric chairs; those are just hilarious!
It was the “harmless” part that confused me, but it makes more sense now that I know the “hand grenade” was just a noisemaker. 
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.
Tiny Hijack: How many of you would “save up and send off and get” this stuff?
Even things that required “25c in coin” or a boxtop or a tear-out coupon from a comic book or magazine, or a money order, were more than most kids had in one batch at one time. Thus the save up part. But was it “send off” or “send in” or some other variation for you?
Nat’l Lampoon had a great parody once: “Boys’ Real Life,” the cover for which was a troop of scouts circle-jerking. Inside, one of those “salesman” type ads for peddling such useless junk, but the idea was to case the homes while showing off the wares. The headline was, “Hey, guys! Look at all the great stuff I got just by breaking into some houses!”
It showed how to modify a train tranformer so it would detonate a shotgun shell. (Hint: also makes a great “lie detector”).
Or the Dalton Dead Eye BB gun.
Mother (seeing son take a bead on his infant brother): “Tommy, you could put your little brother’s eye out with that!”
Tommy: “You bet I could, mom! I can even pop a hole in car safety glass a block away!”
And then there was “Frog Baseball.” You don’t want to know.
Ahem. You get the idea.
Remember that bit about a homemade suitcase bomb ad: “Hey kids! Be the first kid on your block to be the last kid on your block!” (or the only kid – it varied)
Hey, X-ray glasses! Who bought X-ray glas … uh, no, me neither. That was just stupid.
This thread reminds me when my brother and I ordered those little exploding spikes that we’d put into a few of our mother’s cigarettes to get her to stop smoking. We got a good talking to after she stopped laughing. Someone at her job wanted a cigarette and became our unintended victim. Of course, she threw out that pack and hid all others from us after that. Still brings a chuckle.
I once ordered a '‘go-kart’, and they sent the plans on how to build a go-kart.
They sell them in the gift shop of the hospital I work in.
Who in their right mind decided that would be a good idea?
If one gets dropped or left anywhere in the hospital you’ll have a huge scare and maybe a PR breakdown if a rumor gets out that a needle was just laying on the ground in a hall.
Heck, I used those things on my husband, not all that long ago. They’re called cigarette loads and I found them in a magic/illusion shop. This shop also had a lot of the products in the old comic books.
At any rate, it didn’t make my husband stop smoking…but he DID start hiding his packs from me. And if I found a pack, and moved it in any way, he threw it out. For some reason, he just didn’t like his smokes exploding in his face.
Helpful hint: I always cut the loads in two or three, the long way. They still got the job done, they were just less visible when I put them in the cigs. I also worked them about a third of the way down the cigarette, so that he’d be puffing away, all relaxed, when WHAM! he had reached the load. I also never loaded more than one or two cigarettes in a pack, and I usually took out a few, put in the loaded one, and then put the safe ones back. He never knew whether I’d loaded the pack or not. :)
The vacuum cleaner hovercraft plans were in the comic book ads. The thing did work if you built it, because I saw the results of a man building it put on a web page.
I always wanted the hot air balloons they advertised. So what if they didn’t have gondolas to ride in.
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.
ETA Never mind.
*
X-Ray Specs were invented by Harold von Braunhut, also the inventor of Amazing Sea-Monkeys.*
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.
LOL. My mom *swears *by hers. She was very much against getting any, but my sister bought some and plugged them in. Mom said she unplugged them twice, but since has seen that they work.
I bought a “remote control” bat. It was a rubber bat on a string.