Saturday, May 10, 2008

Everything old is new again



Do you remember browsing through the back pages of your comic books and finding ads for a whole host of weird and wacky items, most of which seemed to be too good to be true?

Do you remember ordering some of these items, only to discover that, indeed, they were too good to be true?

I sure do. In my callow youth I was suckered into purchasing an "exploding matchbook" that was so awkwardly-constructed that the gag usually gave itself away before I could "fool" anyone with it. I think that was the beginning of my lifelong distrust of advertising.

Anyway, most of these doo-dads are now available here. All of the hilariously cheesy artwork seems to have been preserved. (The only thing that seems to be missing are the Sea Monkeys.)

Via Mostly Ghostly.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I bought the X-ray specs, the remote controlled ghost, and of course the Sea Monkeys, although judging by the official Sea Monkeys website, and the promotional video on youtube, they'r trying pretty hard to shed their "scam" image.

Never tried to sell Grit, though.

Andrew Durkin said...

Ha! I missed that promo video... "We will single-handedly create life" -- awesome.

Thanks!