{"id":21319,"date":"2022-03-12T13:30:55","date_gmt":"2022-03-12T18:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=21319"},"modified":"2022-03-12T12:41:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-12T17:41:13","slug":"post-2-of-8-sea-monkeys-and-other-wonders-from-the-back-pages-of-comic-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=21319","title":{"rendered":"Post 2 of 8: Sea-Monkeys and Other Wonders from the Back Pages of Comic Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Advertisements for mail-order novelty items were ubiquitous in comic books during, in particular, the 1950s and \u201960s, and beyond. Magazines aimed at the youth market, too, often ran these ads. The hucksters who came up with this stuff preyed on the gullible by offering fantastical, amazing, stupendous<\/em>\u2014or so their ad copy claimed\u2014toys, novelties, gag items, and other such flotsam. The products were designed, first, to remain affordable, in that the target customers were adolescents or teens, most often boys, who generally didn\u2019t have a lot of money and even less judgement or self-control, and second, to relieve said kids of their allowances and hard-earned paper route money.<\/p>\n

All of this miscellany was aggressively marketed with little regard for honesty and integrity; truth-in-advertising was most assuredly not<\/em> a chapter in whichever sales manual was used by the people who pushed this paraphernalia.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of the warehouses worth of cheap, over-hyped, and often fraudulently marketed product, Sea-Monkeys\u2014Instant Pets!\u2014is the unrivaled gold-medal winner in this category of merchandise. Harold von Braunhut was the inventor and master marketer who came up with Sea-Monkeys, inspired by a rival\u2019s Ant Farm. Braunhut died in 2003 with close to 200 patents to his name.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kirk Demarais<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Zoom right now, we\u2019re exploring some of those crazy, miraculous, impossibly<\/em> astounding, and definitely not-as-advertised pop culture icons of a bygone era\u2014monsters, spaceships, ghosts, dinosaurs, and more! To give credit where credit is due, most of the information we\u2019ve gathered on this topic is contained in collector Kirk Demarais\u2019 book Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic-Book Ads<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Do join us on Zoom for all the fun!<\/p>\n

This Afternoon\u2019s MonSFFA e-Meeting on Zoom<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Join by phone (voice only); in Montreal, call in toll-free: 1-438-809-7799. Find your out-of-town Zoom call-in number here: Call-In Numbers<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Meeting ID: 852 6845 9705
\nPasscode: 615915\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advertisements for mail-order novelty items were ubiquitous in comic books during, in particular, the 1950s and \u201960s, and beyond. Magazines aimed at the youth market, too, often ran these ads. The hucksters who came up with this stuff preyed on the gullible by offering fantastical, amazing, stupendous\u2014or so their ad copy claimed\u2014toys, novelties, gag items, … Continue reading Post 2 of 8: Sea-Monkeys and Other Wonders from the Back Pages of Comic Books<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21319"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21323,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21319\/revisions\/21323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}