Talk about hitting all of my nostalgia points! Hat tip to SWLing Post reader, Mitch, for sharing this ad from a 1960s comic book:
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Never saw ads for REAL monkeys, but you mentioned shrimp – and I ordered a kit of Sea Monkeys. They were brine shrimp eggs that you put in water, added “Sea Monkey Food” and in a couple weeks they hatched and swam around. Not too long afterwards, the water gets very cloudy and stinks up your bedroom, and mother says “No more Sea Monkeys”…
Ahhh – those were the days!
Kevin, those ads about sand-in-the-face of the weakling on the beach were for Charles Atlas’ muscle building correspondence course (nowadays called “distance learning”). Ha, I signed up for his course way back when. Never got to the beach and never got the muscles. Some dreams are destined to be unfulfilled.
🙂
I like the coverage of solid state technology (diode made with razor blade & pencil lead).
Amused it just glosses over the “attach pencil lead to the short side of pin” without mentioning how to attach it. I wonder how many kids in those few decades used glue, and subsequently gave up terribly disappointed? 😉
Personally my favorite ads were about the poor 90 pound weakling who was having sand kicked in his face while his ‘girlfriend’ walked away arm-in-arm with the bully. But good old ‘dynamic tension’ came to the rescue and the bully ultimately lost both his self-respect and the girl.
For anyone looking to replicate these radios, when I was a boy back in the early 1970s, I used have a plain crystal radio with a 1N34 germanium diode and a crystal earphone. It could pick up about five different stations in the city. My razor blade detector on the same antenna and setup could pick up only one. It left a bit to be desired in the sensitivity department.
Yep, built one of these as a kid from an article in Popular Mechanics; it was called a “foxhole” radio. Used on of Dad’s (R.I.P.) Gilette double edged razor blades to make it. Never got it to work though. Decided to build one using a germanium diode and had better luck.
Comic book ads in the ’50’s and ’60’s had all sorts of interesting advertisements for kids: “shirt pocket”crystal radios, mini-spy cameras, X-Ray glasses, shrimp eggs, “The Big Ear,” chihuahas that fit in teacup and even real monkeys! Those were the days before responsible advertising hi hi.
What a great post Mitch. Let’s hear from other readers about their memories of old-time ads. And thanks Thomas for this great blog.