Well the holidays are over so it is back to things as usual which means 6' tall Frankenstein Monsters! This comic book mail away was one that all kids saw in the 60's and 70's. What kid didn't want a 6' Frankenstein in their room. Well that giant new pal just turned out to be printed on a plastic sheet. Still I am sure lots got ordered and pinned to walls to creep out unsuspecting visitors.
Weird, I've never seen one with that screw in his forehead. Maybe its some rare variant.
ReplyDeleteYou're lucky to have one of these!
This one is from 1973 - there seems to be a different earlier one from the 60's
ReplyDeleteI wanted to order one of those Monster Sized Monsters from the comic book so damn badly! Arrrgh!
ReplyDeleteIf you read the ad it says "in authentic colors on durable polyethalene". Well what kid would stop to think that means a sheet of plastic. I mean, let's face it. All of these things were rip off, but as a kid you don't care about that crap. I never got to send off for anything, but my brother sent off for the Charles Atlas program. If I recall it was a pretty thick, cheaply made book. However, it was so full of double talk, and nonsense no adult let alone a kid could have gotten anything even closely resembling a working body building program out of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I saw a pair of the X-Ray glasses once. It was feather sealed between two plastic lenses. I guess you were supposed to be dumb enough to think the feathers looked like bones.
Dave
Aw man, I used to see those ads in comics all the time! Yup, and I used to think they were mannequins or something.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's along the same lines as that "1,000 pc. Battle Set" or whatever that they also used to advertise in comics...I'm sure you know it, the one where it showed a total action-packed scene of a D-Day style beach invasion, complete with tanks and battleships and pillboxes and machinegun nests. It even tallied how many pieces you had of each: "50 mortars, 25 pillboxes, 30 landing craft, 50 infantry men, etc."
I think one of my friends actually sent in for one back then and received it awhile later—turned out that everything was printed on cardboard stock which was held up by little plastic bases.
Him and I talked about how we both fantasized about having epic battles on our living room rugs with plastic, realistically-detailed figures and vehicles...yeah right.
Awesome. I just did a comic about a kid wanting one of those monster sized monsters that you control so that he could send it off to destroy his enemies. I remember reading something by a representative of the Johnson Smith Catalog people, that basically said that the catalog itself was meant for entertainment & that same wishful fantastic thinking of the impoverished. As long as it's cheap, it's worth it though. It's not a rip-off if it's cheap.
ReplyDeleteNo, actually the X-ray glasses really do "seem to work" - they are indeed feathers (and the glasses themselves have a very odd smell, like roof tar - 27 years and I never forgot) but the feathers create illusion that the light is focusing a certain way so what you glance at appears to have a strange shadow.
ReplyDeleteJust a cheap gimmick really. I was also suckered in by the Sea Monkey debacle, those powerful magnets, and the spy pen radio that if you moved a fraction of an inch would lose the one station it got. I also ordered a sheet of plastic, a small dowel, fishing line on a clear/white holder and a ghostly smiley face - that was the "scary ghost creature". Long since discarded.
100 Piece Soldier Battle Set -
ReplyDeleteI never knew that about those! Stephen King did one better, when he wrote the story that was later in NIGHT SHIFT collection about the little small men (soldiers) and a certain tiny thermonuclear device they were shipped with. I think the 1985/1986 TWILIGHT ZONE series adapted that exact story.