Back To Dick's Gadget Warehouse!

This is a slightly different gadget warehouse find, but a fascinating one. When someone told me about a new book called Mail Order Mysteries I thought someone had stolen my idea of exposing all those mail order rip-offs of the past. Well, it’s the exact same idea, except in a totally different area. This fun volume is all about crappy merchandise that was advertised in comic books up to 50 years ago. Yep, if you’re old enough, you can remember those fantastic ads that offered authentic laser-gun plans, x-ray specs, and even a 7-foot- submarine big enough for two kids to get into! Wow. I wanted that! You would read all those exaggerated claims, and envision amazing things that could be yours. Then you’d clip that tiny coupon, send your hard-earned cash away and wait --- and wait. It was often weeks and weeks until the package came. You’d open it and find – a major disappointment! Mail Order Mysteries –Real Stuff From Old Comic Book Ads – written by Kirk Demarais, finally reveals what you got when you bought a pair of X-Ray specs. They were eyewear stuff with bird feathers. For real! The feather’s vanes diffracted the light, creating the appearance of two offset images. The image could be ‘interpreted’ as the bones in your hand. Pretty disappointing, eh, but great fun to know the secret after all these years! Mail-Order Mysteries reveals the amazing truths (and agonizing exaggerations) about other actual products marketed to kids in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s – including 100 Toy Soldiers in a Footlocker, Hercules Wrist Band, Hypno-Coin, Life-Size Monsters, Mystic Smoke, Sea Monkeys, Soil From Dracula’s Castle, U-Control Ghost, Ventrilo Voice Thrower and many, many more! Each page contains the actual ad – what the kid expected to get in the mail – and what finally arrived. It’s a fun, memory-provoking book!  I bought my copy at the link below for $13.57, and got it in two days with Amazon Prime. I signed up for the free one month trial on the same day I bought the book: 

http://www.amazon.com/Mail-Order-Mysteries-Real-Stuff-Comic/dp/160887026X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

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