Giant Rockets and Subs in Comic Book Ads

I Remember JFK ^ | (not given) | (not given)

[laotzu]

How cynical we Baby Boomers are. And for good reason, too. After all, we devoured comic books like they were cotton candy. And the comics' ten or twelve cent price was subsidized by advertising. But it wasn't just advertising. It was huge, colorful, lavishly illustrated ads for things that, if we could persuade our parents to part with their hard-earned dollars so that we could obtain them, turned out to look nothing like the ads promised.

Take, for example, the six-foot Polaris submarines and rocket ships. My beloved Archie and Superman comics were profusely populated by half-page blurbs showing unbelievably real looking submarines and rocket ships available for a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars their real-life counterparts would cost.

What a bargain! What kid should be denied their very own submarine for a paltry $6.98? Just think how much fun it will be when we take that bad boy down to the lake and surface in the middle of startled swimmers!

Well, as we learned from any monkeys or dogs in teacups that we might have tried to obtain, the truth is often different from what the ads promised.

I never knew any kids who actually obtained the sub or rocket ship. But stories spread throughout Nichols Elementary School about a kid that someone else might have known who ordered one, only to have a big, flat package delivered to their home. The package was full of pre-cut cardboard and assembly instructions.

No rivets, no titanium, no nuclear powered propulsion. Just a big cardboard thing that, if left out in the rain, would quickly biodegrade into dirt.

I wouldn't try surfacing under any surprised swimmers at the lake in that puppy if I were you.

Thus, the rest of us decided that hounding our parents for such a disappointment simply wasn't worth it. Instead, we concentrated in sales pitches for more substantial items like, say, G.I. Joe's.

However, that didn't keep me from reading the ads over and over again. Part of me wanted to believe that the other kids had lied, that you really could receive a space-worthy vehicle for what you dad would spend to fill up the car two or three times. No wonder we didn't trust The Man. We couldn't even trust Superman.

But you know what? This amazing photo of a kid in an actual Polaris sub, taken in July, 1967 (Thanks, Mark Fraunfelder), shows that the cardboard Polaris sub was a pretty stinking cool looking item. Check out how that conning tower raises and lowers!

So why did the sellers of rocket ships and submarines not just come clean with us and let us know what exactly it was that we were buying? Their sales might have been even more brisk, since the derisive talk at school about what you REALLY got for your $6.98 wouldn't have been around to cause them (and, by association, all other advertisers) to be mistrusted.

Oh well. At least we Boomer kids got a dose of how the world really operates at a good young age.

[laotzu]

and, from michaelchuck.com:

Kirk and I looked at this strange package, mystified . . . . How could our submarine be in there? I was expecting at least a very large wooden crate. Maybe even some kind of crane to lower it into the back yard (we had talked of how we would attach it to the roof of Dad’s car to get the monster down to the river . . . the sub, not Dad . . . .).

A nameless dread rising within me, I began to pull open the big box. Inside, to my shocked dismay, were several pieces of flat, blue colored cardboard. We took them out and spread them across the floor. There were little metal clamps in a bag to fasten the cardboard pieces together. Once put together, the thing had room for two kids, all right. They could fit in the large cut-out hole in the bottom. The “electrically lit control panel” consisted of a single small bare bulb, the size of a blueberry. The plastic toy periscope and torpedoes completed the set. I didn’t see how we were going to explore underwater in this thing.

Cardboard . . . . It was made of cardboard! HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!

The story of my young life. Once again, my most cherished dreams, my fondest, deepest hopes torn to shreds like used tissue paper. Kirk wanted to mail it back, but hey, it was a gift. It wasn’t Wayne’s fault our expectations were too high.

In the end, we did finally play in that cardboard submarine, a two-man crew, and pretended to dive, hunt for treasure, and battle enemy navies. We used our imaginations and explored depths of wonder no real submarine could ever hope to reach.

Not bad for seven bucks.

[Badeye]

Sucker. I had a great time traveling the universe in the rocket....(chuckle)

And flying around the neighborhood on my lawn mower powered ‘flying saucer’. Unfortunately, with the ugly ‘sea monkey uprising of 1975’ I lost both. Bastards took em during their escape.....

[laotzu]

ping; thought this might interest you

[laotzu]

the ugly ‘sea monkey uprising of 1975’

Har!!

If you're a drinking man, the next one is on me.

[Thrownatbirth]

Boomer kids got a dose of how the world really operates at a good young age

At our school off base, the Fast Attack and Surface kids knew just as much.

[Camel Joe]

Well now you know how the dolts who voted for “hope and change” are going to feel when the cardboard President gets unwrapped on the 20th. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[gigster]

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was “Have Spacesuit,Will Travel”,by Robert Heinlein.
Must have read it four or five times.
Pluto was pretty damn cold, though.
(Much like Northern Michigan is now.)

[the_devils_advocate_666]

You should have seen that coming...

[blues_guitarist]

"Well now you know how the dolts who voted for “hope and change” are going to feel when the cardboard President gets unwrapped on the 20th."

Nice!

[Badeye]

(chuckle)

[Tennessee_Bob]

Never did get one of those. I was fortunate - the neighbor ran an applicance store, and we had cardboard boxes for freezers, refrigerators - you name it. We had boxes for days. Built our own B-52, our own submarines, Apollo spacecraft. Ahh - back when kids had to use their imagination.

[weegee]

... the ugly ‘sea monkey uprising of 1975’

PLANET

OF THE

SEA MONKEYS

[laotzu]

we had cardboard boxes for freezers, refrigerators

Oh man!! That brings back great memories.

A friend of mine(apx 6 years old) had about 8 refrigerator boxes. We built the coolest fort, slayed the most powerful enemies of the universe, and lived for days without even thinking about TV.

[scan59]

X-ray glasses.

So what was the deal with those? What did they do?

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

They got me with the toy soldier set. They were flat!

Oh well, I mixed them in with my other toy soldiers and played with them anyway.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Ray_Specs_(novelty) ...

The lenses consist of two layers of cardboard with a small hole about 6 mm (.25 inch) in diameter punched through both layers. The user views objects through the holes. A feather is embedded between the layers of each lens. The vanes of the feathers are so close together that light is diffracted, causing the user to receive two slightly offset images. For instance, if viewing a pencil, one would see two offset images of the pencil. Where the images overlap, a darker image is obtained, supposedly giving the illusion that one is seeing the graphite embedded within the body of the pencil. As may be imagined, the illusion is not particularly sustainable.

[wideminded]

The “Polaris subnmarine” has been discussed on FR before. As a kid the ads of course fascinated me, but even then I knew there had to be a catch.

[weegee]

Did anybody ever actually BUY a copy of Grit?

I mean, someone may have sent off for the subscription sales racket, but did anyboy ever actually BUY Grit?

Do they have it archived at a library someplace?

[Tijeras_Slim]

the ugly ‘sea monkey uprising of 1975’

I wiped out whole colonies in college.

[laotzu]

Did anybody ever actually BUY a copy of Grit?

I'm sorry, but; what is Grit?