Comic Book Back-page Adverts

The post about X-ray Specs started a conversation about those ads in the back of comic books. I never purchased any comic-book stuff, like Sea Monkeys or the device that helped "throw your voice" or the infamous Ju-jitzu and Dynamic Tension ads.

I was a boy scout and a faithful reader of, and subscriber to, Boy's Life magazine, which also had interesting ads in the back pages. My brother and I were always interested in one ad for a "Remote control ghost! You control its every move! Terrify your friends!" We finally saved up enough money and asked our dad to purchase a money order and mail our order to the address in the advert. We were living on Okinawa at the time and, not being in the military, didn't have an APO address, so it took forever to arrive. In the mean time, we started working on our plan to terrify our friends. There was a large cave in our neighborhood, a cave from which every child in the neighborhood was forbidden, therefore it was the most popular place to be. We just laughed at how our friends would scream running from the cave when our remote control ghost rose from the center of the cave and then chased them out into the daylight!!!!!

One day we came home from school and there was a box on the table, addressed to Masters Michael and James Dresbach. IT WAS FINALLY HERE!!! We could barely contain our selves as we found some scissors and carefully opened the box. Inside we found the following: 1 each white plastic sheet with hole in center; 1 each white balloon with ghost face painted on it; and, Several feet of fishing line. Well, we never got to terrify our friends and we never purchased anything from the back of a magazine again!