Did You Ever Order From Those Small Comic Book Ads Back In The Day?

[Mikey]

Wasn't that one basically a balloon and a big piece of white tissue paper?

Yep

[ctc]

>My kids love Gundam!

Which series? (I've always been partial to the original UC0079 series; although G-Fighter is a close second, and 0080 is one of the best; and most depressing things I've ever seen.)

Now that you mention it, I used to order from Mile High all the time too. Never ordered the novelty stuff; we had a store downtown that sold all them things. AND comics. Windsor had a comic shop proper as far back as '76, at least. (That's where I used to get Heavy Metal as a kid.)

Don C.

[Bruce Banner]

I had the X-Ray specs, the joy buzzer, the whoopee cushion and the snapping gum as depicted in that and similar comic book ads.
Amusing trinkets, to be sure.

Always wanted Sea Monkeys, and those plastic soldier sets, too.

[knight errant00]

I never ordered any (my parents were the "it's all a ripoff" types as well), but I know a guy who says he and his friends, in the summer, would order one of the weather balloons they used to advertise for in comics, and when the got it, would open the fire hydrant on the corner, fill it to make the most giant water balloon ever, then send it rolling down the street like the Blob to get into whatever trouble it would while they watched.

[Mikey]

Whenever you ordered anything it always took a real long time to come -- like 3 months

[livnxxxl]

Whenever you ordered anything it always took a real long time to come -- like 3 months

Yeah even today a lot of the cereal ads will say 4 to 6 weeks. What?!?! I usually forget about it by then and that is when it finally shows up in the mail.

[livnxxxl]

They were just not like the green army men in Toy Story.

Thanks for that. That is good to know. Now I can put that child hood memory to rest knowing that I would not have been a happy camper when I received them in the mail. Like they say "everything happens for a reason".

[Earth 2 Chris]

I remember sending in my UPC codes for my Kenner Super Powers Clark Kent figure. The sticker on the package said it would take up to 14 weeks! It did. To the day!!! The longest 14 weeks of my life.

Chris

[fallensaviour]

Yeah I ordered army men and roman soldiers and never got any of them...Thanks for bringing back the memories...

[TrueDave]

The Army men ad is a classic. I wanted the Roman Soilders ( wonder if they were flat too) the Castle and the Tank War! games

I got a hand me down 6 foot Frankenstien with glow in the dark eyes .

Big piece of plastic and two luminous circle stickers.

Anybody ever see those giant articulated heroes?

Forgot what they were called. Jointed like a Halloween door Skeleton. Spidey, Cornelius, Batman. Always wanted those.

I did buy three of the four plastic chip melty superheroes. You hang them on the wall.Spidey, Bats and Supes. Bats feet were broken off in the mail. Wish I knew the name . . . .they make Christmas stuff the same way . . .

The giant Tank, Atomic Sub and doll house big enough to get inside and close- always intrested me !

[ShadowAvenger]

I ordered and got the toy soldiers as a kid. I was very disappointed at first since they were flat, but as I recall they had some nice tooling/etchings in the plastic and like any toy and some imagination they got used a bit. They were just not like the green army men in Toy Story.

I also ordered the flat toy soldiers in the thin cardboard box colored to look like a footlocker. I was disappointed too at first but end up using them with my regular green army men. I remember that several of them broke in my first adventure. I don't think I ordered anything from a comic book after that experience even though I was tempted.

[livnxxxl]

The Army men ad is a classic. I wanted the Roman Soilders ( wonder if they were flat too)

I would have been a sucker err um I mean customer for them as well. I remember seeing those and used to be excited about the thought of ordering them. Now I am glad that my parents was right (once again).

Does anyone here happen to know the name of the company that made those are at least some kind of info to search by? I am kind of curious to see actual pictures of some of them since I did not get to see them first hand.

I did buy three of the four plastic chip melty superheroes. You hang them on the wall.Spidey, Bats and Supes. Bats feet were broken off in the mail. Wish I knew the name . . . .they make Christmas stuff the same way . . .

I have some of the Christmas stuff. I think that stuff is kind of neat in a nostalgic kind of way of course.

[VintageMike]

I ordered one of those back issue comic lists (I don't remember which ad) and then subsequently a VF copy of Amazing Spider-Man #43. I still have it.

[saildog]

Anyone read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon?

The main characters create The Escapist and it is published in a Comic called Amazing Midget Radio Comics. The publishing company had been a novelty company and they started the comic to sell these midget radios that they had a ton of.

Comics mean one thing to us, but I never really thought about the business behind it. Ad revenue is why Publishers are in the game. Those novelty ads were what paid the bills for the Publishers AND they are what kept the cover price down for us kids. It's a marriage that worked well for a long time, but, as we see in the realm of traditional print medium or over the air television, mediums fail to deliver a market or the demand for products change and...wah-lah...we wind up in the paradigm we see now (Three bucks for a comic with virtually no advertising and all of the good programming is on Cable or Pay TV.).

Case in point...anyone remember what VHS tapes cost before Pepsi advertised at the beginning of Top Gun??? Before that innovation, the thought of actually owning a movie was not something that most people even imagined. You had to rent them exclusively.....unless you reaaaaalllly wanted the movie.

Backed by a massive $8 million marketing campaign including a Top Gun-themed Diet Pepsi commercial,[10] the advanced demand was such that the film became the best-selling videocassette in the industry's history on pre-orders alone. It was also one of the first video cassette releases in the $20 price range, previous cassettes sold closer to $80 at that time.

Top Gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[jwyblejr]

Another thing that I was always tempted with was those ads where they wanted you to sell stuff so you could get neat stuff.