A kid in my 5th grade class bought the “laser pistol” plans. I was disappointed when I realized that they were a crock. It would have been cool to have been able to burn the limbs off of certain tough kids.

I had the laser pistol plans (although mine had a white cover, not the yellow one illustrated), and I actually thought they were kind of neat, except for the “if you want to shoot a real laser beam, you’ll need to replace the plastic laser rod with a ruby one” part. I looked into it, but making a synthetic ruby laser rod seemed a bit out of my pre-teen ability.

The phaser plans (“make things appear to disappear”) from the same company kind of sucked, though. They claimed that by putting a flashbulb behind, say, a 20x magnifying lens that it would make the light 20 times as bright. Even I knew that was a crock….

I’m 40 and read comic books as a little kid for entertainment, until I bought my first computer at 10 but even then I would still read them. Anyway – I ordered a few of these…mostly magic tricks and the magic tricks were pretty much as described. The Sea Monkeys were clever too. However, at the age of seven, I realized how cruel mail-order product advertising can be. The x-ray glasses…were not. 

Later at age 25 I  decided to try again and sent off for a mail-order bride. After six weeks a courier shows up bearing a small box with air-holes…Texas postage – the same town my bride is from. Turns out what was in the box wasn’t a suitable bride. Click the thumbnail below for a look:

A kid in my 5th grade class bought the “laser pistol” plans. I was disappointed when I realized that they were a crock. It would have been cool to have been able to burn the limbs off of certain tough kids.

Another kid bought that “footlocker” of 100 soldiers.

A HOBO IN A PARK tried to sell a ventriloquism thing to my family. He was “throwing his voice” into a handkerchief, actually pretending there was a bird in there. The device was a cardboard and waxed paper thing.

I never fell for any of these ad / scams. Partially due to a lack of money, partially due to a MAD Magazine fueled suspicion of exaggerated claims.

I remember being very skeptical about certain advertisements in Boy’s Life magazine. They made certain, wild-seeming claims for a hobby / plaything. Then I found, on the ground at summer camp, an actual catalog from the company . . . Estes Industries, purveyor of model rockets. That 1970 catalog blew my freaking mind. As soon as I got home I ordered a catalog for myself and have been in that hobby on an off every since.

I was 13 and read too much sci-fi so I just had to see for myself. It was not a bad device if you could squint into the tiny eyepiece. I of course took it to school and lost it. Then, the next day i about had a heart attack as I saw one of the school football jocks messing with it. 

I knew I would never own anything so nifty and geeky again in my lifetime. 

PS – Micronauts was a great comic (and the action figures rocked!)