Super-Fun-Pak Comix by Ruben Bolling for August 02, 2024

Hey kid, you ever consider selling Gazpacho Shack franchises?

Has anyone here ever ordered that submarine? If memory serves back in the early 1970s it was $1.00, which was the going rate it seems for plastic soldiers, sea monkeys, monster plants etc. Well, the ads looked good. Chris Elliott parodied the idea on an episode of his sitcom “Get a Life” (it’s on YouTube, “Neptune 200”), but I’m guessing it didn’t even look that good. ;-)

Win a real submarine!* (*operation requires several 55-gallon drums of baking powder, not included)

Eh not only kids but there adolts too who will falls or false gimmeecks.

Grit, those were the days.

Oooooo a Mystery Box!

I don’t know of anyone who sold, Grit, seeds, or greeting cards and got a bicycle or some such nonsense. I’m sure it was an early MLM and you got stuck for shipping and taxes on your “Prize”

Hm, reads exactly like the TMTG stock prospectus.

Reminds me of being involved with school groups like the band – and how they expected you to sell stuff to raise money. The stuff was usually junk and over-priced. One year our whole class was expected to sell stuff to raise money (even kids who didn’t belong to any activity clubs) and they wouldn’t tell us what the money was going to be used for… whoever sold the most stuff won a prize – that they got to pick out of the pile of unsold stuff. Worst was teachers and principals who put a lot of pressure on kids to sell the stuff, and to sell a lot of it – and embarrassing kids who didn’t sell a lot.

I printed up 100 matchbook covers for a fictitious “Famous Matchbook Artists School”. It was my first computer artwork back in the 70s. I used a graphics program to make the box-in-a-box-in-a-box … recursive advertisement, “If you can draw this matchbook, you can become a Famous Matchbook Artist.” I had a friend distribute them with cigarettes from a Tobac booth at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. People loved them. I wished I had kept one. :)

Sea monkeys were almost as much fun as amoebas…..

I remember those from comic books. Even when I was 7 or 8 they seemed fishy. Then there was Grit.