Wow, just what I want for Xmas - a Nuclear Sub for just $6.98!!!

[LynneSin]

[hollysmom]

1. got your hand on a ye olde newspaper, did ye?

[geardaddy]

2. I remember those ads

I always wanted one.

[rug]

3. This ad was staring at me on the back of comic books for months.

When I finally ordered it and it arrived, I suffered my first of many existential disappointments.

[LynneSin]

4. This was mine. What can I say - I expected them to look like the photo

And btw you cannot train (*#$ Sea Monkeys

[rug]

5. My sister ordered them. When they came out of the envelope they looked like pepper.

[malthaussen]

7. Moi aussi, Rug.

I may still have a few of those guys in one of the old boxes I keep failing to throw away. Fought a lot of wars with them, though. I used to have an aluminum pan filled with sand. I'd build forts and start fires. Then watch the buggers melt.

-- Mal

[rug]

9. A friend of mine, who later became a psychopath, used them for mass executions.

He put a matchbox on his pillow and put a board on his bed and lined them up single file. He then put the first one flat on the matchbox and cut its head off with a single blade razor. He removed the body and then proceeded to move the whole line up, one by one, placing the first one in line on the matchbox.

He had a fine little collection of heads by the time he was done. Me, I just started brooding about the nature of capitalism.

[malthaussen]

10. "later became a psychopath?"

Funny little choice of words, there.

I suppose he's now a Senator?

-- Mal

[rug]

11. Lol, no. He ended up working for the Bank of America.

I made a slight, very slight, exaggeration.

[onethatcares]

21. not much difference

I would think.

[malthaussen]

6. Oh, I remember that one.

There were also ads for Mercury space capsules, and I really wanted one of those.

In the early '70s, there was a house not far from mine that had a full-size Apollo capsule mock-up in the front yard. But the property was later sold for an industrial park.

-- Mal

[Tom Ripley]

8. My dad would never let me order that sub

"You will be real disappointed"
Smart man

[hunter]

12. Hours and hours of adventure!

I found this on the internet:



http://secretfunspot.blogspot.com/2007/12/polaris-nuclear-sub-photo.html

My own parents, artists, would encourage us to make our own adventure vehicles from stuff we found, maybe not for any educational reasons, but because they rarely had any money.

$6.98 could buy food other than fish, rice, and pasta, maybe even let us turn on the heat in the house sometimes.

It's not that my parents didn't have money, it's that it was all tied up in their home and any spare change was spent traveling around like gypsies. We even made it out of the United States a few times, my parent's calling what we did "camping," which isn't what most people consider camping, but more like how the homeless live.

I did learn to be creative however. Eventually my home-made adventure vehicles had real rockets.

[LynneSin]

13. You could always get your materials for the Nuclear Weapons here...

http://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM/ref=pd_sim_indust_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1M1CKVMPF8VQ2YP7JPQG

[hunter]

14. People who viewed this item also viewed this:

JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank

http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/dp/B00067F1CE/ref=pd_sbs_indust_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0PBFX1KH4E1SG7P0CSXP

[LynneSin]

18. And people who viewed your Land Cruiser also viewed this:

http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0/ref=pd_sim_sbs_misc_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1TRMH4K7Y1KE1W627TSZ



Only $75 for a gallon of milk. Those must be some amazing cows there in the Tuscan. Probably for the 1%

[geardaddy]

15. I know someone who ordered this...

Only to receive a dead monkey in the mail.

[LynneSin]

17. OMG how traumatic would that be to receive a dead animal in the mail

I can't believe someone had this setup as mail order!

[alphafemale]

22. Can't imagine it was much fun for the monkey either.

No wonder they're bitey.

[cloudbase]

16. It's probably more effective

than the sub the North Koreans are cobbling together from Russian scrap.

[Ampersand Unicode]

19. You'll nuke your eye out!

[marzipanni]

24. LOL

[onethatcares]

20. sometimes I think

I should have spent my allowance on identity changes available on the inside back cover of the Rolling Stone magazine.

[Special Prosciuto]

23. The Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab included uranium

http://orau.org/ptp/collection/atomictoys/GilbertU238Lab.htm

[marzipanni]

25. These ads had to have been published after July 1, 1963

That's when we started using zip codes.
Does anyone remember when there were two digit postal zone codes, used between the town/city and the state in the address?
I remember the one for my town, and it's now the last two numbers of the zip code, but my husband says he only remembers them being used on magazines, not first class mail.