Unbagging Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff From Old Comic Book Ads
Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff From Old Comic Book Ads!

Writer: Kirk Demarais
Publisher: Insight Editions
Publication date: October 11, 2011
“It’s a rip-off” was the motto that stood between me and the solutions to all of my problems, which included bullies, bad skin, and the inability to see through clothing.
A recent post on Bluesky featuring an old comic book page featuring ads for various mail-order products prompted me to decide to do something a little different and write an Unbagging about something that isn’t a comic but is still comics-adjacent.
If you’re of a certain age and read comics in your youth, you undoubtedly encountered such ads all of the time, and if you’re like pretty much everyone else – particularly me and the author of the book we’re taking a look at today – you undoubtedly wondered, in vain, what you would actually get if you were to scrape together all of your pennies and send away for some of them.
Of course, many comics featured multiple pages advertising mail-order products, and, like me, you may have actually gotten some of them, but while there were ads for comic book back issues, toys, posters, and the like, there was usually a page chock full of ads for all sorts of products crammed together in tiny print, and those were the products that really captured your imagination.

These kinds of ads ran for decades and were pretty much inescapable.
As indicated by the book’s subtitle, Mail-Order Mysteries is a curated collection of many of the actual products you would have gotten – if you were lucky and actually received anything for your money – if you had sent away for the products.
The book is broken up into categorized sections, such as “Superpowers and Special Abilities,” “High Finance,” and “Top Secret,” with examples of the product ads and pictures of the actual products with an explanation of how they worked – or mostly didn’t – and a breakdown of the expectation vs. the reality.
For example, in that first category, we have the classic, possibly most-desired product of them all: X-Ray Spex.

The “High Finance” section covers one of the other products I wanted as a fool who would have soon been parted with his money if he’d had any.

Not everything was as misleading or disappointing. Horror fans, at least in the early days of the product, would have been thrilled by the beautifully monstrous work of the legendary Jack Davis.

Some products I don’t recall seeing, such as this early attempt at a waifu pillow featuring big-screen bombshell Raquel Welch.

In addition to products, the book also discusses other items advertised in comics, such as the various options for kids to sell products themselves in order to earn cash and prizes.
I very much wanted to try to sell GRIT magazine as a kid, despite the fact that the tiny local population could never support that dream.
By all accounts, most of them were legitimate, and some people do credit their efforts to earn a ten-speed or a transistor radio as instilling them with an entrepreneurial spirit that they’ve carried through life.
Some items sold well enough that the companies selling them could spring for full-page ads for just the one product, and those products are covered in the book as well.
One of the more famous products, with full-page ads featuring art by comics legend Joe Orlando, was one that we did actually have when I was a kid, though we didn’t send away for them: Sea-Monkeys.

We got our – disappointing – Sea-Monkeys from a general store that sold all manner of unusual products.
Sea-Monkeys were famous enough that they even had a live-action TV series in the ’90s.

For my part, I only recall two instances in which I ordered anything – other than other comics – from a comic.
One was a set of Spider-Man webshooters – I think they fired suction cup-tipped darts – that were no longer available by the time I ordered them, so instead I received a refund.
I forget what I ordered a few years later, but it was similarly no longer available. This time, however, instead of a refund, they sent me a product of equal – or more likely, lesser – value.
It was some version of these. I don’t think it included the Captain America figure. It may have had Dr. Doom, but I know for sure it included that Iron Man and Thor.

There were also some things that either I had or the whole family had that were available via mail-order comic ads, but I don’t know for sure if that’s how they were acquired.
For example, I had a Batman utility belt that could be sent away for, but it may be that it was also available for sale in stores. Certainly, I didn’t send away for it, but I suppose it’s possible my mom did.

It’s also possible that, like a number of toys – and comics – I had as a kid, it predated me and was something that belonged to one of my older brothers.
Another thing I remember us having was a Spider-Man bank. No idea where it came from, and I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have it.
It didn’t belong to any one of us, as everyone in the family tossed loose change in it, and everyone in the family received a response of, “Check Spidey” when in search of a small amount of money.
I think it even survived our house fire and continued to be used by my mom and dad for years after.

I don’t know if we got it from there, but I know it was available to order from a comic book ad.

That’s all I can really recall of my own real-life encounters with mail-order mysteries, but basically every type of shady, cheap product you can imagine was available for purchase from the pages of comics back in the day, and the book looks at almost all of them, albeit not necessarily every iteration, answering every question that kids like me had about them.
It’s an immensely satisfying read, one that scratches both a nostalgic itch and a curiosity itch at the same time. Definitely worth picking up if you’ve ever wondered what you’d get if you ordered a Hypno Coin, or a Spud Gun, or a Polaris Nuclear Sub.

Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.