Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S7E07 - Comic Book Ads

Episode Date: February 16, 2018

This week, we explore the fascinating world of Comic Book Advertising. A world where Sea-Monkeys could be trained, X-Ray Specs saw through clothes, Charles Atlas taught bodybuilding secrets and one-day karate courses could be yours for just a dollar. You probably spent your allowance on one or two in your day... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. We'll see you next time. new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 7, 2018. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly.

Spider-Man comic book issue number 96 came out in May of 1971. It didn't introduce any new characters. The artwork was the usual high quality. But it was missing a tiny detail on the front cover, and it would change comic books for all time. To understand this story, we have to go back to 1954. A psychologist named Frederick Wortham published an article stating that comic books were corrupting the country's youth. A year later, he published a book titled Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham maintained that the sex and violence in comics was influencing children, that Batman and Robin were really homosexuals, and that Superman's iconic S insignia was really an echo of the Nazi SS symbol.

Timing is everything. Wertham's assertions were made during the fear-mongering McCarthy era. His crusade triggered a Senate subcommittee on comic books and juvenile delinquency. It is my opinion, without any reasonable doubt that comic books are an important contributing factor in many cases of juvenile delinquency. Comic book publishers quickly realized this negative wave could destroy their business. So they banded together to create the Comics Magazine Association of America. Job one, convince the government and parents that comics were wholesome entertainment. To do that, the association drafted

a self-governing set of standards and ethics, creating the Comics Code Authority, headed by a New York magistrate. Immediately, the words horror and terror were banned from titles. Vampires, werewolves, and zombies were strictly prohibited. Crime could not be glorified, and even the word crime was subject to restrictions.

A tiny one-inch black-and-white seal that looked like a stamp was created, saying, approved by the Comics Code Authority. It appeared in the top right corner of sanctioned comic book covers. That seal was important because distributors would only handle comic books that displayed the seal of approval. While the code was created to protect the comic book industry from outside attack, it eventually grew into an oppressive form of censorship. Storylines were bleached and homogenized.

Sales fell. Hundreds of comic book companies went out of censorship. Storylines were bleached and homogenized. Sales fell. Hundreds of comic book companies went out of business. That's when Spider-Man came to the rescue. In 1971, the U.S. government approached Spider-Man creator

Stan Lee and asked him to devise a storyline that addressed the dangers of drug use. So Lee created an anti-drug storyline with Spider-Man issue number 96. But when he submitted the story to the Comics Code Authority for approval, they turned it down. Lee protested, saying the government had asked him to write the storyline to use Spider-Man's influence for good.

The comic's code said no dice. So Stan Lee went to his boss and asked for permission to publish the issue without the comic's code approval. It was a huge decision, because no comic book had defied the code since it was enacted in 1954. But Lee's boss backed him up, and issue number 96 was published without the seal. Even though it created a big controversy,

distributors decided to circulate the unapproved comic. That daring move by Stan Lee would eventually lead to big changes in the comic's code. Arcane rules were revised, story guidelines were loosened, artwork mandates were lifted. The Bronze Age of comics would begin, and a more reasonable revamped Comics Code authority

would continue to stand guard over millions of young guarded young readers against negative influences in the storylines, it stopped its moral authority at the last page. There, at the back of comic books, was a huge assortment of ads seductively aimed at separating kids from their allowance money. Sea monkeys, x-ray specs, and one-day courses in karate could be yours for just a dollar. Many kids dreamed of owning those products, me included. But what you wished for and what you got were often two very different things.

You're under the influence. Comic books were a big part of my life growing up in the 60s and 70s. I devoured Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The Flash and Tarzan comics. And Korak, son of Tarzan comics. Truth be told, I dabbled in Archie, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich comics too. The thing about comics was that you read and re-read them, and you spent a lot of time reading the small space ads in the back pages, or rather, dreaming of owning the products breathlessly promoted in those tiny ads.

Those back pages were mostly the domain of one man, named Harold von Braunhut. Harold von Braunhut had several careers before he found untold riches in the back of comic books. He raced motorcycles, he was a magician, and he managed a guy who high-dived into a pool of water 12 inches deep. Then one day in 1957, von Braunhut was in a pet store and watched with amazement as the owner fed live brine shrimp to tropical fish.

When he asked about the shrimp, he was told their eggs can live in suspended animation for years and came to life when you just added water. That's all Von Braunhut needed to hear. He teamed up with a marine biologist to create a hybrid shrimp that could survive the United States Postal Service. He created a print ad with the headline, Instant Live Sea Animals. In it, he referred to the aquatic pets as exotic Saskatchewan brine shrimp.

For the princely sum of 49 cents, you got a package of 100 eggs, nutrients to condition the water, and shrimp food. But the ads didn't drum up any interest. So in 1963, von Braunhut tried to sell his Instant Live Sea animal kits directly to department stores, but was turned down by them all. That rejection would turn out to be a blessing in disguise because it forced Harold Von Braunhut to look to another form of marketing. Von Braunhut started buying up advertising space in comic books.

That's when he made two momentous decisions. He decided to rename the shrimp Sea Monkeys and he hired an illustrator to create a brand new ad. If you read comic books back then, all you have to do is close your eyes to picture it. The headline said,

Enter the wonderful world of amazing live sea monkeys. The ad showed smiling mother and father sea monkeys with two smiling sea monkey babies posing in front of their underwater, um, castle. Mrs. Sea Monkey even had blonde hair and a bow. They were pink with arms and legs and looked a bit like naked people. They had little crowns on their heads and long tails.

The ad said sea monkeys could even be trained quote, like a pack of friendly seals. Just add water. Cost? One dollar. Wow. Of course, what you received when you sent away your paper route money wasn't

exactly as advertised. Yes, the eggs hatched when you added water, but the emerging brine shrimp were microscopic, like tiny white flecks of dandruff. No happy moms and dads, no smiley kids, no monkey anything. As for training them, good luck with that. Von Braunhut put the sea monkey ad into every kind of comic book,

from Archie to Spider-Man to Casper the Friendly Ghost. He didn't care about genre. He cared about access. And this is the important point. Von Braunhut chose comic books because he wanted to market directly to kids, bypassing parental authority. He wanted to speak directly to kids' imaginations. Sea Monkey ads appeared in 3.2 million pages of comic books per year.

That strategy would make him a rich man. Harold Von Braunhut died in 2003, but his creation didn't die with him. As a matter of fact, his widow is suing the company that licensed sea monkeys from her late husband. She claimed breach of contract in 2009. But there was a very interesting tidbit in the filing. It noted that Mrs. Von Braunhut was receiving an annual royalty of 20% of gross sales, totaling $3.4 million. Which means...

Sea Monkeys are still generating over $18 million per year. Sea Monkeys weren't the only Von Braunhut scheme in the back of comic books. He also created the equally famous X-ray specs. The ads, that would be so unacceptable today, showed an illustration of a man wearing the X-ray specs looking right through a woman's dress. Cost? One dollar.

You can only imagine how many crisp dollar bills were mailed in by trembling young boys. But here's what they actually got. Black plastic glasses with red hypnotic spirals on the lenses, emblazoned with the words X-ray vision, which would make it a little difficult to be discreet. The lenses were solid cardboard with a hole in the middle, and in this hole was an embedded bird feather. Images seen through the feather refracted the light coming through the hole,

so it appeared, for a millisecond, like you were seeing a weird double image. And because you wanted to believe so much, you swore you could kinda see through your hand. Dresses? Not so much. And x-ray specs wasn't even Harold von Braunhut's boldest product. That honor had to go to his invisible goldfish. For a couple of bucks, you got a glass bowl, a handbook, and fish food. You also got a printed 100% guarantee that you would never see the fish.

There was another comic book ad that I stared at for hours. It was for a Polaris nuclear submarine. The ad said it was over 7 feet long, could seat two kids, it fired rockets and torpedoes, and had a real periscope. Be still my beating heart. I lived near Ramsey Lake in Sudbury, Ontario,

and this was a fantasy come true. For only $6.98, I could zoom around the lake undetected. I could just hang out underwater after school, do some target practice with torpedoes, you know, that kind of thing.

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered they wouldn't ship to Canada. But those lucky, lucky American kids did receive their submarines. The first clue you're not exactly getting what you're hoping for is when your nuclear submarine can fit in your mailbox.

It came shipped folded and flat. It was made of cardboard. Clearly, water was its nemesis. As one young U-boat commander said at the time, it even started to fall apart from the dew on the grass in his backyard. Another tempting comic book ad was for a Frontier Cabin. Peaked roof, all-weather durability,

no tools required, sets up in a jiffy, order shipped within 24 hours. Cost? $1. Or five Frontier Cabins for $4. Again, you know something is fishy Cost, $1.00. Or five Frontier cabins for $4.00. Again, you know something is fishy when your 23 cubic foot Frontier cabin is delivered in a 9 by 14 inch manila envelope. Inside was a tightly folded vinyl sheet.

It had a log design printed on it, but it only assumed a shape when draped over a couple of chairs. Furniture not included. And while most comic book products didn't deliver as advertised, one actually did. And we'll be right back after this message. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives? Available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list.

The comic book ad said, Darling Pet Monkey. It showed a cute little squirrel monkey sitting in the palm of someone's hand. Cost, $18.95. Pricey for a comic book ad. It said a squirrel monkey makes an adorable pet and companion, almost human with its warm eyes. Eats the same food as you, even likes lollipops. Simple to care for, your family will love it.

I found a story of one person who ordered a squirrel monkey. It's a good one. 15-year-old Jeff Tuthill sent away for the pet monkey after seeing the ad in the back of a Spider-Man comic. It arrived one day in a little cardboard box with a chicken wire screen window. Jeff and a friend snuck it into the basement of his parents' home.

He carefully opened the box to give the monkey some water when suddenly the monkey leapt out and shot up to the plumbing pipes in the ceiling. Then it started racing around the basement swinging from the plumbing like he was on vines, chirping loudly.

Jeff started chasing the monkey, afraid his father would hear the commotion, and managed to grab it by its tail. The monkey landed on his shoulder and started biting him up and down his arm like a drill press. Jeff said the monkey was literally unsewing his arm. He was bleeding profusely.

The monkey was screaming like a scalded cat. His friend was laughing uncontrollably. Suddenly, his father came stomping down the stairs, looked at Jeff and yelled, What are you doing with that rabbit? Jeff said, It's not a rabbit. It's a monkey. The next moment is the that rabbit? Jeff said, It's not a rabbit. It's a monkey. The next moment is the best.

His father said, A what? Yep, that darling pet monkey cost Jeff 28 stitches. It's astonishing to think companies were actually shipping live animals through the mail. And get a load of this. A report from that time stated that more than 173,000 squirrel monkeys were imported into the USA from South America between 1968 and 1972, mostly thanks to comic book ads.

While the squirrel monkey ads actually delivered as promised, most comic book ads. While the Squirrel Monkey ads actually delivered as promised, most comic book ads didn't. Which raises the question, if the Comics Code Authority was safeguarding kids against questionable storylines, why wasn't it protecting kids against questionable advertising? The aforementioned U.S. Senate report on juvenile delinquency didn't seem worried about the content of the ads, but rather with the fact some comic book advertisers were selling or renting their mailing lists. It appears that some youngsters were now being targeted with sexual materials. dealer about the money-back guarantees so many of the comic book ads seemed to promise, I was told

that often, when refunds were demanded, checks were sent back to kids from companies with indecent names, often with the word pornography in them. They were too embarrassing to cash, which was the point. Harold von Braunhut was actually brought to court by the New York Attorney General in the 1970s. The prosecutor argued that sea monkeys were fraudulent. He demanded that von Braunhut cease usage of the name sea monkeys because they were neither monkeys nor from the sea. The federal judge who reviewed the case was amused by the Attorney General's intense concern. The judge considered it all as whimsy.

He stated that sponge cake wasn't made of sponges and butterflies weren't made of butter and threw the case out. That court ruling emboldened comic book advertisers. Around that same time, Chinese martial arts movies were becoming popular. Enter Mail Order Karate. Ads promised to teach you an ancient martial art in just 24 hours. It was the writing that was so seductive.

Lines like, fear no man. And my personal favorite, you may have to license your hands with the local police department. I'm not even sure what that means. But what young boy wouldn't be swept away with the thought of becoming a hero by the time he reached the back page of a comic book? Which brings us to the most successful comic book ad of all time in case nobody's told you weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative and that's where felix comes in felix is redefining weight loss for canadians with a smarter more

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If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BitMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. In 1903, a young man named Angelo Siciliano moved from Italy to America with his family. Angelo was skinny and slope-shouldered and was often the target of bullies. One day at Coney Island, a teenaged Angelo was lying on the beach with his girlfriend when a husky lifeguard kicked sand in his face.

Unable to stand up for himself, 97-pound Angelo went home defeated and embarrassed. Later, on a visit to the Brooklyn Museum, he saw statues of Hercules, Apollo, and Zeus. They were muscular and masculine. And they gave him an idea. So Angelo ran home and spent the next months sweating away, lifting makeshift weights, using the gods as inspiration but the results were disappointing he was still scrawny then one day while visiting the Bronx Zoo Angelo had an epiphany watching a muscular lion

stretch he thought to himself lions don't have any barbells they just pit one muscle against the other. So Angelo went home and threw out his equipment. He began working his muscles using isometric exercises, pitting one muscle against the other. The next summer, Angelo stunned his beach friends with his brand new physique. One of them said,

you look like that statue of Atlas on the top of the Atlas Hotel. Not long after, Angelo Siciliano changed his name to Charles Atlas. He entered a few bodybuilding contests and won, which gave him a lot of publicity. With that success, he hired an advertising agency to help him promote a mail-order business to sell his exercise routine. But, with profits lagging, the ad agency shuffled the business over to its newest hire, 21-year-old Charles Roman, who is fresh out of college. It would turn out to be a very smart move. First, Roman coined the term dynamic tension for Atlas' exercises.

Then he wrote a Charles Atlas comic book ad that would not only save the business, but would become a marketing landmark. The headline was irresistible. It said, The insult that made a man out of Mac. It was the story of Angelo Siciliano and the beach bully, only this time, 97-pound Mac uses dynamic tension to build his muscle to come back bigger and stronger to get his revenge.

Roman made the ad look like a mini-comic. It had a storyline and took up a full page in the back of comic books, which was highly unusual, as most comic book pitches were tiny classified ads. At the bottom was a coupon to mail in and receive the Charles Atlas 32-page book on how to bulk

up fast, all next to a big picture of Atlas himself looking tanned, toned, and manly. That ad would make the two Charles very rich. By the 50s, Charles Atlas had nearly a million disciples worldwide,

and the dynamic tension regimen had been translated into seven languages. Like the karate ads, the key was context. Young men reading comic books about the strongest superheroes would turn the page to find an ad telling them how they, too, could look like Superman.

But Roman's ads didn't just pitch big biceps. They sold manhood. The idea that physical size could give you confidence is a powerful message that still echoes to this day. Remarkably, the ads Roman created in the 1930s ran all the way into the 1970s. By all accounts, Charles Atlas was an above-board guy until the day he died in 1972,

and his course had merit. His company still exists, and now does 80% of its business online. The Charles Atlas ad not only became one of the most famous comic book ads of all time, but possibly the most successful mail order ad in history. Between Atlas' knowledge of the human body and Roman's knowledge of the human mind, it truly was a tale of marketing muscle. Comic book ads were a genre unto themselves.

As writer Kirk Damaris says in his terrific book, Mail Order Mysteries, when you read those ads as kids, for the first time, you didn't think in terms of playthings. You thought in terms of life enhancers. They fed into childhood fantasies of seeing through clothes, becoming a karate master, and vanquishing your enemies with a bodybuilder physique. Harold von Braunhut knew that comic book ads were a secret conversation between advertisers and kids, with no parental supervision. And Charles Atlas knew a superhero context was the best place to sell a superhero physique. It's surprising that comic book ads peaked in the 70s when consumer protection legislation was also peaking.

Yet, they were allowed to roam free without any regulations or standards. Some agree with that judge, saying it was all just novelties, that the loss of a buck was too small

to fret about. But I think those tiny ads had a bigger impact than that. They taught baby boomers, at an impressionable age, to be skeptical of advertising, and that skepticism would often ripen into cynicism. Maybe it was a vital life lesson. Maybe it was one of life's necessary losses. Maybe it was a blow that advertising was never able to recover from.

Either way, the experience was kind of like x-ray specs. It taught you to see through offers that were often too good to be true when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Under the Influence was recorded in the Airstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound Engineer, Keith Oman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, James Gangle. Co-writer, Sydney O'Reilly. Visit us on Facebook to see some vintage comic book ads. This episode brought to you by... Sea Monkeys, the amazing instant pets for the whole family. We'd like to see your mug shot. Purchase an Under the Influence coffee mug, then send us a photo of you listening to the show with the mug. We'll post it to our social media. Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop.

Every purchase supports the show. We appreciate it. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle

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make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.