Friday, November 24, 2006

The Comic Ad Lied!!

When I was a kid I loved to look at the ads in the comic books. Everything looked really neat. I thought it would be so cool to own the items advertised and how much fun it would be to show it to my friends. However, things are not always as they seem, especially in the world of comic advertising circa 1970.

Everyone loves a magician's sleight of hand tricks, and what better way to be a magician than to own his hat? All you do is place the hat made of wire and top quality silk on your head and presto chango - you're a magician!. Once again, a disappointment for kids who thought that somehow this would help them to do magic tricks.
Holy moly!! It's the Magne Power Ring! And it comes with the Magne Actuator!! Oh yeah, I'm going to be magne-ing the hell out of anything I can get my hands on. You know, I'm not really sure what a Magne Power Ring does, or what Magne itself is. But judging from the ad, apparently it's something that can turn devices on and off....like you'd can do with an on/off switch.....and your finger.
During the Decade of Steve Austin-ism, all you needed to turn products into gold was to dub them bionic. But this ad says the hand is bi-onic. Is that the same as bionic? Does one hyphen make a difference? How big is it? How does it work? If I hit the bully from Miss Sawyers class during recess, will it go straight through his skull?

I am skeptical that $1.00 can buy a bi-onic hand when Oscar Goldman had to shell out six million dollars for Steve's bionics. It's not like the government is going to pay millions of dollars for a $1.00 hand..... oh. Um, well, if bi-onic hands were $1.00 back in the 70s, we all should have been rolling in bionic hands. And in case you were wondering, we weren't.

1 comment:

Riley said...

I think back in the 70's, a buck got you a bi-onic pinky...or a bi-onic big toe...surely not a whole hand.