We all remember the stories, but they weren't (or still aren't, for that matter) the only thing Marvel was publishing back in the day. A standard comic book would count 36 pages, only 20-22 of which depicted a story. The rest were ads. Some very, very strange ads at times. Let's have a look at some of the wackiest ads from Marvel's Silver Age.
Note: A special thanks for inspiring the idea goes to the amazing blog of Dr.Manhattan (all in Italian, but well worth learning the language if you can).
Ready? Off we go!
(from Avengers #10, 1964)
Many ads apparently were about buying the tools or getting the certificate for some kind of job, always guaranteed to make the applicant rich. With superhero comic books mostly read by boys, it's not surprising to find here a "home training plan in auto repairing". Apparently, America was short 100.000 mechanics and the course is "so practical that many students earn money repairing cars in their spare time... while training for a top pay job or their own business".
(from Avengers #10, 1964)
But if you didn't want to repair cars, you could try selling shoes on Saturday mornings. The ad promises to provide a free selling kit with 230 "fast-selling shoe styles" and sellers would "keep all the profit". Hmm, not so sure about that. But apparently Mason still exists today so somehow it must have worked.
(from Doctor Strange #181, 1968)
Another option was to sell Grit, "America's Greatest Family Newspaper". I must admit at first I thought they were trying to sell actual grit, but it turns out Grit was indeed a popular newspaper in America's more rural areas, selling over 425.000 copies. According to Wikipedia
During the first three-quarters of the 20th century, Grit was sold across the country by children and teenagers, many recruited by ads in comic books from the 1940s to the 1970s. Approximately 30,000 children collected dimes from more than 700,000 American small town homes during the 1950s when the publication still carried the subtitle, "America's Greatest Family Newspaper." A comical ad in Richie Rich comic books aimed to recruit more young salesmen, suggesting that Richie's father, Richard Rich, got his start as a businessman selling Grit.
(from Doctor Strange #181, 1968)
Selling really was all the rage back then. If you were the more sporting type, you could have a go at the "007 Power Twister, proved effective by champion athletes and bodybuilders". I have no idea where 007 comes from since it has nothing to do with James Bond, but the thing itself still exists today and can be found on Amazon with decent reviews. It doesn't look very versatile to me, but it looks effective for the upper body in a rudimentary sort of way. With a $9.95 investment necessary (at a time when a comic book costed 12 cents), it was certainly one of the more expensive avenues to try.
(from Avengers #29, 1966)
It was not all about getting people to sell after all. Naturally, some readers of superhero comic books must have wished to look like Thor or Daredevil from time to time, so a few ads are about exercise programs, and they don't beat around the bush. Readers are guaranteed to develop "spacemen strength" (which doesn't mean much considering we lose muscle mass in space), to gain "mighty muscles" and lose "ugly fat". The best bit is about "winning female admiration", becoming "an idol of women" and stopping being "the ugly weakling women despise". Talk about laying it thick, no wonder puny Peter Parker was unpopular. All the guys in the photos look like they are holding their breath for dear life.
(from Avengers #52, 1968)
Things don't get better a couple of years later, when personal trainer Joe Weider promises "a muscle-building miracle virtually overnight", with only a few minutes of exercise per day,"a body that brings you fame instead of shame". Generally speaking, when something looks too good to be true, it's not. Weider was the trainer of various Mr. America and Mr. Universe winners, but will eventually get in trouble for this kind of advertising. According to Wikipedia
In 1972, Weider and his brother Ben found themselves a target of an investigation led by U.S. Postal Inspectors. The investigation involved the claims regarding their nutritional supplement Weider Formula No. 7. The product was a weight-gainer that featured a young Arnold Schwarzenegger on the label. The actual claim centered on consumers being able to "gain a pound per day" in mass. Following an appeal wherein Schwarzenegger testified, Weider was forced to alter his marketing and claims. Also in 1972, Weider encountered legal problems for claims made in his booklet Be a Destructive Self-Defense Fighter in Just 12 Short Lessons.
Weider was ordered to offer a refund to 100,000 customers of a "five-minute body shaper" that was claimed to offer significant weight loss after just minutes a day of use. The claims, along with misleading "before and after" photographs, were deemed false advertising by a Superior Court Judge in 1976.
In the 1980s, Weider found himself answering charges levied by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In 1984, the FTC charged that ads for Weider's Anabolic Mega-Pak (containing amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and herbs) and Dynamic Life Essence (an amino acid product) had been misleading. The FTC complaint was settled in 1985 when Weider and his company agreed not to falsely claim that the products could help build muscles or be effective substitutes for anabolic steroids. They also agreed to pay a minimum of $400,000 in refunds or, if refunds did not reach this figure, to fund research on the relationship of nutrition to muscle development.
In 2000, Weider Nutritional International settled another FTC complaint involving false claims made for alleged weight loss products. The settlement agreement called for $400,000 to be paid to the FTC and for a ban on making any unsubstantiated claims for any food, drug, dietary supplement, or program.
(from Avengers #48, 1968)
But it wasn't all about the body, with this ad promising a "he-man voice". I wonder if it would work for the ugly weaklings women despise.
(from Fantastic Four #39, 1965)
There were also a few ads on martial arts, with this one in particular about Yubiwaza promising to turn one finger "into a potent weapon of defense". I've never heard about Yubiwaza, but a quick search produced this
Nelson "Mitch" Fleming and his wife Yoshie Imanami would have preferred the Yubiwaza ads never have appeared. After studying Sosuishi-Ryu jiu-jitsu in Japan, Mr. Fleming and Ms. Inamani returned to America to open a school in New Jersey. Convinced by a publisher to write a book on Yubiwaza (jiu jitsu finger techniques) what Mr. Fleming thought would be a 100 page book turned into a 14 page pamphlet, sold through the proposterous ads below. Fleming had no input on the ads, incidentally. He enjoyed a long career as a martial arts instructor until he passed away in 1987. Ms. Fleming, as her son indicated to me in an e-mail, is "still alive, still very tiny."
A post by Stephen on Yahoo Answers has this to add
I also ordered the "book" based on the comic book ad. It took so long to arrive that I had forgotten all about it. It did contain a few useful techniques based upon Jiu Jitsu, but it certainly didn t instantly turn me into a dangerous person. There was also a section on how to break boards ("...with breath, sand, and straw!"), and even a section on how to pick up girls.
(from Avengers #52, 1968)
And what about girls? It was certainly a different time as this add promises to help them to put on weight with tablets packed with "pounds gaining calories", something for which you could be burnt at the stake today. You can tell there weren't many female readers as this ad is in a tiny little corner.
(from Avengers #29, 1966)
But the best bits were the things you could buy. A hypno-coin "guaranteed to work or money back" (did it belong to the Miracle Man?). And obviously it's a girl who gets hypnotized in the ad.
(from Avengers #48, 1968)
A spy pen "to see through walls" and "developed by the German Secret Service". I'm starting to sense a pattern here as the peeper uses it to spy on a pretty girl who appears to be dressing.
(from Doctor Strange #181, 1968)
A set of mustache, side burns and Vandyke (!) to "have the look men envy and women admire" (even if you are an ugly weakling women despise, I'd imagine). Readers could even send a sample of their own hair and "leave the matching to our expert". It doesn't actually say what this stuff was made of, though.
(from Uncanny X-Men #69, 1971)
"We are not making any claims, but it's a fact that scores of athletes, golfers, tennis players and celebrities wear there 100% copper bracelets for their legendary power". Right. Copper is actually a mineral the human body uses to make red blood cells, to keep nerve cells and the immune system healthy, and to form collagen, a key part of bones and connective tissue, but this is mostly through nutrition, not by wearing it. Then again, copper bracelets are still sold in health food stores, so the ad may have been on to something.
(from Avengers #48, 1968)
For those into war stories, it was possible to buy a six feet long "missile firing tank" made of fibreboard. At almost 7 USD, it costed a lot less than the power twister.
(from Avengers #23, 1965)
(from Avengers #48, 1968)
And the plastic toy soldiers, from either the Revolutionary War of the World War. The WW soldiers found their way to Italy eventually and I remember playing with them as a kid.
(from Avengers #48, 1968)
The last few ads would make the WWF or any other animal activist cry. You could order live seahorses (father, mother and two babies. I don't want to know what happened to the other babies), a young pet Squirrel Monkey (complete with cage and leash)
(from Fantastic Four #39, 1965)
a group of sea-monkeys to put in what looks like a portable cardboard aquarium. The ad says they are live, and apparently they have already been trained to race, play tag, "battle for a fair sea-monkey damsel" and "ride on each other". This is certainly one possible way to describe sex.
(from Uncanny X-Men #69, 1971)
And a pet baby raccoon! Rocket would have loved this.
(from Fantastic Four #39, 1965)
Finally, if you were into more exotic species, you could grow "two living, botanical monsters", something I'm still not sure what they could be.
Have you ever bought something from the Marvel ads? Sound off below with your experience!
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