Boys’ Life Magazine Ads.
Boys’ Life is the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. It ruled my childhood.
I was in the Scouts, but that had nothing to do with it. All of my grade school buddies were in the Scouts. It was just kind of a given that we would be.
For us, it was essentially an afterschool “latchkey” program, held at a nearby church, with a few of our mothers rotating in and out of “den leader” roles. We wore the uniforms and we had the books, but it was more or less just playtime. Actual scout-like activities were few and far between. I didn’t mind going and neither did my friends, but we’d have just as soon stayed home.
Only one of my friends stayed in for the long haul. He seemed embarrassed whenever we brought it up, but his bedroom was full of Boy Scout things, including the fabled Webelos uniform that none of the rest of us achieved.
He’s the one who introduced me to Boys’ Life Magazine. In his room was a pile of them, nearly half as tall as I was. I don’t know what compelled me to begin thumbing through them, but once I did, something magical happened.
The articles in each issue were what you’d expect. Sugary stories about being a better person, or about making things out of egg cartons, or maybe about the logistics of rain.
I wasn’t enthralled until I got to the last few pages. The “GIFTS & GIMMICKS” section. At that moment, something clicked, and nothing would ever be the same.
I’ve written about old comic book ads a hundred times, but the truth is, I rarely ordered things from comic books. When I’ve alluded to a past filled with mail order madness, it was chiefly because of Boys’ Life Magazine.
The “Gifts & Gimmicks” section was typically 5 or 6 pages, very close to the end of each issue. It became as important to my childhood years as nearly anything else, and I can’t mean that more sincerely. With oodles of vague ads for oodles of vague things, it kicked off an obsession with mail order goodies that I still haven’t completely kicked.
I never subscribed to Boys’ Life Magazine, and it wasn’t the kind of thing that you could just buy anywhere. Instead, I’d visit my still-a-scout friend’s house every month, and rip the pages from his magazines. Sometimes he charged me a token fee; other times I just tore them up when he wasn’t looking.
I protected those pages like they were the most important things in the universe. I even went to the local pharmacy to make photocopies, so I could safely cut out offers without decimating whatever was on the flipsides of the pages. I was nuts.
I didn’t buy everything from those ads, but I sure ordered a lot. Anything in the realm of “pranks and gags” was my chief interest, in part because I was an idiot, but mostly because those were the cheapest things.
There was almost never a time when I wasn’t expecting a package to arrive. I think I enjoyed the anticipation more than anything, and I’d fall into a deep sulk if there were no postal miracles to look forward to.
For some reason, I’d always bring my purchases to school, still safely protected in their bubble mailers. For a few years, that was “my thing.” When we were getting our yearbooks signed by all of the teachers in the fifth grade, most of the ones I’d had penned thoughtful wishes for “good mail to come.”
I can’t say that these passions brought me much kinship or camaraderie.
The scans above come from a 1989 issue of Boys’ Life, but the “Gifts & Gimmicks” section looked very similar to that for many years, before and after. Below are closer inspections of several specific ads that piqued my interest back then…
Crazy knives! How were ads like this legal? They can’t still be legal, right?
The knife on the left doubled as a survival kit, with a bunch of random tools shoved into its hollow shaft. The “Action Knife,” shown right, was like the super mega version of a Swiss Army Knife. (Actually, that exact ad inspired me to request a Swiss Army Knife for some long ago Christmas. Its most useful tool was a slide-out plastic toothpick.)
I fell for Badge A Minit’s pitch, hook, line and sinker. Though the $33 price tag precluded me from ordering one, I spent countless nights imagining the fabulous riches waiting in the button business.
Regarding the two smaller ads, I’m sad to admit that I never experienced the thrill of pets-by-mail. My parents didn’t have many hot buttons, but “surprise animals” would’ve won me a beating for sure.
I was especially interested in the quail eggs — likely because they came with an incubator that looked like an alien spaceship. That ad wasn’t long for the world by 1989, and I remember being so regretful when it finally stopped appearing in Boys’ Life. In hindsight, thank God it stopped. Putting the kid version of me in charge of baby quails had many potential endings, but they were all very, very bad.
*panic excitement die words here*
These ads mean A LOT to me.
The first two are from Brad’s Fun Shop and the much larger Johnson Smith Company. (Don’t let the size of Johnson Smith’s ad fool you; this one is unusually small.) For years, these two companies battled for supremacy in the “cheap jokey shit” arena, constantly tweaking their wares and prices. Their doodads fell from a dollar to eighty-eight cents, finally settling in at a seemingly impossible fifty cents. (Loss leader?)
Venus Flytraps! Whoopee cushions! Fake vomit! Snap gum! All of the best things ever made, for the best prices ever seen!
Brad’s Fun Shop generally had cruder stuff than Johnson Smith. The upside was their reckless abandon regarding any laws about selling low-grade fireworks by mail. Still, Johnson Smith was the gold standard, and even if you don’t recognize their tiny ad, you probably know their work. If you’ve ever paged through a Things You Never Knew Existed catalog, that’s them!
Oh, and about that third ad. Garner’s Pranks & Magic desperately wanted a slice of the pie, but they just wouldn’t commit to an across-the-board low price. I have no facts to back this up, but I like to think that it’s what put them out of business.
The Pinewood Derby is one of the few true “Boy Scout things” I can remember taking part in. My father built a real beauty: A Corvette-looking thing with shiny red paint, and just enough random metal shit stuck in the back to give it ample weight.
All of my friends were just as into their cars, and come race day, we were AMPED. When we arrived, the Official Scout People had set up a two-lane raceway. Two kids would race, and then another two, and then another two, whittling down the contenders until we had our grand champion.
Unfortunately, it became immediately clear that the right-side lane had a much steeper slope, and so, the only way to lose was to be on the left. None of the adults seemed to believe us, even after a car that I swear only had two wheels managed to win three races. It’s been more than twenty years, and I still clench my fists when I think about this.
Oh, and the other ad? As a kid, I was just gullible enough to believe that building such a hovercraft was possible. And I guess it was, technically. Still, there’s no way that thing did what I imagined it doing. I saw myself flying over houses and being all over the news.
I dabbled in stamp collecting for several years, all thanks to ads like these.
Each sold you a handful of stamps (or coins, or bank notes) for an enticingly low price. The catch was that they’d send you tons of extra stamps (or coins, or bank notes) on “approval.” If you wanted to keep them, you had to send in more money. If not, you had to send them back.
I don’t know if that arrangement was purposely sneaky, but if it hurt anyone, it was the companies themselves. Even if I didn’t outright intend to “steal” from them, I was never any good about sending the extra stamps (or coins, or bank notes) back. It’s not like I feared jail, or bat-bearing stamp shop heavies.
It was always neat when “big brand real stuff” turned up in the classifieds. You know, for lack of a better term.
I actually did join that World Wrestling Federation fan club. I remember owning everything described, except for the alleged quarterly newsletter. The big draws were the autographed 8x10s, even if they were just copies of autographs. Kids believe what they want to believe, and as far as I was concerned, Koko B. Ware set aside five seconds just for me.
No matter what I ordered, I was really in it for the simple joy of getting mail. Focusing on the cheaper things just meant that I could get more mail. I didn’t care what was coming, so long as things were.
To this end, I must give a special shout-out to the various ads for free catalogs. (Even if “free” meant I had to pay the shipping costs, or worse, figure out what a “SASE” was.) I never turned down the chance, even if I knew that I would have absolutely no interest in what the particular company was selling. I didn’t care. Just send me mail!
Oh, and I just confirmed that Boys’ Life Magazine is still around. Would it be weird of me to subscribe, just to see if they’re still running ads like these in the back? I guess it wouldn’t be any weirder than writing about magazine ads from 1989 at three in the morning.
I think I’m gonna do it.
In 1985, there were full-page ads in the “magazine” section of the Sunday paper for those survival knives. IIRC, they were inspired by a scene in a Rambo movie. In any case those ads ran for week after week, and most of the boys in my troop bought them.
In December of 1985, my troop went camping. There were over a dozen knives at the beginning of the trip. By the end of the weekend, there were only one or two that weren’t broken. Even at the time, I wasn’t surprised.
//CSB
Ordered two chameleons from Texas Wonder Pets in the late 80′s / early 90′s. One lived two years, one lived three months and then one just randomly got sent to my house…dead in the box. The food that came with them was a dimebag full of mealworms which doubled as an awesome prank to put in your sisters lunchbox.
I was the same kind of *eeee! mail!* kid. My sister and I killed forests in free catalogues. We played a game where you had to order one thing off of every page… now that i think about it, it’s a wonder we didn’t end up shopaholics or hoarders.
I still compulsively check the mail… this no mail on Saturday thing is going to be hard on me.
i wonder if matt ever used the free wwf ticket
These are wonderful. I remember a particular ad was for a wooden helicopter with a kid sitting in it. It made no reference to it being a working copter but I swore they were selling a real kid helicopter. I had a lot of daydreams flying to school and hanging up my rad helmet where book bags and coats go.
Never of having a terrific fiery crash in trees.
Tiny Matt stories are the best. This one compels me to make you a care package and send it back in time.
That air car!!! I vividly remember that from Comic books,Boy’s life and other magizines!!! I always wondered…..
@J: I don’t think we got a free WWF ticket with the club; just a chance to win one. I did go to a few shows at the time, though. Earliest one I can recall had Macho King vs. Dusty Rhodes. (I was there for Macho and we ended up leaving before the main event — which I think was another of the 30-second Warrior/Andre squashes.)
@oliver: Ah, someone who actually ordered the lizards. Good for you. I had a few (not by mail) and while I’d prefer not to describe while I’ll never own another… I’ll never own another.
@M. Oleman: That classic “U Control Ghost” has actually been re-released. At least in bootleg form. I have one around here somewhere, though I never bothered to set it up.
@Bill: The vehicle ads in general were so sneaky.
@velouria: Please do! Eight-year-old me will appreciate it.
I was in Cub Scouts when I was in elementary school. We actually met in the cafetorium of our school on certain nights. It’s weird, I don’t have any memories of having the uniform or anything, but as you can see here (http://www.myspace.com/teddyray/photos/42394062#%7B%22ImageId%22%3A42394062%7D), excuse the ancient myspace page, I did have a uniform (that’s Lil Teddy Ray second from the left), but apparently the uniform was optional.
Geez, that was a long run-on sentence. Anyway, I vaguely remember doing the Pinewood Derby, but that’s one of the only Scout things I remember doing. I tried to do actual Boy Scouts when I was older. I had a good friend who was a couple years older than me and he was in Boy Scouts, went to the meetings and all, so I tagged along with him, but they were Boy Scout meetings in the loosest sense of the word. I don’t remember anything about them…just sitting around talking, really.
I also don’t remember having a subscription to Boy’s Life magazine, but I remember getting it and reading it, so maybe I did. The ads didn’t intrigue, though, for some reason. Sure, I would look at them, I remember them…but I never ordered anything from them. I guess I inherited a healthy dose of skepticism from my parents. I just always thought those ads were a rip off, so I never ordered anything. Well, I’m rambling, so Imma shut up now. Great article, Matt. It really takes me back.
I too shared your mail obsession (I kind of still do) and used to send away for any imaginable free catalog or sign up for any “Kids Club” I could find. I also entered every contest on earth, was constantly writing jokes in the USA Network Kid’s Club and was constantly trying to get autographed photos from celebrities (which ended up mostly being the cast of Kids Inc.). I also joined things like the Full Moon Video Fan Club and the Joe Bob Briggs fan club so I could get their newsletters.
I mostly got free catalogs from the back of Fangoria magazine, these were highly inappropriate for children. In my pre-teen and teen years any money I made I used to dump into magazine and comic book subscriptions. The rest all went to stamps.
It continued into my teen years when I used to send away for just about any zine I could find that sounded remotely interesting (and some that didn’t) in the back of Maximumrocknroll and Fact Sheet Five. When I moved a couple years ago I donated about 8 boxes of zines to a local “zine library” (talk about things you never knew existed) and I had to describe them to the girl at the place as “like blogs on paper”.
My mom was sooooo pissed when we started getting bombarded with catalogs, packages, and those stamps on approval. We continued getting stuff for years and years. It was awesome. I loved getting all the mail. My favorite Johnson Smith purchase was definitely the Rattlesnake Egg envelope. I would scare the shit out of people with that.
Pretty much all of these things are items that are infinitely cooler to contemplate owning while looking at the ads than they are to actually own (“That’s not a chameleon, that’s an anole!”, “These x-ray glasses are a lie!”, et c.), but good luck explaining that to a kid, as nothing—not even aliens—says “I Want to Believe!” as much as these sort of ads.
Somewhere, I’ve got a Boy Scout handbook from the 1930s that has some pretty nifty ads in it; I’ll have to scan them in if I can find it.
I was waiting to see the hovercraft ad. I had the same daydreams about its capabilities, so you’re not alone.
There’s book out called Mail-Order Mysteries that shows what a lot of those products really looked like. I aims to get my paws on it one these days.
Awww man.. this one really put my nostalgia into overdrive. My scout troop was a lot like yours. Everyone was just in it, and no one ever did any actual scouting. In fact we were fairly evil to all the other ones that did at the group camp things we had to do. Mostly We were about lighting stuff on fire. A neat trick I learned in scouts, if you soak your hand in purel, you can light it on fire, then shake it off real quick, be totally fine, and a total badass.
The pinewood derby was the best though. There weren’t any pretenses at all when it came to who made the cars. It was pretty much who’s dad could build the coolest car. My dad was a carpenter, and watched formula one racing religiously. He built an exact scale replica of Michael Shumacher’s F1 Ferrari. I was a shoe in. Turns out though that a scale replica of a formula one racer holds up about as well as the real thing when it hits a wall. The thing flew faster than any other car there, and the whole front end shattered on impact with the padding at the end of the track. The second round it was just barely held together with Elmer’s glue. It pretty much hobbled it’s way across the finish line in one of the slowest times of the day. I still have the “participant” ribbon though.
The Air Car is a distinct visual from my Boy Scout days that I’ll never forget. Something about the triangular formation of the hover discs burned itself into my brain. I also remember ordering the “Things You Never Existed…and Can’t Possibly Live Without” catalog and skimming it’s pages with giddy delight at my friend Mike’s house. Boy’s Life also had some comic strips in it, which were the only other pages in the magazine that got a second look from me.
For me, when I had Boy’s Life it was all about the comics (shock of all shock). I think I went back later on when I just had stacks of them in my bedroom and actually read a few of the articles, but I was more intrigued by the regular adventures in the comics and was disappointed when one of the comics had ended without any fanfare. You could probably call it my first foray into comic book reading considering the way the things came out (can’t remember if it was monthly or seasonally). When my subscription finally ended, I managed to keep on reading thanks to my school library’s subscription, though eventually they seemed to just stop coming or perhaps I just lost interest. Either way, good times. And yes, I loved all the ads in the back even though I never had money for any of it. XD
i see that several of those stamps are post-marked. now granted i know nothing about stamp collecting, but doesn’t that kill them as collectibles?
Oh MAN, this takes me back!! I did the same shit!! I had a subscription to Boys’ Life. I had that free “1800 things you never knew existed” catalog, and it was AWESOME!! I loved ordering more catalogs of cool junk. I remember getting all kinds of the magic tricks and prank stuff. “Smoke from your fingertips,” trick gum, invisible ink, rattlesnake in a bag. I think I also ‘ordered’ pen pals through boys’ life. I had several around the world and we trade coins with each other. I always wanted that hovercraft kit too…
aaaaanddd. Things you never knew existed still EXISTS! http://www.thingsyouneverknew.com/
I just ordered a new catalog