Mail-Order Novelty

A longtime fixture of printed media throughout the 20th century, the Mail-Order Novelty is a gadget or tchotchke advertised in comic books, newspapers, and magazines, usually targeted at children. They would include a mailing address, a cut-out form, or a postcard so that readers could mail in a payment and directly receive the product being advertised. Payment was usually done with cash or a check, but could also include promotions like proof-of-purchase receipts.

Mail-Order Novelties targeted toward kids tended to be:

• Air Guns and other toy weapons
• Toy versions of Gadget Watches, Spy Cams, invisible ink pens, disguises, and other spy gear
• Practical Joke implements like Electric Joybuzzers, Whoopee Cushions, and Explosive Cigars
• Sea Monkeys, ant farms, and other "exotic" "pets"
• Actual exotic pets, usually monkeys
• Halloween costumes, decor, and horror props
• Magic, hypnosis, and ventriloquism kits
• Fantastical futuristic gadgets like X-Ray Vision glasses, Hypno Rays, and Hover Boards

Products targeted toward older children, teenagers, and the occasional adult included:

• Get-Rich-Quick Schemes, usually multi-level marketing sales kits
• Cosmetics and beauty products
• Correspondence Courses or Phony Degrees
• Quick fixes for physical problems (lose weight, build muscle, learn martial arts, etc.).

These products were infamous for making Too Good to Be True promises in their ads and failing to deliver on every count. The toys were cheaply made and flimsy. The X-ray goggles merely created an optical illusion and didn't allow for someone to see through their skin (or for a Hormone-Addled Teenager to see through someone's clothes). Purported Hypno Rays were just 10-cent pieces of plastic with a spiral pattern on them. The fad diets and workout regimens were either placebos or required far more time and effort than the marketing implied. Anyone who got one of these would inevitably end up disappointed, throwing it away and cursing themselves for being suckered in by such obvious Schmuck Bait. But if it performs as advertised, especially for ones making incredible claims? Then things tend to get very interesting.

The most prominent retail companies in the Golden and Silver Age of Comic Books were Johnson Smith, Fun Factory, and Honor House Products Co. By The '90s, a new age of the Mail-Order Novelty emerged with the rise of high-end retailers Hammacher Schlemmer, Sharper Image, and Brookstone, which advertised through catalogs like SkyMall (a fixture of airline seatback-pocket reading). They sold lifestyle products that many saw as pointlessly expensive, overspecialized, or otherwise meant for those with too much disposable income and not enough common sense.

The economic and cultural trends of the Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s have served to make this a Forgotten Trope. The rise of the internet coincided with declining sales for comic books and children's magazines. Online retailers like Amazon saw a meteoric rise, while former mail-order giants like Sears and Montgomery Ward floundered and died. The 2008 recession drove businesses to embrace online retail as a cost-saving measure, which consumers also found quicker and more convenient than mail ordering. As the web became more and more of a lucrative market for both advertising and sales, print media became less so. SkyMall folded in 2015, and high-end novelty retailers like Hammacher Schlemmer shifted to fully digital storefronts.

Compare Free Prize at the Bottom, Sea Aping, and Competition Coupon Madness, as well as Acme Products and We Sell Everything.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• The Simpsons: In the Bartman issue "Where Stalks... The Penalizer!", the titular vigilante has somehow obtained the Hypno-Coin, a hypnotic trinket Bart purchased via mail order that actually worked, and is using it to carry out Heel–Face Brainwashing on Springfield's troublemakers. Bart has to take up the mantle of Bartman in order to stop the Penalizer and take the coin back.
• Specs: In the indie limited series, two teenage male friends (one white, one black) order a pair of "Gamma Ray Magic Specs" they saw in a comic book ad, which supposedly has the ability to grant the wearer's wishes. One of the friends wishes the other wins in a baseball game, but things get a turn for the worse when they are assaulted by their bully and they wish for him to be gone. The bully's disappearance shakes the small-town community, and the black friend is wrongly blamed, although later acquitted. The white friend, meanwhile, tries to locate the glasses' manufacturers and makes his way to an abandoned factory. The glasses are indeed wish-granting, and its previous owner was a lonely teenage girl who wished on prom night that people would never forget her. The glasses granted her that wish, but not in the way she wanted: her boyfriend drowned her in a pond, and her body wasn't found until a week later. Her hometown certainly didn't forget her after that...

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: One plot arc has Calvin gorge himself on Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal to collect enough proof-of-purchase seals to order a propeller beanie, believing it to be a real Hat of Flight. When he finally gets it, his test flight is an immediate disappointment, so he tosses it aside and happily plays with the box instead.

Films — Live-Action

• A Christmas Story: Ralphie, an avid fan of the Little Orphan Annie radio show, hears about a cross-promotion with Ovaltine where those who send in enough proof-of-purchase labels get a special decoder ring at the mail, allowing them to be part of a "secret club" that receives coded messages from Annie at the end of every broadcast. He drinks enough Ovaltine to make him sick, gets the decoder ring in the mail, and rushes to the bathroom so he can decode the latest message in secret. Needless to say, he's not thrilled when he learns it's another product plug.
  "'Be sure... to drink... your... Ovaltine.' [Beat] Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!"
• Creepshow: The wraparound story ends with two trash collectors finding Billy's Creepshow comic after his abusive dad threw it out. They laugh over the mail order gags on the back page like fake x-ray specs, but note someone already sent away for the "authentic voodoo doll." Billy did, and uses it to torture his dad while laughing evilly.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The "Charles Atlas Song" is partly a Shout-Out to Charles Atlas, a bodybuilder whose namesake at-home exercise courses were a long-running staple of comic book ad pages.

Literature

• The Baby-Sitters Club: A B-plot among the sitting charges in one book features the kids becoming addicted to purchasing items through magazines and comic books, buying bust enhancers, x-ray specs, all-purpose glue that claims to hold anything, etc. It isn’t until they buy supposed real moon dust for fifty cents that the older kids realize they’re all being ripped off, and try to sell the items to the adults in the neighborhood to get their money back.
• Captain Underpants: In order to get out of being blackmailed by their principal Mr. Krupp, George and Harold decide their last hope is ordering a 3-D Hypno-Ring from a magazine clipping and hypnotizing Mr. Krupp into doing whatever they want. Much to their surprise, it works better than they intended.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: the Last Straw: Greg reveals that he has no disposable income because he spent them on comic book ads that turned out to be scams. The X-ray glasses don't work, the money-printing machine is just a magic trick you have to load with your own money first, the ventriloquism book's lessons are useless, and the hoverboard is actually a manual with (prohibitively expensive and complicated) instructions on how to build a hoverboard.
• Homer Price: One story mentions how the diner owner bought dozens of Whoopsy-Doodle Breakfast Food cereal boxes to help the local kids collect the box tops for mail-order prizes. However, the actual cereal didn't taste very good and sold poorly. Homer's grandpa Hercules buys the stale cereal from the diner owner at a discount and uses it as chicken feed.
• The House With a Clock in Its Walls: In The Figure in the Shadows, Lewis Barnavelt reads a Captain Marvel comic and finds a couple of ads of this type, including one for a "Vacutex" (designed "to suck out unsightly blackheads") which he has no interest in, and one for a booklet of Charles Atlas's "Dynamic Tension" exercises that can supposedly turn a weakling into a muscle-man. While he's considered ordering it in the past, this time Lewis decides to go for it and sends away for the booklet, which arrives a few months later. In The Vengeance of the Witch-finder later in the series, it's revealed that the exercises were boring and Lewis only kept at them for a few days.
• The Lost Continent: Bill Bryson talks about these items always being disappointing and, if he ran such a company, he would just send customers a letter telling them they should know better and to consider this a life lesson.
• Magic Shop: In The Monster's Ring, Russell Crannaker recalls at one point how he'd once ordered a pair of X-ray Specs from the back of a Muck Critter comic, but had sworn off that kind of thing after they turned out to be useless.
• The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks: Early in book 1, it's explained that Michael's always saving up and sending away for things through the mail. The plot kicks off when he receives a pair of "Amazing Beans" he'd sent away for (though he doesn't remember actually doing so by the time they arrive), which end up growing into the titular sock-eating plants.
• Paths of the Perambulator: Jon-Tom tries to use magic to summon a riding snake towards the beginning of the novel but ends up with a $25 Jeep by accident. He then has to explain to Clothehump what a $25 Jeep is (a military surplus jeep that could allegedly be bought for $25 from a magazine advertisement). The fact that he made one appear makes him wonder about whether or not he could summon real, working versions of other mail order novelty items like x-ray glasses or bust-enhancing pills. The jeep turns out to work, but it's an incredibly bumpy ride due to having apparently no suspension system and guzzles gas at a tremendous rate. They sell it once they get to the next town.

Live-Action TV

• The Adventures of Pete & Pete: Little Pete spends the entire "New Year's Pete" special daydreaming about and saving up for a jetpack sold in the back of a comic book. The jetpack turns out to be a leaf blower.
• CSI: NY: A plot point in the episode "Child's Play". A man is killed with an Exploding Cigar, but he wasn't the intended target: the real target was Lawrence "Laughing Larry" Galachter, a longtime toy store owner who advertised novelties in comic books. Decades prior, Larry had sold a child-sized play submarine; the killer's childhood friend had bought one and drowned trying to float it in a river, prompting him to seek revenge as an adult.
• Hannah Montana: In the episode "Super(stitious) Girl," Jackson, Oliver, and Rico debate whether to open a mail-order package Robby Ray ordered from Hummacher-Schlummacher that had arrived while he was away. When they do, it's revealed to be a deceptively small package for a bounce house, which immediately inflates and fills up the entire living room.
• Leave It to Beaver:
  • In "Captain Jack," Wally and Beaver find an ad in a comic book for a pet alligator and send away for it. They imagine a full-grown gator being sent in the mail, and intend to keep it in their bathtub. What arrives is a baby in a shoe box, and what ensues is them trying to care for it without telling their parents. Eventually, their parents do find out and they make the boys give the alligator to a local reptile house.
  • In "Beaver's Accordion," the family gets an order form for a free trial of accordion lessons, complete with accordion. Ward sees it as a scam and tosses the form, but Beaver fishes it out of the trash and with some convincing from Wally's Toxic Friend Influence Eddie Haskell, sends away for it. When it arrives in the mail, he's suddenly faced with the dilemma of being unable to return it before the five-day free trial is up and having to pay the exorbitant fee.
• Red Dwarf: Referenced in the episode "Better Than Life", with Rimmer accusing Lister of sending off for every item of mail-order junk he comes across just so he'll have some mail to open. "Please rush me my portable walrus-polishing kit!"

Video Games

• Anna's Quest: In castle segment you find a coupon for magic thimble. To get one you need to send it with mail pigeon.
• Space Quest: A Running Gag in the series involves Roger sending away for a novelty whistle used to solve a puzzle in Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge, but because he didn't send in the payment, the Time Skip between the games, and the company's cheerful disregard for sentient life (they made a slot machine that could potentially vaporize an unlucky player), this results in a succession of Bounty Hunter robots sent out after Roger in future installments.
• Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World: After you fight Decus, he laments that "this damn mail-order exercise machine must have been a scam!"
• Team Fortress 2: The Sniper Vs. Spy Update brought us the Dead Ringer and Cloak and Dagger watches via mail-order catalogue, styled as being the Spy's own orders. The Mann Co. catalogue he bought them from also had more conventional examples of the trope such as a "portable" Baccarat Detector that is the size of a car engine and doesn't detect punto banco as a form of baccarat, and a "crab-walking kit" stated to be excruciatingly painful to use.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive: A non-canon comic says that Catalina's very poor Gaydar is because she bought a literal gaydar device from a comic book ad that advertised itself as "100% accurate."

Web Original

• Cracked: Seanbaby's Popsicle Pete comics reimagine the 1950s advertising mascot as a bloodthirsty Eldritch Abomination. One comic includes a mail-order advertisement for toys, which is heavily implied to be Pete reselling the personal effects of his murdered victims.

Western Animation

• Angry Beavers features an episode where Norbert purchases X-ray specs from a magazine, and gives Daggett a pair of "invisible X-ray specs" (actually just thin air) so he won’t ask to use them. The glasses Norbert has, however, are just non-prescription glasses with hand bones painted over the lenses… and Dagget actually does have functioning X-ray glasses, they’re just invisible. Daggett lets Norbert use his, seeing as his own pair was a scam.
• One episode of Cow and Chicken sees Chicken order a personal submarine from a comic book.
• Futurama:
  • In "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences," Fry writes a comic book featuring mail-order ads for X-ray specs, Sea Monkeys, and Professor Farnsworth's novelty "Disintegration Ray" (actually a Teleport Gun, which is considered cheap garbage relative to the tech of the 31st century).
  • In "The Route of All Evil," Cubert and Dwight order a pedal-powered spacecraft out of the back of a comic book. The ad says "Allow four to six seconds for delivery."
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "Chocolate Sailor", Billy answers an ad from the back of one of Grim's comic books from the underworld to sell Chocolate Sailors, enchanted chocolates that turn those who eat them into chocolate sailors. Their only victim, however, is Billy himself, who ends up eating them all.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "No More Bunny Business," the boys are disappointed when the X-ray glasses they order turn out to be a scam, so they decide to build a pair that actually works.
• The Raccoons: In "Easy Money!", after Bentley accidentally breaks Bert's RC car, he looks for a quick way to pay it off. After seeing an advertisement in a comic book for Colonel Jethro Smith's treasure maps, he sends away $2 for one and follows it into the Endless Echo Caverns in hopes of finding treasure. The maps are later revealed to be a scam, as Cedric tells Bert and Lisa that his father also fell for one, so they go on a mission to search for Bentley.
• The Simpsons:
  • The plot-instigating device in "Homer's Night Out" is a tiny spy camera Bart ordered from the back of a comic book, which actually works and takes high-quality photos.
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror XIV" segment "Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off", Bart and Milhouse order a stopwatch from an ad in a comic book that claims to be able to stop time. It actually works as intended, and they immediately use it to carry out pranks around town.
• South Park: In "Cartman's Incredible Gift," Cartman is confronted by a group of "real" Police Psychics who are angry he didn't go through the proper channels to get certified. What are the proper channels, then? Getting a $25 Phony Degree from a psychic detective school advertised on the back of a comic book.

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