Here are the last page and inside/outside rear covers of The Adventures of Bob Hope, dated October-November, 1964. It's one of the few comics I have in its original copy -- that is, this is the one from my childhood, as opposed to most of the other 2000+ that I have re-acquired copies of.
I think I read somewhere that the toy soldiers were three-dimensional, but not actually fully rounded. They were VERY FLATTENED to save plastic. They kind of looked like soldiers from Flatland. And, of course, the "footlocker" was thin cardboard.
You can't really read the signature on the He-Man book, but it ain't "Charles Atlas." Also notice the Mercury dime. That hsn't been minted since the FDR dime came into circulation in 1946! Of course, also notice that the tagline at the top of the ad, "Brother, can you spare a dime," comes from the lyrics of a 1931 song of that title.
I never sent in to sell greeting cards, either. And that's for the best. The company's procedure was to send you a few boxes that you had to pay for. It was up to YOU to sell them to somebody else! Wimp that I was, I would end up with those boxes of cards sitting on a closet shelf for twenty years before I got up the nerve to try to push them off on somebody.
Of course, if the grown-ups I knew were as friendly-looking as the ones shown in the ad, I might have made some BIG BUCKS.
See you next week!
(And check out the new link for the CBS Mystery Theatre to the right.)
