Monday, June 16, 2008

Manic Monday--Monkeys By Mail

From an ad in Tales of Suspense #59, 1964:

Everything was cooler in 1964Really??

You could order monkeys by mail in 1964?? With a free monkey toy?? Live delivery guaranteed?? And they like lollipops?!?!

Really?!?!

Damn, once again I was born too late....

4 comments:

Khairul H. said...

And this is why the '60s was just a plainly awesome decade (Vietnam notwithstanding).

I was born in the 70s myself but I've heard stories....

Anonymous said...

I keep picturing the kid opening the box and the "live monkey" attaching itself to the kid's face like a face-hugger from "Alien".

"SCREEEEEEEEEECH!"

I have a few other thoughts on the monkey ad here:

http://tinyurl.com/55k383

snell said...

oops...sorry. Mark, I didn't realize you had already covered this phenomenon...

I wonder how many kids managed to send away for one of these without informing their parents? Quite a surprise at the mailbox...

Anonymous said...

Well, they'd probably have to be spoiled-rotten little kids to make their monkey order without their parents' knowledge/permission. $18.95 was a fairly hefty sum in 1964 - $127.06 in 2007 dollars, according to the online inflation calculator.

Among other reasons I miss Penn Jillette's daily radio show is that his Monkey Tuesday! is now a thing of the past.

He had all sorts of great monkey stories, and did cover this ad, though never found anyone who actually had ordered a monkey-by-mail. You definitely get the impression that spider monkeys make pretty horrible pets, though....