Mail Order Madness

December 2025

I’ve talked before about ordering stuff from Amazon and getting it the next day, or even the same day on a few items. I often wonder what kind of strange logistical solution makes this possible. I’m pondering now about my childhood, when you might order something from a catalog in October if you hoped to get it by Christmas.

Catalogs were the Amazon of yesteryear. There were Sears, Montgomery Ward, JC Penny, Spiegel amongst a variety of others. Even Radio Shack and Sharper Image had detailed catalogs back in the day. Many were big, thick and unwieldy.  But everyone looked forward to receiving theirs in the mail. Each member of the family taking the time to look them over, often scouring them for hours on end, dreaming of maybe someday being able to afford such luxuries. Yes, it was a very different time indeed.

I recall my mother ordering stuff from a catalog and waiting forever to get the wrong thing. Or the incorrect size. If it was for my brother or me when we were young, we might be a whole different size by the time we received it. It was easier to go to Goodwill or yard sales, which is where many of my clothes came from in the 1960’s and early 70’s.  But that’s another story that we will save for another time.

Personally, I even felt the pain of this archaic pre-Amazon era, where mail-order was sloth-like and painstakingly inaccurate. I had a paper route and lawn jobs during this time, so I occasionally had money burning a hole in my pocket. Usually, it went for an album that I would buy at the local JC Penny record department. One that I might listen to only once or listen so often that I wore it out. Regardless, those old LPs would now be worth ten times their original value. Sadly, when CDs came along, I stored my now seemingly irrelevant albums in the basement. A subterranean vault that flooded and ruined all 200 or so that I had purchased in the 1970’s. What a pity.

But it wasn’t just music that I purchased with my 13-year-old income. I liked to buy comic books and magazines as well.  In these kid-focused periodicals, there were pages containing boundless temptations for a young boy.  This was based on highly effective marketing and advertising, at least as far as its influence on me.  It would compel me to order some very strange stuff. Like the time I ordered and grew sea monkeys.  Yes, sea monkeys. Allegedly, they were mosquito larvae that hatched and filled our house with mosquitoes buzzing in our ears at night.  That was what my mom said anyway, when she saw what she deemed as a “foolish waste of money”. 

Actually, these Sea-Monkeys were Brine Shrimp eggs packaged with a "growth formula." I was fascinated, as the illustrations in the comic ads portrayed a humanoid, underwater family, smiling and posing for the candid shot of their aquatic home. Once I received them, several weeks after ordering, I diligently followed the directions and several more weeks later all I got were tiny larvae swimming around in my glass jar.  So, in reality it was much less exciting than what I expected. Just like everything else I bought from this company. But buy, I did.

I remember ordering fake vomit, X-ray specs, whoopee cushions, a miniature camera and invisible ink.  Nothing really worked, and if it did work, it only did so once or twice.  It was a very shoddy time for comic book novelties. These ads were notorious for exaggerating the quality or effect of their products, leading many kids like me to experience their first lesson in misleading advertising. Long before I learned the meaning of caveat emptor.  And creating long term, serial sceptics out of many of us.

Speaking of serial, there were also the “cool” things you could get inside breakfast cereal boxes or by collecting their box tops and sending them into the company. Another highly effective marketing ploy aimed at kids and generally pushed through that incredible new advertising medium, television.

In the 1970s, cereal box offers often included groovy prizes that were supposed to be both fun and memorable. I seem to remember spy kits, miniature telescopes, magnifying glasses, signal whistles, and spy decoder rings. This piece of plastic jewelry was high on my wish list. These rings helped kids decode secret messages from TV shows.  Which you could then tell all your friends.  Making you the coolest cat in the neighborhood. Of course, you had to wait weeks for the package containing your prize to arrive and when it did, it wasn’t really worth the wait.  My mom hated the whole deal, because we had a bunch of topless, yet full, boxes of cereal in the pantry that never got eaten. 

But again, music was the real passion for me at the time.  So, I tended to spend way too much of that disposable income on albums and 45’s. When I was about thirteen, I found what I thought was the most amazing deal.  I read in one of my comics that I could get 12 albums immediately, for only a penny. And then I would just have to buy 3 albums over the next 3 years. All I had to do was join a music club.  Of course, when they said, "Get 12 albums and just buy 3 in the next 3 years", this was classic bait-and-switch marketing. A tactic used by music clubs like Columbia House and BMG for decades.  I think I joined them both.

These companies lured suckers like me with the whole 12 albums for a penny thing.  How could that be bad? The problem became those “3 additional albums…”. They were about $25 each at full price, plus shipping and handling.  And that wasn’t the worst of it.  Each month, they would send a “rejection card” that showed the month's featured albums. One that you would never care to purchase. But, if you forgot to mail back the card by the deadline, the album would be shipped to you anyway, and you would be billed for it. Incidentally, this album would not count toward your “3 additional albums” requirement.  Yikes!  So, people ended up spending a fortune and/or getting sent music they never wanted.  My mom got me out of the deal somehow.  I think she wrote a letter to them and threatened a lawsuit, as I was only 13.

It was a trickier time, that is certain.  Marketing and advertising didn’t have any real rules, not in comic books anyway. I learned a few valuable lessons. One was patience, because nothing came quickly.  Sometimes I think the anticipation you felt while awaiting the arrival of your perceived treasures made the wait worth it. It might have been a better feeling than playing with the stuff you got. In today’s immediate gratification world that is no longer the case.  And you know what, the world isn’t really any better off.   We have too many choices and we want them all right now.  And really, are we more satisfied?

Maybe the comic book and catalog days weren’t so bad. Before Amazon dominated the market, shopping required a little bit of work.  Either the catalog scanning and ordering I have described or actually getting out of the house.  Visiting lively stores and malls that fostered socialization and a sense of community. With our purchases often strengthening homegrown businesses and supporting the local economy.

Although we didn’t think so at the time, this fostered a slower, simpler pace of life. Our existence was generally less instant and demanding. We all had to think ahead and not live in such a last-minute world. Communications back then often involved letters or landline phone calls, and products ordered from catalogs would take weeks to arrive. I don’t remember anyone ever stressing about this.

But maybe, the most important fact of life before the dominance of Amazon is the least visible. It’s a part of those amazing magical logistics. We are now being watched.  Our behavior is being monitored. So, speed and our need for immediate gratification comes at a cost.  It involves a loss of personal privacy, as everything we look at online, or say while we are around our phones, is a constant collection of data and the tracking of our behavior. All designed so that Amazon can know what you want before you do. Is it really worth that level of violation of our personal liberties just to get our Sea Monkeys tomorrow?