The Wisdom of P.T. Barnum

 

A Childhood Chump

There’s one born every minute.

I'll be the first to raise my hand.

When I was a kid, I'd believe anything.

I even fell for those White Cloverine Brand Salve ads on the back of funny books.

Surely you remember the ads. They seemed to be on the back cover of every comic book:

“Boys! Girls! Ladies! Men!

“We Give You Cash or Premiums!”

There, in the midst of a host of exclamation points, was the pitch: Sell boxes of White Cloverine Brand Salve and you could win a wagon or a bike, a Daisy air rifle or a guitar, a .22 rifle or - drum roll please - a live pony! Now that one deserved an exclamation point.

Wilson Chemical Company of Tyrone, Pennsylvania would send you - on trial - 14 boxes of White Cloverine Brand Salve. On trial! You would sell the salve for 25 cents a box, return the money to them and pick a premium! Or keep a cash commission!

It seemed simple enough. I mean, who of your neighbors, didn’t need salve? According to the ad it was “wonderful for chaps and sunburn.”

In my youth the back pages of comic books were almost as good as the comics themselves.

There was the famous “Hey Skinny, Yer Ribs Are Showing” ad, inviting all us 98-pound weakling kids to shape up with the Charles Atlas He-Man course. Just send 15 cents to Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension, Dept 29, New York 10, N.Y. and no muscle-bound bully would kick sand in your face again.

Empty your piggy bank and learn to “Draw Any Person in One Minute - An Amazing Invention - Magic Art Reproducer.” Just send eight quarters to Norton Products, Dept. 652 New York 6, N.Y.

You could earn money selling Grit in your neighborhood. Or you could buy all sorts of neat stuff: whoopee cushions, hot gum, fake vomit, trick black soap, X-Ray glasses (see through skin and, who knows, maybe see through clothing!), joy buzzers, Hypno-coins (“Hold the Hypno-coin in front of the person you want to hypnotize”). 

I talked my mother into letting me order the “100-piece Toy Soldier set - Only $1.50 - Packed in this Foot Locker” from Lucky Products, Dept. B-6, Westbury, Long Island, N.Y. The excitement of getting mail, even tiny mail, was dampened by the product that arrived. I hadn’t paid that much attention to the ad - in little letters the word “pasteboard” was in front of “foot locker.”

The foot locker was just a cardboard box, a tiny cardboard box, maybe six inches long, a couple of inches wide and an inch high. And the soldiers who looked so realistic in the ad were about the size of a thimble. And flat.

Another time I ordered a gizmo that was guaranteed to “Turn your home’s electrical system into a giant TV antenna.” I had visions of watching New York stations and Los Angeles stations. When it arrived, it looked like a potato scrubber, a U-shaped coil that you put between the TV plug and the electrical outlet. I followed the instructions and excitedly went up and down the VHF dial, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 19, 11, 12, 13. Nothing. We couldn’t even get Johnson City anymore.

But no matter how many times I was disappointed, I always went back for more.

And no ads were more enticing, or ubiquitous, than those White Cloverine Brand Salve come-on’s.

The clincher was a cartoon ad: “Jim and Judy Defy Savage Gorilla!”

“Help the gorilla is loose!” a frightened zoo visitor screams in a six-panel cartoon.

“Stand back, I’ve got a gun!” Jim says, aiming his .22 rifle at the ape.

“Get back!” says Judy, pointing her bow and arrow at the gorilla.

“Look he’s climbing back into his cage!” says a matron.

“That boy and girl saved out lives!” cries another.

“You kids deserve a medal! Where’d you get that ‘22’ rifle and that bow and arrow?” asks the Mayor.

“We earned them selling White Cloverine Brand Salve!” say Jim and Judy.

“Wow! I’m going to sell some of that salve, too!” interjects some little punk.

I took the ad to my father. He studied it carefully.

“I want to sell this stuff and earn a pony,” I pleaded.

“We don’t have any place to keep a pony,” he reminded me.

“Then I want to earn a .22 rifle.”

“Your mother wouldn’t allow that.”

“How about a bike?”

He looked at me over his glasses, one of those Ward Cleaver looks.

“Remember the stamp club?”

Yes, I remembered the stamp club.

I was the world’s worst stamp collector. I had an album and I pasted in stamps but after filling up all the one-, two-, three- and four-cent stamp slots, I was stuck. My uncle who was in the Air Force in Libya would send me stamps from there but the only way to fill the rest of the slots was to buy stamps through the mail from collectors.

Then I saw an ad on the back of a comic book and joined a stamp club. They would send me stamps every month “on approval.” Soon I was getting stamps and stamps and more stamps. They came in little cellophane sleeves and I would tear them open and paste the stamps in my album.

Then one day a bill arrived. I owed Peterson Stamps of N.Y. something like ten dollars. I didn’t have ten dollars. So I did what any ten-year-old kid who owed ten dollars he didn’t have would do. I hid the bill. But soon another arrived. And another. Along with stamps and more stamps, all on approval.

One day my dad came home from work and sat me down. Peterson Stamps had called him at work. Where were all my stamps? I dug them out from under the bed, along with the bills.

He sent them all back along with a check for ten dollars. I paid him back out of my allowance and my credit rating was saved.

So when I came to my father with the White Cloverine Brand Salve, he explained to me a lesson that has stood me well: there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I saved up my money and eventually bought a bike.

And White Cloverine Brand Salve and I were both the better for it. 

 

 

TV Antenna Gizmo Challenged by FTC

In 1973 the Federal Trade Commission investigated the TV antenna scam folks.

“In advertisements for their ‘JUMBO TV ANTENNA,’ respondents make the following statements:

“Every home a super receiver ELECTRONIC MIRACLE TURN YOUR HOUSE WIRING INTO A JUMBO TV ANTENNA

“Do you know that you have one of the greatest TV antennas ever constructed? It's better than any set of rabbit ears, more efficient than complicated external antennas. It's your house. Yes, the wiring in your home constitutes a giant antenna that acts as a super receiver for TV, FM, all kinds of difficult reception.

“And the secret to using all this reception potential is an amazing little plug-in attachment that utilizes the receptivity of your house wiring without using a single bit of electrical power. Yes, you simply attach the adapter easily & quickly to your set ... plug it in to any wall outlet and immediately your entire electrical system is working for you. No ugly looking rabbit ears, no difficult, dangerous to maintain external antennas, and reception so sharp and clear it will amaze you even in the more difficult areas.”

The FTC hired electronics engineer Frank Triolo of the United States Electronic Command in Fort Monmouth, N.J. to investigate the claim.

He concluded the mail order antenna was inferior to all other antennas he used for comparison, including rabbit ears.

The FTC reported that the claims were “false and misleading.”

I could have told them that.

 

 

Sucker!

P.T. Barnum is always credited with the saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

He may have lived it but he likely never said it.

His biographer Arthur H. Saxon could not find a single documented instance of Barnum actually quoted as saying the phrase.

The earliest reference I could find was in a January 2, 1879 Chicago newspaper story about, what else, Chicago gamblers:

“It's mighty hard times with the most gambler; in the season they make a bit on baseball, or on the races, and then, you know, ‘there's a sucker born every minute,’ and rigid city legislation drives the hard-up gambler, who would be a decent one of the kind, to turn skin-dealer and sure-thing player. When gambling was run as it should be run, everything was open and aboveboard. Anybody could walk into the room, be he policeman looking for a criminal, employer for a clerk, wife for a husband, father for a son. Now, what little is done is done in fear and trembling, as it were, behind iron barred and bolted doors, and that's no way to do things. Why, look, did you ever see so much card-playing before in saloons as you see now? Of course not.”

Not a mention of P.T. Barnum, who would have been seven years old at the time that paragraph was published.