If you grew up anytime between the, oh, 1920s and 1980s or so, pretty much most of the 20th century, then you probably are familiar with the Johnson Smith Company, if not by name, then visually. That’s because Johnson Smith was one of the main companies that advertised on the back covers of comic books and magazines like Boy’s Life and the Utne Reader, ads that were densely packed little drawings of amazing things like X-ray glasses and pranks that promised big laffs, but were almost all some sort of scam, or at least a letdown.
I remember these pages of ads quite well from my youth; they seemed to be everywhere, and if you wanted fake gum that would injure a friend, whose misery you could then laugh at, or tiny radios or cameras or pens with pictures of ladies with vanishing clothes, then this was your best source.
Of course, I never knew anyone who actually ordered anything from those pages, because even as kids, we weren’t that stupid, or, more accurately, we never had money to waste. Same thing. Anyway, I came across an old catalog from 1951 – I’m not going to bother linking it here, because it’s got more racist and anti-Semitic stuff in there than I would have imagined – and it did have some interesting car-related things.
Like this:
Yes, number 6534, the AUTO SCARE BOMB. This thing sounds absolutely bonkers. You connect this 15¢ piece of crap to a spark plug lead and ground, and when your victim attempts to start their car, there’s…explosions? Smoke? A whistle? what the hell was this thing? It sounds like spark plug-actuated fireworks under your car’s hood?
They say it’s “quite harmless and does not injure the car in any way” but I’ll be honest, I think that just may be bullshit. Smoke and bangs? From something that is noted to be NOT MAILABLE? To hell with that.
This is, of course, about the level of humor that Johnson Smith dealt in: terrify someone, justifiably, with explosions or mild injuries, then it’s guffaws aplenty.
I did try to find some other automotive products and references in their catalog, and there’s a pretty good number of them. This one isn’t strictly automotive, but the context given is:
Ah yes! Throw your voice, get your dad beaten by an angry cop! Hilarious! And I’m sure this method worked incredibly well. I guess cops back then didn’t concern themselves with whether or not mouths synched up with the audible speech they heard? And if that speech was coming from a child?
This is some really top-notch garbage here: the Gastine, a magical pastille you plop in your gas tank and it grants your car better, well, everything: performance, gas mileage, compression – holy crap, right?
It’s funny to see that advertised right above a genuinely rational accessory, a back-up light.
Since we’re already talking taillights, this was also a bit ahead of its time: a flashing brake lamp! These have been proposed multiple times, and have even been implemented in some cars like BMWs for hard braking, emergency stops, where they can command much more attention than conventional brake lamps. Not a bad idea! And in 1951!
A more frivolous taillight add-on are these novelty reflectors, which helpfully inform another driver of your status as a hepcat, or beg pardon for dust, or cajole drivers to either slow down, ride ’em as a cowboy would, come up (sometime), and even suggest nuts to you, fellow driver.
Very useful.
There were plenty of car toys and models, too:
Like these really archaic early Cadillac and a White steam car, or this midget race car with an actual gasoline engine:
The ad claims speeds up to 50 mph – holy crap, really? Even if they’re exaggerating by 100%, that’s still pretty damn fast!
For the top “Remoto-Car” I’m not clear how that one button on the wired remote does all the things it says, but I do like the fact that it has a 1/2000 hp motor is mentioned. The little bump-and-move car is pretty clever, I remember those from when I was a kid. My understanding of driving etiquette comes from watching those cars bang around a cluttered table. [Ed note: I’m 99% certain the remote-control car steers passively when reversed via a caster-like wheel under the car, like so – Pete]
And finally, you could build a real car from these catalogs, and all you need is two bucks and “spare time” and a motorcycle or outboard boat motor and a crapload of parts from old Fords or Chevys. I wonder if anyone actually built one of these from those plans, and if they did, did they take their girl to “go to town” as the ad suggests?
It’s all delightfully half-assed. And, really, Temu and Alibaba and all those sorts of places are the modern form of this kind of cheap, overpromising sort of thing. In a way, I’m glad it still exists. This sort of thing does fill a hole, regardless of how inane or shameful that hole may be. It’s our hole.
Interestingly, The Johnson Smith Company closed in December 2019. I somehow remembered them being a thing and looked them up ~2016.
A gas-powered model car that goes 50mph and has no remote control? What could go wrong!
I was about to say the same thing. And, also, why would you even want that? Even a fool ought to realize the thing will smash itself to bits on the first ride.
I assume it’s a tether car and runs in a circle–that’s why the ad says you only need six feet to run it.
No, Cox used to sell untethered gas powered cars. I had a Baja Bug that we’d run next to until the engine failed or it ran out of gas (very small tank). Engine was very temperamental and difficult to get running reliably.
I stuck one of those exhaust whistles in a coworkers car.. he was perplexed about the noise for a few days. Then in real time he was texting me about putting it up on jack stands to figure it out, found it, then blamed another coworker. Several texts later the penny dropped and he realized it was me. He tried to get me back by spilling oil under my WRX right after I had the engine built. However not knowing Subarus he put it too far back and I didn’t fall for it..
Yeah, a person used to find scam/junk sales hidden in the back of something called: “Magazines”
Today scams and junk are available freely from something called: “The Internet”
They sold those things in comic books and I’m pretty sure J.C. Whitney sold them also.If I’m not mistaken they were still selling them in the early 1990’s.My brother and I would get our father or grandmother every once in a while with them.Stupid but funny.
The one button remoto car was ingenious and quite awful. I had a radio controlled one.
The button is a simple contact on/off button.
A link/cam inside the car steers the wheels left or right. The link pushing the cam steers the front wheels in a few preset positions.
If I remember well, it worked like so:
Button untouched: car goes forward all the time.
Quick single-press – car turns in one direction. Forgot which. Wheels steer full tilt.
Quick double-press: car turns in the other direction.
Hold pressed: car reverses, wheels steered all the way in one direction.
Or something like that. It was awful.
Back in the 90’s I used to get these catalogs called “Things You Never Knew Existed” that peddled this kind of gag crap. Best I could tell, when I subscribed to GamePro magazine they started showing up. Some things never change!
Much of what you mentioned was in there, pranks and gags. Some legit tech gizmos, definitely some straight up scam stuff. I recall an expensive headset that they claimed allowed you to control your dreams, for example. I only ever managed one order from there – the trick gum pack and a few other prank-type novelties believe.
Apparently it still kindof exists. Disappointingly, I couldn’t find any egregious bullshit with a quick scan of the site. Seems like regular flea market junk.
Yes, Jason, they were spark-activated fireworks. In the early 80’s, I talked my dad into ordering stuff from a fireworks catalog that clearly stated on the order form “Determining the legality of these devices in any given location is the user’s responsibility.” Among the order was one of those under-hood fireworks. One afternoon, I thought it would be hilarious to put it in the farm truck, because my older sister was supposed to go to the feed store. One wire around a spark plug post, one wire to ground, and done.
The real hilarity ensued when my mom got tired of my sister not doing her chore, decided to go to the feed store herself, and set off my carefully-planned prank. A cloud of smoke, several bangs and loud whistles, and my mom is running for the house with me in close pursuit, yelling “Wait ! It’s just a prank and wasn’t meant for you!” We laugh about it now. She didn’t laugh about it then.
No special mention of the magnetic utility tray that you could plonk on your hard, metal dashboard to hold a bottle of your favorite pills and a pack of smokes?
…that will also go flying into the cabin in the event of a crash.
Right? You put them up there in hopes they’d be reachable when you were impaled on the non-collapsible steering column, but now they’ve gone flying bog-knows-where!
insult to injury…
Oh the stories I could tell. I think I’ll recycle a post I did a while back on another forum… all true. Enjoy…
My brother and I have been engaged in a perpetual prank war for as long as I could remember, though with time and distance it became more of a cold war these past few years… at least unit recently.
He had been working for over a year on a 350 small block + 150-shot nitrous gen-2 RX7 project -with full custom exhaust with glorious sound.. .in fact is sounds so good he loves to just crank it up and listen to the idle.
The latest skirmishes started about a year ago when I threw a carefully stashed, left over 4th-of-July smoke bomb that I was saving for the opportune moment right under his hot-rodded RX-7 engine while he was in the car showing of it’s V8. (“let me hear that sweet, sweet idle again Bro… “).. his reaction was, well, I almost lost bladder control… lf.. after he regained composure he looked at me, earnestly admitting defeat. He said… “you got me!” and then after a moment reflection, and with an evil grin… he continued… “it’s on… oh yes…. it’s on”
His lame attempt at retaliation the next day had to do with a fuel cut off switch that I diagnosed in about 5 seconds (“you cut the fuel off, didn’t you?”) so I left him hanging his head in shame at being so obvious.
So with that, the ball winds up in my court again.
He later picked up a cream-puff Lexus sedan as a daily commuter – and oh how he loves to boast about how quiet and smooth the car is “you can’t hear the engine running at all”… so I knew I had to do something with that.
I found the SoundRacer device (aka Varoominator).
On a visit one weekend, with a co-conspiriter, we managed to get hold of the key to the Lexus, and while he was distracted, hid the SoundRacer in the car and tuned the radio to the proper FM station. A little while later, we found an excuse to get him to run to the store…as he walked out to the car, others in on the gag said “let’s take the Lexus, we want to see how quiet and nice it is” …
The prank worked fine. He got in the car, and “vrrrrrooooom” Amazing. You can’t help but really, really like it! The sound auto syncs to the engine RPM and is absolutely perfect. It’s a digitally sampled V8 exhaust.
The prank lacked the evil underpinnings of previous classics (hiding dirty diapers under the dash, etc),. but the effect was well worth it. His Lexus really does sound like a fully hot-rodded V8! When he got to the store, he was crawling under the car looking for a microphone that he was sure was picking up the car exhaust and amplifying it (it uses the electrical ‘noise’ from the alternator to sync to the revs). We finally showed him where it was hiding and how can just plug into a cigarette lighter. As an added bonus, since his Lexus is older and doesn’t have a AUX input, the vroominator includes an input jack, so he can use it with his mp3 player.
Cool gizmo – though less than a month later – for some mysterious reason, the transmission in the Lexus blew. Oddly – about a year after that – his Chevy truck (which also had a turn with the varoominator) blew it’s transmission too. He does have 2 young sons .. so that might also have something to do with it?
… Anyway – flash forward to this past weekend – now he has a slightly used Civic Si 4-door that he commutes with – he likes to brag on how sweet a ride it is, and how stealthy it is, but still has a lot of power and zoom zoom. He also was very determined to keep it as plain and non-ricer as he could.
… so I ordered some decals for it. The kind that you need a hot-air gun to remove. (Edit: decals were very large, very hot pink flames rolling out behind the rear wheels on a jest black ‘stealth’ car)
They were snuck on while he was out of town – and he didn’t’ notice them until he got up and went out for his Monday morning commute – running late and not enough time to deal with them so he had the pleasure of driving to work 45 minutes and then parking where all could see. He even had to run up to a couple of co-workers he caught snickering at the car after he parked it to explain about his evil brother. Then had to drive back at the end of the day with everyone seeing it.
Not as dramatic as the smoke bomb, nor as transmission taxing and the varoominator, and oh so wrong for not only the being hot-pink, but I just HAD to put them on the rear wheels So a successful prank .. especially when you’re obsessed with the appearance of your car. He finally did get them off the car – but it was money well spent!
His wife still blames me for the 2 transmission repairs! 🙂
As a youth I ordered a set of X-ray glasses out of the Utne Reader. I couldn’t tell if they worked because the lenses were obscured by a treatise by Germaine Greer condemning the subjection of women to the male gaze.
“For the top “Remoto-Car” I’m not clear how that one button on the wired remote does all the things it says”
Me and my brother had several of those. They go somewhat in straight line forward, or mechanically steer to one side when going backward.
They really sucked, because it was quite impossible to have them drive a planned course, such as around the dinner table.
I also remember being in the store and not being able to decipher from the box whether the toy I wanted was controllable or behaved like this. The clerk was no help.
I completely forgot about Boys Life magazine! They must keep on top of things because once I got my Eagle Scout, they stopped coming.
Oh yeah, you need to actively subscribe to Man’s Life. They don’t just upgrade you.
Its since been renamed Scout Life, because rebrand
Fun fact, the Boy Scouts of America didn’t originally create it, it was a pre-existing commercial magazine that the BSA just purchased and reorganized
“I wonder if anyone actually built one of these from those plans, and if they did, did they take their girl to “go to town” as the ad suggests?”
Only if they are conjoined twins as shown in the illustration.
They claim that it doesn’t harm the car, but come on. That’s basically a firecracker wired into the ignition system. If nothing else there’s a good chance it will harm your victim’s britches.
you could still get those at fireworks stands as late as the 90’s, they were called Auto Foolers by then, but they were pretty dangerous no matter what anyone said. By that time they had limited the wires on those to about 8 inches, so you had to mount the thing pretty close to the spark plug, or set it on top the air cleaner lid and wire it to the rotor cap, which at the time was usually pretty close to leaky valve covers and who knows what else. Of course the cars that you did this to had to be unlocked or old enough to be able to open the hoods without the internal hood release which by the 90’s was pretty much just 20-30 year old cars for the most part. so they were often guaranteed to be leakers.
I would say though, that the Temu of my Day was JC Whitney catalogs. they had mostly Ronco brand or otherwise sketchy car stuff, including these devices I imagine, but they also had a great deal of odd stuff. that company is still around and just like Temu, if you decide to try to shop the website, they throw up a Discount wheel to spin before getting started.
I know it’s not the same Ronco (I don’t think?) but I now have an insatiable desire for rotisserie chicken.
That one actually worked
You haven’t lived until you’ve owned a Pocket Fisherman!
Yeah, I’m old enough to remember. Old enough, in fact, to be approaching the Hair in a Can age.
Jaylen Brown is only 29 years old so maybe you’re not as old as you seem?
Ronco Made the Cigarette auto light thing that would dispense a lit cigarette on demand, mounted under dash in most cases. It was just as scary as you would think.
Oh wow lol.
At least JC Whitney and even Johnson Smith never resorted to selling a bunch of very obvious “personal relationship devices” under false names like “pelvic exerciser.” Or maybe they did.
Temu, Shein, and Ali can disappear for all I care. They’re one of the worst, extreme examples of the race to the bottom in the overall US/China commercial relationship that goes back to Nixon or shortly after. We demand the cheapest, they phone it in, item maybe arrives a month later with very little customer recourse or merchant accountability.
I’m convinced that half their business now comes from “influencers” who think the best way to get clicks is to order things that obviously can’t be what is advertised and reveal what they receive. Every time I run into an account doing it, I block it, but they keep cropping up.
What a crazy, meta world we’re living in. I can only imagine sociologists and historians 1,000 years from now trying to describe this to whatever society is dominant at the time.
Of course, maybe this really is just Idiocracy and we’re sowing the seeds for a new normal.
Either way, mountains of trash are in our future 🙂
Fitting time since MTV Finally closed up. Videos really did kind of kill the radio stars though there are a few bastions of DJ’s I suppose.
At any rate I feel like reality TV was the thing that simultaneously saved yet killed MTV in the end.
Sadly Youtube creators kind of took that over, especially when they can in some case get millions of eyes on the home made content when a reality TV show struggles to get a tenth of that – mostly because Youtube exists I imagine. Youtube took over Music Videos too BTW.
But Youtube is not as cool as it once was, Kids shun it like Facebook for the most part, yet it seems like the Chinese replacement called Tic Tok is blowing up. guess we shall see if that lasts as well. I guess when it gets to the point that we are watching “Ouch My Balls” and drinking Brawndo, then it really will be an Idiocratic world.
But Brawndo has what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes!
The beginning of full-tilt idiocracy has arrived about 500 years earlier than Mike Judge set in the movie.
There are multiple guys doing fart sound maker pranks in public that sound as convincing as a whoopie cushion. Surely there’s an “Ow, my balls!” equivalent out there with 100ks of subscribers.
It’s funny you think humanity will exist 1000 years from now.
We can also walk into any corner gas station and walk out with a “love rose”, Chore Boy, and a cheap plastic lighter, get the rest of what you need from the guy eating a sandwich by the door and using the garbage can lid as a table
I think whoever is around in 1000 years will see that we called ourselves “Homo sapiens” and comment on the irony.
I lucked out in November with Temu. Picked up four strings of bright and proper color temperature LED Christmas lights. One hundred total feet for $16. Once these are reboxed and sold at Target or Lowe’s, they become $20 a string or more.
When my wife has ordered some super cheap clothing item from Temu, I always tell her it was probably made by some poor Asian child.
…along with half the things in your closet. And I don’t say that to shame you in any way. Some luxury brand that was “made in Italy” got busted for basically just moving a sweatshop from Asia (complete with workers) to Europe. Even if you try to be an ethical consumer, it’s essentially impossible. I don’t know the percentage of items in our homes made by enslaved people, but I’m certain it’s more than 0. This is the world we live in.
Oh yeah. As a somewhat decent at least maintainer of cars back then, the JC Whitney catalogs were a source of amusement. I must have ordered something from them, because they kept showing up for a while in our PO Box. Or maybe just signed up because they were so cheesy and there was nothing they had that I wanted.
I did do some hair-brained things back then. I put Jensen 6×9 speakers in the back deck of my Peugeot 504, and a Pioneer head unit and moved a faux Cibie fog lamp from the front to the back after its partner got taken out by a tossed up rock. I wired it to a toggle for when I actually needed the illumination, but mostly to try to get someone close behind me to dim their high beams.
These days, I just try to fly under the radar and the crossfire. I NEVER honked my horn in Texas. And rarely flashed my lights other than to alert someone who was driving at night with NO lights. A lot of open carry people down there.
A lot of open carry crazy Neanderthals.
Open-carried AR-15s in an H-E-B grocery store? In Texas. First target of someone who wants to do harm. Happy to be back in WA, where this is not a thing. I know what I’m doing around guns. But I don’t have one or a concealed carry permit. Nor do I need the feel for either, around here.
Texas is its own beast — even here in Alabama for 25+ years, I’ve seen open carry exactly twice in public, and maybe two more times on private property (one is a cash-heavy business, the other a large property with wildlife control requirements)
I’m amazed whenever I see these big televised 2A open carry protests or whatever they’re called. I’m sure plenty of people conceal, but IMO that doesn’t concern people nearly as much (and it requires very special training, like the ability to hand over $40 and have no felonies on your record. That’s all.)
Ha! I remember being in 6th grade and the NRA training us (me and my 5th grade brother) how to be safe with guns. Shooting single round .22 rifles. It never occurred to us then to carry anything back then. Or that we would encounter anyone who did. This was 1969. It’s very sad where we, as a nation have gone to.
I suppose I should research mass shootings back then. But I suspect there were fewer.
Absolutely. My WWII vet grandpa got me a lifetime membership to the NRA in the 80s. I went to a couple training sessions with a 22LR and learned storage, safety, even some cleaning — on top of what my dad and gramps taught me indepdendently. None of them ever even considered taking a gun in public. My dad insisted they stay locked in the trunk while transporting them.
I never hunted, only target shooting. I don’t own a gun today “for home protection” because I have two teens, one with emotional problems, and the odds are not in my favor. But otherwise I probably would consider it. However, more broadly, we either need to fix our cultural norms (families, economics, self-centeredness…and drug addictions, gun obsessions and violence) or we’ll just sit around and argue about why we need more gun control or why we should bomb Venezuela — focusing on the symptoms and not the disease.
/rant off
Sorry. And having lived with two suicidal wives, (no longer with either one, and not at the same time) I do not have any firearms in the house. Nor either of the wives. Lest they decide to transition to homicidal. So far, everyone is still alive. I’m doing my best to just get everyone to just calm down.
Pardon me and my conversational divergence. This is a car site. Let’s talk more about LS6s and less about .22LRs.
But to your comment… My brother had three deer heads and an elk on the wall until his house burned down.
I never hunted, but I loved shooting guns at targets. Precision is fun. And I love the smell of burnt gunpowder.
He and I would go plinking at stuff in the quarry he worked in, when I visited 30 years ago and as a TV news photographer, I had a pretty stable body and a good eye. I usually beat him at the challenges he set up.
But hey. Let’s get back to cars. Which I have never shot at.
Open carry leads to carried by six.
Eh, it was either an Urban Legend or possibly a real thing, but there were stories of Gang Bangers in urban areas purposely driving without lights who would shoot if you flashed them the warning (on-off).
Kraco or Krackle 6X9’s and a Bass tube with built in passive Amp onto a factory FM radio in a 1970 Buick Lesabre was a thing in my highschool years. we all did the stupid stuff, but I agree the JC Whitney Catalog was always entertaining. I did almost pull the trigger on a muffler bypass with cable actuated butterfly valve. would have just been louder, but we were dumb kids I suppose.
Yeah, I remember that. Funny how there were never stories of it actually happening in the newspapers or TV news.
Some kids seemed to drive without lights I think because of that. Had a friend who freaked out because I flashed one and he thought he was going to turn around and come after us. In a wussy suburb. I shrugged and told him that could be fun, but I was quite sure we had nothing to worry about and we didn’t.
I got a PA sound effect system from JCW for my HS Subaru GL. Best $25 I ever spent, particularly for the animal noises.
I was at the very tail end of these catalogs, and I remember a lot of similar ads showing up in the back of Boys’ Life magazines, too — the most popular one being “build a hovercraft from a vacuum cleaner!,” just $5 for the plans.
Vacuum cleaner and angry mom not included.
The spiritual successor to this was probably some combination of Lillian Vernon, Fingerhut, and potentially Sharper Image (which actually had quality stuff before they licensed their name out to fill the shelves at Marshalls and Ross…)
I was a catalog fanatic in the 80s, my grandmother got them all — including Nieman Marcus, which was its own version of point & laugh at the other end of the economic spectrum.
The Ventrillo. “Seldom fails.” Lol!
I remember this stuff too, from my (older than you) youth. I didn’t have the disposable income to order any of it. Just as well.
I remember being in 7th grade and someone put a whoopee cushion on the chair of our very rotund band director and when he sat on it, it immediately popped rather than making its intended fart sound and that was actually a funnier outcome. We were all clued into the plan and pretty much all ended up on floor laughing hysterically.
There’s a store in Seattle that still sells some stuff along these lines: Archie McPhee Seattle Store | Toys, Gifts and the Rubber Chicken Museum
Worth a visit if you’ve got idle time in the Emerald City.
Archie McPhee is where I do all my Christmas shopping!
I did that one year, two decades ago, when my kid was 11. I did some other shopping around for his mom/my then wife.
Maybe I’ll do that again this coming year. Early. Because I hate driving and parking around Seattle these days. Can they please open a branch in Tacoma?
Internet. They ship!
But browsing the store in person is so fun!
I’m not likely to find out, sadly.
As a kid in the 70s/80s I loved the Johnson Smith catalog. I spent a decent chunk of my mom’s $ with silly mailorder crap, pretty sure she would get me money orders to pay for it too.
Ah, flashing brake lights! You don’t have to go high-end for those, just find a dealership that installs this nonsense on every new and used car, one of those mandatory “options.” In my case, they tried to slip $500 into the sales contract for it, which almost scuttled the deal until they removed the charge. I later found the modules selling online for less than $10, and official install tutorials that showed about a 15-minute job.
Last time I checked, those are not legal in Washington state for some reason. I find them very effective, at least on the CHMSL. On my trips up and down I-5, lately, I’ve noticed that some Amazon trailers have an amber version of it in the middle of the tail edge. I’m not opposed to it.
Yeah, not a bad idea, just not worth $500. I imagine with labor and a little profit margin, it still should be south of $100.
I have no idea what they cost. But I’m not going to be retrofitting them into my 8-year-old car that has never been rear-ended. I do wish they were standard equipment, because they do get your attention in traffic and they don’t annoy me.
I have a scooter that I putt around town on when the weather is nice, and it doesn’t have that feature, so I give the front brake lever a double squeeze to simulate it. I haven’t been rear-ended on it either, so far.
They are not legal in any state. The Amazon trailers get around it since those lights are amber, not red like an actual brake light.
I am with their being illegal. To me they are beyond highly visible and alerting: they are distracting and disturbing. Instead of making me aware that someone braked, they force my attention at that particular car back end, breaking the overall situational awareness that is all the more necessary when someone else is braking.
The dealership I used didn’t even put up a fight on that. I saw the charge for the flashing brake lights and the one for the door edge protectors and they only fought me on the edge protectors. Really says something about how little the module costs when it’s easier for them to drop that charge than the charge for a tiny bit of the cheapest PPF.
$500 is the going rate at my nearest VW dealer. I still see brand new ones around with a flashing CHMSL. Ford was the only other dealer to try it, but I think they gave up.
I’m not really a fan, but I can see the allure. I always thought it should only flash under extreme braking — in fact, BMW tried to roll out a brake light that varied in intensity based on pedal pressure. Also a good idea, but illegal in a lot of places.
That’s something I never understood in light of the fact that MANY states have no inspections at all. Sometimes the only way I know a brake light is out is a good samaritan has the guts to tell me and hope I’m not one of those “Mind your own business!” people. IMO, telling people about lost brake lights and underinflated tires is a civic duty.
I actually added this to a 23 Chevy Bolt with its notorious crappy brake lights (they’re hiding low down on the bumper, NOT onside of the hatch where you expect them to be) and also put one on a 2010 wet-payment-grey Miata (because Miata).
Unlike some, these aren’t annoying. This model has a programmable flash (I set it for 4 quick flashes then steady) and a retrigger delay (I set it for about 30 seconds). Upon initial braking, the flasher triggers once. It won’t repeat the flash sequence unless you stay off the brake for a bit, avoiding a constantly flashing brake when in stop and go traffic.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN983DCS?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_5
Aside from the scam element, why call it nonsense? Seems like a good idea, but maybe I’m missing something.
Cheap version flashes every time they hit the brakes….quite annoying in stop and go traffic.
Yeah sorry I commented too early before I saw the rest of the thread. And I can completely understand the need for regulations/standards to prevent that.
I ordered a remote control hovercraft from one of those ads. It was a super cheap vaguely hovercraft shaped thing with fan wired to a handle. I pressed the button, the fan spun, and it hovered! You kinda led it around by the wire..
I think it lasted a week or so.
Fly-by-wire! Way ahead of Airbus.
And Tesla and probably built about as well!
that seems like the best case outcome for one of these products.
You don’t need X-ray eyeglasses ($2.95!) to see that all of these ads were nonsense. If you were gonna send money through the mail in hopes of getting something good back, you at least clipped out the form from a reputable mainstream publication- not a freakin’ comic book.
Popular Mechanics and others had similar offerings, though I suppose they may have been about one rung up the ladder. I was always tempted to order a hovercraft kit, but it’s probably best that I didn’t.
Oh right, the hovercraft you build out of a vacuum cleaner! Even as young kids we knew that was bunk.
Yeah, but I always wanted to know how bad it was. I suspected it wouldn’t be able to support the vacuum cleaner, but it might have briefly worked until you added literally any additional weight. Plus, my dad owned and operated a log truck, so there was always the thought of trying to hook it up to a big air compressor instead of the vacuum blower. Wouldn’t go anywhere, but might have been fun to see if it could work. And the vacuum cleaner certainly wasn’t going anywhere, either.
It would be fun to try to build a hovercraft now, with adult skills and money. Dyson motors might actually work!
Pretty sure there was at least one person who has made one commenting here the last time the conversation came up. And I know there are plenty of people here with the tools and knowledge to do it well.
I’ve seen a number of examples using leaf blowers. The only legitimate use for those things, in my world.
My favorite mail order insanity comes from Turbonique and their drag-racing rockets, but those prank fireworks have 3/4s the danger, an infinitesimal fraction the usefulness, and maybe a quarter the boom if that, all for pennies on the dollar. What a steal!
It’s our hole.
I prefer autonomy when it comes to holes, thank you very much.
It appears these catalogs exist to make your Marx Brothers dreams a reality.
I would love to know how many of these “comic reflectors” were really sold and installed. I was completely unaware that there was a precursor to trashy bumper stickers from this far back.
This reminds me of the “Sea Monkeys” and other various mail-order crap of the 80s and 90s.
Thanks for the memory reboot, Torch!
We had Sea Monkeys. The little brine shrimps lived until they died.
Funny thing is, my microscope set came with a vial of brine shrimp eggs, too.
To be fair, that’s true for all of us too.
Step back, jack, I intend to live forev… oh yeah. Fair enough.
I was thinking more of the fact that they didn’t reproduce the way they allegedly would. Then again, these sea monkeys were hastened to their end by a fall off the kitchen windowsill. I hope to avoid similar.
Sea Monkeys were also sold through brick and mortar retailers. My parents got them for me because I still wanted them even after they told me they were just tiny shrimp. They were killed when the resident poltergeist knocked the dresser over that they were on top of while we were all in the living room at the other end of the house. Every time I’ve seen Lethal Weapon 2 after Riggs shoots the fish tank and the big bad diplomat guy is telling his guys to “pick them (fish) up with your hands,” all I can think of is those unfortunate shrimp in the carpet and laugh.