Gem 💎 Balboa

Good Thursday 𝕏🌍 Remember those Sea-Monkey ads in the back of comic books? 😂 They showed an entire underwater family with smiling faces, little crowns, and what looked like their own kingdom. You could order these amazing creatures through the mail, add water, and supposedly have your own miniature civilization swimming around in a bowl. For a kid flipping through a comic book in the 1970s, how could you resist? The whole thing started with a fellow named Harold von Braunhut, who noticed brine shrimp being sold as fish food in the late 1950s. He figured out that their dormant eggs could be packaged and sold as instant pets. He originally marketed them as Instant Life, but sales really took off after he renamed them Sea-Monkeys and started advertising directly to kids in comic books. And when your package finally arrived? You got tiny, nearly transparent brine shrimp. No smiling faces, no crowns, no underwater castles. Just little creatures swimming around that barely resembled anything in the advertisement. The advertising was brilliant, though. They sold millions of kids on the idea of raising an underwater family, and Sea-Monkeys are still around today. Did you ever order Sea-Monkeys from a comic book? And were you as disappointed as I was when you found out what they actually looked like?😭

Good Tuesday 𝕏🌍 Remember when Christmas shopping started with the Sears Wish Book? If you grew up in the 60s, 70s, or 80s, you probably remember getting that big catalog and heading straight for the toy section. You'd spend hours looking through those pages. Circling the things you wanted, folding down corners, changing your mind, and making sure your parents knew exactly which toys you were hoping to find under the Christmas tree. Sears started putting out its Christmas catalog back in 1933. It wasn't officially called the Wish Book until 1968, and that year's edition had 605 pages, including 225 pages of toys. That's a lot of Christmas wishes! There were bicycles, electric trains, dolls, action figures, games, and just about anything else a kid could dream of. Of course, you knew you weren't getting everything you circled. You'd be lucky to get a couple of things. But that didn't stop you from going through that catalog again the next day. We didn't have online wish lists or shopping carts. We had a pencil, a catalog, and a whole lot of hope. Who remembers the Sears Wish Book, and what was that one toy you wanted more than anything?