Has anyone heard of this?

[SoulBlazer]

Recently I bought a collection of Spider-Man comics on Amazon scanned on CD -- the first 500 issues. They are complete scans, with the latters and adds and what not all included.

 

Last night I was reading a comic fron early 1984 when I noticed this one:

 

Has anyone heard anything about this? Seen similar offers? Know how it worked? Talked to anyone who tried it?

 

It seems something like this might have worked if it was done during the 'golden age' of home videogaming, but by the time this was being offered, early 1984, the great video game crash was allready starting. Even at the discounts they were offering the games for, I suspect soon you could find them at your store even cheaper.

 

Still, sounds pretty cool. Wish there was something like that when I was a kid.

[godslabrat]

Recently I bought a collection of Spider-Man comics on Amazon scanned on CD -- the first 500 issues. They are complete scans, with the latters and adds and what not all included.

 

Last night I was reading a comic fron early 1984 when I noticed this one:

 

Has anyone heard anything about this? Seen similar offers? Know how it worked? Talked to anyone who tried it?

 

It seems something like this might have worked if it was done during the 'golden age' of home videogaming, but by the time this was being offered, early 1984, the great video game crash was allready starting. Even at the discounts they were offering the games for, I suspect soon you could find them at your store even cheaper.

 

Still, sounds pretty cool. Wish there was something like that when I was a kid.

 

There HAD to have been a catch. No minimum order, and you could buy a $40 game for $6? What's to stop people from growing their collections by being their own best customers?

[SoulBlazer]

Yeah, it's a good question, I don't know. Maybe you had to order more then one game? It's interesting, though.

[SlowCoder]

Maybe something not unlike the Publishers Clearinghouse, where you could get stuff cheap, but had to promise to buy x number of items in a year?

[the-topdog]

I'm not familiar with this one specifically, but for the one I know about, you would go around to all of your friends and get orders... once you had 25 orders, you would mail in the order form with YOUR OWN cash (you were not allowed to collect money from the buyers until you delivered the games).

 

Now the BIG catch was that these were cartridges and manuals only... no boxes. My guess is they were all of the factory seconds that had damaged boxes.

 

They would ship them to you and they would be in manila envelopes with the corresponding order numbers. Then you would go out and deliver them and collect your money. The whole process took about 3 weeks each time you would order.

 

If you had the cash for the first order, it was a pretty good thing for a kid for the 6-7 months the company was in business. It was much easier than a paper route. The only BAD thing was the deadbeats that "changed their minds" after you ordered and decided not to pay... you were suck with those games.

Edited November 12, 2010 by the-topdog

[Skylark68]

I remember this ad from some of my GI Joe, ROM, and Transformers comic books. I always wondered how it worked.

 

This, and those Grit subscriptions...

 

What exactly was Grit anyways???

[SoulBlazer]

I remember this ad from some of my GI Joe, ROM, and Transformers comic books. I always wondered how it worked.

 

This, and those Grit subscriptions...

 

What exactly was Grit anyways???

 

I was curious about that also, seeing all the Grit adds, so I looked it up on Wiki.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(newspaper)

 

It was a weekly newspaper and is still around today in a magazine format.

[the-topdog]

I remember this ad from some of my GI Joe, ROM, and Transformers comic books. I always wondered how it worked.

 

This, and those Grit subscriptions...

 

What exactly was Grit anyways???

 

I delivered Grit for a while too It was just a newspaper with mostly good, feel good articles, and a great comics page. I did all kinds of things as a kid to support my gaming, computer and comic book habits.

[raskar42]

never did any of those seed/wrapping paper/newspaper sales comic book offers - even as a kid it seemed like a scam.

[the-topdog]

never did any of those seed/wrapping paper/newspaper sales comic book offers - even as a kid it seemed like a scam.

 

Well for the most part it was, they were counting on the fact that the kids wouldn't follow through after the initial purchase (which was always out of their pockets or their parent's)... but just in case the kid was industrious and went through the paces, they had the actual products for them... nothing like paying am underage kid pennies per item for hours of work.

[SoulBlazer]

never did any of those seed/wrapping paper/newspaper sales comic book offers - even as a kid it seemed like a scam.

 

Well for the most part it was, they were counting on the fact that the kids wouldn't follow through after the initial purchase (which was always out of their pockets or their parent's)... but just in case the kid was industrious and went through the paces, they had the actual products for them... nothing like paying am underage kid pennies per item for hours of work.

 

Yeah, as a kid I would have tempted to buy that 'turn any TV into a hypnosis device' thing.

 

One interesting thing in reading these digital scans of these Spider Man comics is seeing how slowly the adds changed over the years. You went from several pages of small addvertisements that almost all sounded like a scam in the 60's, into less and larger adds but still kind of fake in the 70's, to less adds and more 'big company' ones like Mars, Coke, 7-11 and so on in the 80's, to all big time commerical company ones in the 90's.

 

By the early 80's they were starting to crack down on the 'fake' adds which is why I thought the one I posted had to be real -- just with a catch.

 

There was a CSI episode a couple years ago that delt with one of these old 'comic book adds' also. As I recall it, a guy and a female friend of his were big comic book readers when they were kids, and they worked hard and saved up money to send away for a toy sub called 'Polaris' that one person could actually get in and use. (I've seen the actuall add in these comics for it). Well, when they tried it out, the sub sank and the girl drowned, and that haunted him his whole life. Years later he tried to kill the guy who ran the toy company with a exploding cigar but he gave it away and someone else got killed. It was a really good episode.

Edited November 17, 2010 by SoulBlazer

[godslabrat]

I'm not familiar with this one specifically, but for the one I know about, you would go around to all of your friends and get orders... once you had 25 orders, you would mail in the order form with YOUR OWN cash (you were not allowed to collect money from the buyers until you delivered the games).

 

That seems like an odd rule-- first because it's almost unenforceable. The company can tell me not to take money, but if that's what I want to do, what's the harm? Second, it discourages the dealer from getting paid, which discourages future business.

[raskar42]

I'm not familiar with this one specifically, but for the one I know about, you would go around to all of your friends and get orders... once you had 25 orders, you would mail in the order form with YOUR OWN cash (you were not allowed to collect money from the buyers until you delivered the games).

 

That seems like an odd rule-- first because it's almost unenforceable. The company can tell me not to take money, but if that's what I want to do, what's the harm? Second, it discourages the dealer from getting paid, which discourages future business.

 

that is weird - i'm sure most kids wouldn't understand the risk they were taking.

[the-topdog]

I'm not familiar with this one specifically, but for the one I know about, you would go around to all of your friends and get orders... once you had 25 orders, you would mail in the order form with YOUR OWN cash (you were not allowed to collect money from the buyers until you delivered the games).

 

That seems like an odd rule-- first because it's almost unenforceable. The company can tell me not to take money, but if that's what I want to do, what's the harm? Second, it discourages the dealer from getting paid, which discourages future business.

 

that is weird - i'm sure most kids wouldn't understand the risk they were taking.

 

My guess is that they were limiting the liability of non-delivery to the kid whether it was their non-performance or the kid's... and limiting themselves from non-payment danger of NSF checks and the like. They just wanted their money and didn't care what happened after thet.

[Video]

I remember seeing those adds as a kid. But even at 5-6 (i would have been in 84) it just screamed "scam" and there was no way in hell I would have tried it.

 

Now days, with a disposable income, I'd be more inclined to try it, but I probably still wouldn't, cause it still sounds like a load of schit to me.

[Rik]

Those comic book mail order jokes were mostly scams as well.I remember those X-RAY specs.They actually had a picture of some guy looking through a girls dress.I thought, X-rays look through skin to see bones/organs, not through clothes to see skin!!! Or those Sea Monkeys.They made them out to be little creatures that actually look like real monkeys on land, but with webbed feet.Those are nothing more than a certain breed of shrimp that are far from looking like land monkeys, like they advertised them as being.

Edited November 18, 2010 by Rik

[gdement]

Given the timing, this ad looks like it's just trying to clearance unsellable games.

"GAMES CLEARINGHOUSE" they call themselves. Probably connected to a liquidation company.

That's quite an incredible discount there - get a game supposedly worth $29.95 for only $5.95. Yeah.. sure. $29.95 was probably the MSRP at one time, but it was now overstocked and worthless. These were probably the same games major stores were beginning to dump for $5.

[OldAtarian]

Ummmm...the year? 1984! The video game crash was in full swing! Who the hell was going to be stupid enough to get into selling games in 1984? In 1984 I was buying games retail for 25-50 cents each. The stores couldn't get rid of them fast enough. Why would you pay their prices for them and why would anyone want to buy them from you?

Edited November 30, 2010 by OldAtarian

[SoulBlazer]

Was looking for this old thread tonight to find the scan I had posted years ago, so thought I'd bump this for the new people.

[+Ripdubski]

The name sounds familiar but the ads do not. I recall a similar company thar sold software the same way. The catch, it was all discontinued or education market software. Still if you needed WordPerfect on the cheap and didnt care if it was v3 or v4 when v5 was current, it was an option. I got it delivered and it came in a newspaper format. I actually got a killer deal on my first CD-ROM combo with dual speakers and monitor sound though i cant remember who made it. The thing sounded great. But there was no comitment. I think i found the ad inside Infoworld.