I got some beach towels from cereal boxes once but it was in the 2000s. My 80s nostalgia lately has been getting back into scratch and sniff stickers and choose your own adventure books. This channel is great at bringing back those memories
My father was the mail order nut when I was a kid - thanks to him, I still have a plush Mister Salty pretzel, a plush Joy (dish detergent) lemon, and a plush Mr. Peanut doll. I was so young when my dad got me the Mr. Peanut doll that I remember being afraid of it!
No one will ever know how mail was in 80's 90's, unless you were there. My parents bought a box of Oreo Cookies and we won Super Mario Bros 3, shortly after it came out. I think from the time it was mailed in it tool 10 days or so. Very cool never won anything, especially as cool as that. I was the first one out of my friends to have the game. Great memories, Great Content!👍🏻🇺🇲
Love these videos. 😀 Does anyone remember getting catalogs in the mail where you could sell items like stationary, etc to family and friends and then send away for a prize depending on how much you sold? I got a Kirby NES game among other prizes. I would love to see info on that again. Probably early 1990's, I think.
King Randor was available as a mail away figure before he was on the shelf. We lived in the middle of no where, and the drug store was the toy store to us, but they didnt have much. I sent in the UPC's with my moms help. She was just as excited to get the figure as I was, as He-Man was something we did together, and when it came in the mail she was away and my father let me open it. She missed me opening Randor, and we had waited 4 months for it to arrive.
Cool topic! I remember sending out a subscription card for Lisa Frank magazines. Getting those magazines with my name on them was awesome. I also sent/mailed out Lunchables labels for a Lunchables keychains. I was determined to eat those Lunchables and get that keychain lol. I had a few Lunchables that was my favorite like the pizza ones. I felt so proud when that keychain came in the mail.
It was always tough when you had to make your way through a supply of some food item to get enough UPC symbols or other package proof. Sometimes it amounted to eating when we weren’t hungry just to speed up the process. 😆
I absolutely hated the waiting, but I would eventually completely forget about what was sent for and when it showed up the delight was as big as Christmas 😀
They made each one feel like the coolest thing ever. You couldn’t help but imagine that the seven foot monster was surely an actual seven foot monster statue.
Wow, this one was fun AND thorough. Special shout out to Johnson Smith, which you feature visually repeatedly. They were the true kings of comic book ad mail order companies, though they folded in 2019. Other great places to see mail order fun were Popular Science, Popular Mechanics & Omni magazine. Then there were cool catalogs that would come from LL Bean & Tiger Electronics, and my Uncle Mark always shared his Whole Earth Catalogs when I visited him, which he dubbed "The Hippie's LL Bean." As a side note, another Star Wars action figure controversy you may have covered is that the original Kenner series included a figure named "Death Squad Commander". It was later renamed "Star Destroyer Commander" as the term Death Squad in retrospect was a bit too ghoulish for a kid's sci-fi toy, though it WAS an evil Empire.
Meahaha! “Hippies LL Bean”. Classic! It is interesting to discover some if the name changes that occurred during film and toy production of Star Wars. Like the promotional stuff for “Revenge” Of The Jedi.
I loved sending in cereal box tops for various toys. My brother, on the other hand, was a bit older and would go all in on getting something though. He would eat food he hated if it meant saving up proofs or purchase or box tops to get something. One time he ate Spam for an entire summer so he could send off for a promotional item...........that never came.
There’s something different about certain types of mail away offers and catalog shopping. Like a sense of discovering something not many others know about, or have access to because of the requirements for getting the item. It hits different.
@RetroDaze absolutely! My son is obsessed with Land Before Time. All the movies and the shows. Thank God for ebay, or I would have no way to get him Christmas gifts.
I ordered the Army men from the back of the comics, it took like 3 months to get to me and when I finally got them they were NOTHING like the advertisement.
"A trip to the mailbox." How big was your front yard? 😄As a kid I never really racked up enough pizza/flag points or whatever to send for free figures. Nowadays I have two G.I.JOE mailaway figures sitting on my shelf. The last thing I had mailed away for was the Sheep faction promo for the Smash up card game. That was pretty sweet.
The only mail away items that I ever received when I was a kid (that I can remember) were these Rugrats Adventure comics and the Weird and Wild Creatures fact cards in the 2000s, the latter of which I still have. As for mail away items I got as an adult, those would be the items I got from the RetroDaze Point Store, two of which I'm still waiting on from last year. Speaking of prizes, I hope there's another Retro Manic stream soon. I would love to win some more prizes.
I ordered stuff from comic books. Had a Johnson-Smith catalog that came every year. They're not called Johnson-Smith anymore. I think it called Things you never knew existed
@@RetroDaze Damn, that's tough. A bald head skin wig, fake soap, marked deck of cards and a pen turn upside down will drop the girls clothes. That's all I can remember.
When I was 7, in the 1970s , ai sent in a number of popsicle rappers and a couple of bucks and got a diamond bracelet, all plastic, of course, and I knew it; but I loved the shape of cut diamonds; used to dig in the backyard thinking I might find some in the ground, all shiny and cut to perfection 😂
I wished I could've enjoyed this more. But, I was a little too young to..send away for stuff..or to know what it meant. Stuff like Neards products, like a pen or a little "plush"..maybe something with Smurffs, idk, like I said I was too young to know this 😊
Hopefully we were able to give you some idea of the feeling of this type of thing. If you can't reminisce on it, at least maybe you can get some sense of the experience!
I used my Kool-Aid points (and a neighbor’s) to get the Kool-Aid Man Atari 2600 game. I also tried to get a Parker Bros Atari game (I believe it was Amidar) for 5 proofs of purchase (I can’t remember what I had to buy), but all I got was an apology letter and a check for $1.25.
@@RetroDaze unfortunately no. All my tiger electronics style handhelds got tossed at some point. Still have a purple Koolaid man cup I had put with koolaid points though.
What used to come in my mailbox 📪 was bills and readers die just and then when Christmas 🎄 time the sears book the big one when I was younger 70’s 80’s 😂those were the days gone by
I dont always like, comment and subscribe but when I do I choose RetroDaze. Stay retro, my friends.
You are our new favorite person of the day! 😆
Little Pervert Starter Pack.. 😅 Can you imagine coupling that with social media back in the day??!!!
I LOVE your channel!!!❤
Oh gosh… don’t even want to consider that! We love you too Stacey!
@@RetroDaze LOLLLLL, right?!!!
- and thank you! I'm from the 70s and 80s and miss the days!
@@staceyl.thienel1499 As do we. Trying to bring back just a sliver of that magic to hopefully bring out a smile or two.
Well, I loved this one! Such a great time to be a kid. Sea Monkeys were my favorite mail order item. And, Crazy Crabs as well!
Thanks Brian! Very glad you got a kick out of this one. It was funny to research for. So much crazy stuff!
So awesome... Nowadays people can't wait to see what's in OTHER folks' mailboxes.
😆 You’re not wrong there!
I remembered a lot of these, and I appreciate your ability to reinvigorize these memories. :)
Thank you. Carleton! We enjoy doing these videos on nostalgic subjects.
I got some beach towels from cereal boxes once but it was in the 2000s.
My 80s nostalgia lately has been getting back into scratch and sniff stickers and choose your own adventure books. This channel is great at bringing back those memories
Scratch-N-Sniff and Choose Your Own Adventure books were childhood staples!
We’re very glad we can bring you some of those good memories!
My father was the mail order nut when I was a kid - thanks to him, I still have a plush Mister Salty pretzel, a plush Joy (dish detergent) lemon, and a plush Mr. Peanut doll. I was so young when my dad got me the Mr. Peanut doll that I remember being afraid of it!
Oh gosh! That would be awful. 😆 Though it’s hilarious to think of all the inanimate objects that struck fear in us as kids.
No one will ever know how mail was in 80's 90's, unless you were there. My parents bought a box of Oreo Cookies and we won Super Mario Bros 3, shortly after it came out. I think from the time it was mailed in it tool 10 days or so. Very cool never won anything, especially as cool as that. I was the first one out of my friends to have the game. Great memories, Great Content!👍🏻🇺🇲
Holy cow! That would have been amazing! A heck of a memory to have. Thanks for sharing that Z Man.
Love these videos. 😀 Does anyone remember getting catalogs in the mail where you could sell items like stationary, etc to family and friends and then send away for a prize depending on how much you sold? I got a Kirby NES game among other prizes. I would love to see info on that again. Probably early 1990's, I think.
That sounds awesome! Especially getting an NES game out of the deal. Nice!
King Randor was available as a mail away figure before he was on the shelf. We lived in the middle of no where, and the drug store was the toy store to us, but they didnt have much. I sent in the UPC's with my moms help. She was just as excited to get the figure as I was, as He-Man was something we did together, and when it came in the mail she was away and my father let me open it. She missed me opening Randor, and we had waited 4 months for it to arrive.
@@FNHot What a fun memory! Thank you for sharing that. Just wish your mom could have been around for it.
Cool topic! I remember sending out a subscription card for Lisa Frank magazines. Getting those magazines with my name on them was awesome.
I also sent/mailed out Lunchables labels for a Lunchables keychains. I was determined to eat those Lunchables and get that keychain lol. I had a few Lunchables that was my favorite like the pizza ones. I felt so proud when that keychain came in the mail.
It was always tough when you had to make your way through a supply of some food item to get enough UPC symbols or other package proof. Sometimes it amounted to eating when we weren’t hungry just to speed up the process. 😆
I absolutely hated the waiting, but I would eventually completely forget about what was sent for and when it showed up the delight was as big as Christmas 😀
Exactly! To have it finally arrive was a true thrill!
Oh, we had the Kool Aid Man mugs!!! And a pitcher to match!
Good topic. Mad I didn’t think of it first! 😂
😆 Feel free to borrow it!
I had no idea this channel existed and I watch your other channel, it came up today for the first time and it’s so great thank you 😊
@@deflepmarc We’re extremely glad you found your way to us! Hope to bring you lots of joyful memories.
I just got the book "Mail Order Mysteries" from the library today, and I'm having a blast reading it!
@@Sabrina79 Nice! Glad we could raise awareness of a fun read.
I use to look at the old comic ads and just dream about the items
They made each one feel like the coolest thing ever. You couldn’t help but imagine that the seven foot monster was surely an actual seven foot monster statue.
Wow, this one was fun AND thorough. Special shout out to Johnson Smith, which you feature visually repeatedly. They were the true kings of comic book ad mail order companies, though they folded in 2019. Other great places to see mail order fun were Popular Science, Popular Mechanics & Omni magazine. Then there were cool catalogs that would come from LL Bean & Tiger Electronics, and my Uncle Mark always shared his Whole Earth Catalogs when I visited him, which he dubbed "The Hippie's LL Bean."
As a side note, another Star Wars action figure controversy you may have covered is that the original Kenner series included a figure named "Death Squad Commander". It was later renamed "Star Destroyer Commander" as the term Death Squad in retrospect was a bit too ghoulish for a kid's sci-fi toy, though it WAS an evil Empire.
Meahaha! “Hippies LL Bean”. Classic! It is interesting to discover some if the name changes that occurred during film and toy production of Star Wars. Like the promotional stuff for “Revenge” Of The Jedi.
Things were slower back then but it felt special.
Well said. Agreed.
I have a memory of aluminum coins that had dinosaur stamped in it that I think came inside the box of Cocoa/Fruity-Pebbles.
That’s cool! Did you hang on to it?
I loved sending in cereal box tops for various toys. My brother, on the other hand, was a bit older and would go all in on getting something though. He would eat food he hated if it meant saving up proofs or purchase or box tops to get something. One time he ate Spam for an entire summer so he could send off for a promotional item...........that never came.
Oh gosh! That’s horrible! Grounds for a lawsuit! 😆
I use to love to catalog shop so much. ❤ I get that wee bit of excited feeling sometimes when my Amazon or ebay packages arrive. 📦 😂
There’s something different about certain types of mail away offers and catalog shopping. Like a sense of discovering something not many others know about, or have access to because of the requirements for getting the item. It hits different.
@RetroDaze absolutely! My son is obsessed with Land Before Time. All the movies and the shows. Thank God for ebay, or I would have no way to get him Christmas gifts.
@@sylviarippey6488Does that include any of the epic promotional stuff from Pizza Hut?
@@RetroDaze alllll of it and the stuff from Wendy's and Burger King.
Nice!!!
I can still remember waiting and waiting for my William The Fridge Perry GI Joe figure
It’s crazy to think about just how popular The Fridge was for a brief moment in time.
I saw an ad for incense candles in a Seventies Disney comic
😂 Ahh the ‘70s. What a time to be alive.
Huh-huh-huh. You said, "joy buzzers."
Don’t think it brought joy to the buzzed. 🐝
@@RetroDaze 😂
Oh man, even those army men look like a rip off. That Raquel Welsh pillow sure is interesting tough.
Yeah, they did look a bit like the Dollar General version of Army Men. 😀
I used to LOVE getting my prizes!! I wish the kids today could have that experience 😒
It was such a rush to get that piece of mail you’d been waiting forever for!
I ordered the Army men from the back of the comics, it took like 3 months to get to me and when I finally got them they were NOTHING like the advertisement.
Unfortunately those comic ads were a bit of a crap shoot.
I ate a serious amount of C-3PO cereal to get that Anakin Skywalker figure! I still have it.
That is awesome that you still have it! Too much effort for it to just be sold off. 😆
"A trip to the mailbox." How big was your front yard? 😄As a kid I never really racked up enough pizza/flag points or whatever to send for free figures. Nowadays I have two G.I.JOE mailaway figures sitting on my shelf. The last thing I had mailed away for was the Sheep faction promo for the Smash up card game. That was pretty sweet.
Well, in my case (Tony G.) we had a long driveway to walk down to the mailbox. So, it was a little bit of an adventure in itself. 😆
The only mail away items that I ever received when I was a kid (that I can remember) were these Rugrats Adventure comics and the Weird and Wild Creatures fact cards in the 2000s, the latter of which I still have.
As for mail away items I got as an adult, those would be the items I got from the RetroDaze Point Store, two of which I'm still waiting on from last year.
Speaking of prizes, I hope there's another Retro Manic stream soon. I would love to win some more prizes.
I ordered stuff from comic books. Had a Johnson-Smith catalog that came every year. They're not called Johnson-Smith anymore. I think it called Things you never knew existed
Do you recall any of those comic book ordered items?
@@RetroDaze Damn, that's tough. A bald head skin wig, fake soap, marked deck of cards and a pen turn upside down will drop the girls clothes. That's all I can remember.
@@villain68 😆 That’s quite the varied list.
Love He-man and She-ra❤
MOTU was my all-time favorite cartoon and toy line (Tony G)!
$2.00 was a LOT of money for me as a lottle kid.
Indeed! We did a lot of digging under couch cushions and poking fingers into vending machine and pay phone coin returns.
When I was 7, in the 1970s , ai sent in a number of popsicle rappers and a couple of bucks and got a diamond bracelet, all plastic, of course, and I knew it; but I loved the shape of cut diamonds; used to dig in the backyard thinking I might find some in the ground, all shiny and cut to perfection 😂
It was priceless to you… that’s what mattered. 😉
I wished I could've enjoyed this more. But, I was a little too young to..send away for stuff..or to know what it meant. Stuff like Neards products, like a pen or a little "plush"..maybe something with Smurffs, idk, like I said I was too young to know this 😊
Hopefully we were able to give you some idea of the feeling of this type of thing. If you can't reminisce on it, at least maybe you can get some sense of the experience!
I used my Kool-Aid points (and a neighbor’s) to get the Kool-Aid Man Atari 2600 game. I also tried to get a Parker Bros Atari game (I believe it was Amidar) for 5 proofs of purchase (I can’t remember what I had to buy), but all I got was an apology letter and a check for $1.25.
That’s what the smart kids would do… pool their points and then share the spoils! 😆
I always wanted tht hoverboard
Which company was doing a hoverboard as a mail away?
You should do one about coke bottle top codes
Please try again. 😆
How about Picture Pages and Mortimer Ichabod Crayon? Not marker, crayon. 😕 😂
Interesting! Time to Google!
Who else racked up debt to Columbia House and BMG as minors!? 😂😂😂😂 edit- mail order just made me think of that 😂
Like those meme images with Jesus saying you still owe them. 😆
@@RetroDaze 🤣🤣
@@GenXfrom75 It was a time-honored scam amongst minors, and I absolutely took part. 😂
I'm a female and I still own alittle over 200 G.I.Joe Battlepoints.
Aww man! Hasbro should let you cash them in for new Joes! 😆
Sending away for and getting the Inspector Gadget Tiger Electronics video game from Life cereal.
Now that would have been extremely cool! What kid WOULDN’T want a game as a mail away! Still have it?
@@RetroDaze unfortunately no. All my tiger electronics style handhelds got tossed at some point. Still have a purple Koolaid man cup I had put with koolaid points though.
Well, that’s not bad. Still pretty cool really.
My parents never let me do this.
Aww. That sucks.
Same. I'm in Belgium and they told me that was only for American kids.
I dont want to know what they with that pillow 😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮.
😆 Nor do we.
Yup
What used to come in my mailbox 📪 was bills and readers die just and then when Christmas 🎄 time the sears book the big one when I was younger 70’s 80’s 😂those were the days gone by
Sears Wishbooks were prizes in themselves!
😂
I was 8yrs old and drank so much kool-aid, I got a crappy hat by the end of summer break 🫣
But do you still have it!?
@@RetroDaze oh man, I wish.