Unlike the notorious Sea Monkeys, this product from Wham-O was not falsely advertised. They found a species of fish, the African Killifish, which laid eggs in mud which could remain dormant until re-hydrated.

The problem was that once in captivity, Wham-O could not get the fish to breed enough to make a sufficient supply of eggs for their product. They did sell a few units of Instant Fish, so it was very briefly a real product, and it was as the box depicted. They pulled it from the market due to being unable to create enough eggs.

This is an African Killifish. Compare to the box art fish in the aquarium, and they did depict more or less what you were going to get.

Someday all TVs will look like this.

The $230 listed price would be around $2200 today.

Annie Oakley was a famous sharpshooter in the late 1800s who toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

She could split a playing card edge-on at 30 paces, hit dimes people threw into the air, hole a thrown playing card multiple times before it struck the ground, and shoot cigarettes from her husband's lips. She could also hit targets while standing on the back of a moving horse. Even at age 62, she was setting accuracy records in clay pigeon competitions against the best in the country.

In 1875 she met her eventual husband, a marksman himself who bet $100 ($5000 today) that no one could defeat him. Then-15yo Oakley defeated him by one shot in a 25 shot match. They went on to marry.

After being injured in a car crash and a period of failing health, Oakley died at age 66. Her husband was distraught, stopped eating, and died 18 days later.

Oakley shooting targets over her shoulder, date unknown,

Oakley in 1902,

An 1894 drawn circus ad, Oakley shooting targets while standing on a moving horse. Apparently, audience safety was not given a great deal of consideration.

This was the first known movie poster, for the short comedy L'Arroseur Arrosé. That was likely the first scripted film. Films before that showed everyday events such as passengers disembarking a train, with no narrative structure - merely filming an ordinary event. The sheer novelty of moving pictures carried that structure for a few years, before the brothers Lumière came along and told little stories on film.

This entire film is around 39 seconds long, and you can watch the whole thing on the wikipedia link above.

Even though this was the first film with a plot, the first film with actors (as opposed to regular people going about their lives) was Dickson's 1893 Blacksmith Scene, under Thomas Edison's studio. You can also watch that one on the wikipedia link.

The program was conceived in 1966, and first aired in 1969. It has now been translated to 70 languages and broadcast in over 120 countries.

Its impact has been widely studied since then. While many commercial cartoons had negative impacts on young children, Sesame Street had a significant and positive impact on school readiness, vocabulary retention, on school grades in English, math, and science, and on ability to resolve interpersonal conflicts without aggression.

Moreover, those effects were durable. Children who regularly watched Sesame Street had better academic performance in middle and high school, and as adults, were more likely to be employed, and to have higher wages, even when controlling for other confounding factors.

In contrast, short form online video content such as Tiktok has negative cognitive effects, damaging memory formation, attention span, empathy, reading skill, analytical skills, and conversational depth, in both adults and children.

Ginger may have been Astaire's more famous dance partner, but here is Fred and Cyd Charisse in Band Wagon. Charisse was said at the time to be the owner and operator of "Hollywood's most valuable legs", which were insured for $5M, or around $54M today.

Fred died in 1987, and Cyd in 2008.

Publicity still with Fred & Cyd.

Obviously that was not actually a thing. The ad does tell you it is an illusion.... right before it also tells you it's a scientific wonder that really works.

While $1.98 specs were literally just looking through a feather, millimeter wave scanners more or less can see through clothing. Some produce anatomically explicit images, but recent ones can highlight only prohibited objects like weapons, replacing the body with a cartoon outline. There has been controversy, charges of "virtual strip searches", documented abuses, and updates to laws and technology due to those problems.

In 2026 people must also contend with "nudification apps", which have resulted in suicides, blackmail, significant emotional distress across many countries and cultures, and other issues.

For the non-US people, Bo Jackson is a retired professional baseball and gridiron football player, one of a few to ever achieve top level success in multiple pro sports. He also found a degree of success in several other sports such as track and field, and cycling. Hence the ad text.

As far as I can tell, he remained wholesome after he aged out of pro sports. After his sports career he went on to get a BS in Family and Child Development, started a charity bike ride to help victims of tornadoes and other natural disaster in Alabama called Bo Bikes Bama, and has donated significant money to various other worthy causes over the years.

Seems like a good dude. Please don't tell me if there's some weird scandal I never heard of. I want to believe some people are just generally good for the world.

This is officially the least vintage ad I've posted.

From the Smithsonian,

Nestle's product was modelled on the earlier work of German scientist Justus von Liebig, who developed a soluble food for babies based on his studies of animal nutrition. However, Nestle's food was considered easier to prepare and, unlike the Liebig formula, only required the addition of water, making it the first complete infant food.

A 1930s vintage can of Nestle's Food,

And an earlier 1890s can,

I thought this was interesting since it was at the cusp of the changeover to direct digit dialing with telephones. The ad promises you can complete some of the call yourself, but an operator is still needed. The text is fuzzy and hard to make out, so I'll transcribe it below, best I can. Mistakes are on me!

Here's Allen Sherman's parody song about digit dialing! His line about another phone company was funny because at the time, there wasn't another one.

Ad text,

Dial "112" to connect you with the equipment. Dial the "area code" to get your distant city ("415" for San Francisco, for example). Then, simply dial the two letters and five figures of the out-of-town number you want. Before the phone there starts to ring, the Operator will ask for the Complete number of the phone you're using - FLeetwood 2-9981, for instance.

Area code numbers, plus complete dialing instructions are contained in the Blue Pages of your directory. In addition, those pages explain (1) if you should reach a wrong number, simply tell your Operator what happened to avoid being charged (2) that you can learn the out-of-town telephone number you want simply by asking your Operator for information in the distant city. No charge!

Same basic composition was running at least into the 1950s, although with minor changes. Only moderate confidence on the 1910 ad vintage. The wording "Produced in Pescara since 1925" allows that it may have been produced elsewhere before that, so 1910 may be right here, but it's not completely clear.

Apology for the low-effort post. I just liked the style of this.

Bell wanting people to become multi-phone households.

Imperial Airways 1930s ad for the Short Empire flying boat. The Empire was designed in Belfast, first flew with airlines in 1937, and was in active use until the late 1940s. It could carry about 24 passengers over a range of around 760 miles. That was enough for many uses, although it wasn't able to make trans-atlantic flights until later modifications to extend the range, using extra fuel tanks and inflight refueling. In that configuration it was able to provide trans-atlantic airmail service in the late 30s and 1940s.

It was powered by four radial engines making 910 hp each, with a cruise speed of 165 mph.

Short Empire in the flesh,

Cool vintage interior photos of the Short Empire,

And finally, the cockpit,

In the late 1950s through the 1960s, you could order automobile record players as a factory option. There were also aftermarket models. It seems that most of them were for 45s, not 33 RPM LPs, so you'd only get a single song before needing to switch the record it had a changer, per post from [email protected] below. But I found photos of 33 RPM in-car players too, so there must have been a few of those.

Here is a 1961 model,

From 1908 to 1942, you could buy houses through Sears catalogs. Sears sold about 70,000 of them throughout the US and Canada, and you could pick from 370 different styles. The cheapest models were about $360 (in early 1900's dollars).

Although Sears houses haven't been sold for well over 80 years, some people in modern times still build homes based on the old Sears plans, since they used fairly standard materials and many models were designed to be easily constructed by the homeowner.

Here is an ad for a large, 10 room model which sold for $6500, and an actual example of one,

There is a fake parody Pacer ad circulating which is very funny, but some sites claim as real ad copy. It is just plausible enough you could imagine it as early viral marketing. I thought to fact check it, and nope. Big ole fake!

The European Pacer ads were rather racier. That doesn't seem to be a fake.

::: spoiler Spicy European Pacer Ad

:::

There was an electric Pacer conversion available, that had a 53 mile range, and could hit 55 mph. Not bad for 1970's tech, before today's battery chemistries.

Pacer in the flesh.

Crayola was founded in 1885.

Creative toys FTW! Here is a pack made between 1904 and 1912,

A 1908 vintage 6-pack,

And a colossal 1962 set of 72!

Leaving aside the question of what a "jet rocket" even is, this seems to be the same company that sold the Polaris Nuclear Submarine. That ad was from 1967, so this may be a similar vintage.

As seen on TV!