I don’t know whether it was the X-ray Glasses or Sea Monkeys that started the trend, but we have since slid into an age wherein no one thinks twice about practicing deception.
The biggest deception, of course, is that whole Man-Made Climate Change & Global Warming And Also Grow Hair! thing that crooks and liars hammer us with today. But I’m afraid it all started with someone selling X-ray Glasses through the 1950s comic books.