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.
Remember these? “See through skin, see through clothes…!” They were one of many truly schlocky items advertised in the back pages of comic books.
Did you ever send away for any of those? My brother and I got these glasses once, and were greatly incensed when they turned out to be just these cardboard things that didn’t do anything at all, let alone see through anybody’s clothes.
I marvel that most of our government’s activities aren’t advertised in the back pages of 1950s comic books.