Has anyone ever kicked sand in your face and called you skinny? Do you yearn to see people without their clothes on? Do you fancy owning a miniature monkey? Then you also read too many comic books!

1: X-RAY SPEX

Harold von Braunhut’s second great con were the X-Ray Spex. Promoted as ‘a hilarious optical illusion’, a pair could be yours for only $1. The ads promised you could “see” the bones in your hands or “see” through someone’s clothes—that “see” was always in quotes. Promising ‘Lots of laughs and fun at parties’, von Braunhut was the one laughing as he shipped out millions of useless novelty items to gullible comic book reading kids.

2: KRYPTONITE ROCKS

For the princely sum of $3.50 some conman would mail a kid a regular rock painted glow-in-the-dark green and claim it had come from Krypton, home of Superman. Quit why kids were being sold Kryptonite, which was used to sap Superman’s powers by his enemy Lex Luthor, no-one knows…