Toy Soldiers

Is there anything that isn't on the Internet (besides a complete listing of AAA maps)? Here's a website all about those dubious toy soldiers that sold for $1.98 for 100 figures on the back of comic books.
Remarkably enough, they even have pictures of what the toys actually looked like. And different types of sets, too: Civil War, Roman, WWII, Vikings, pirates, knights, all sorts of stuff. I never sent away for these myself, but boy, those ads sure made them look attractive. I think my mom or dad warned me that the actual toys would be really cheap, and hey, they were right. With the way people are so sensitive to what gets advertised to children these days, I wonder if this would've flown today. If you look at an old comic book, they're full of ads trying to rip kids off. It was something of an early lesson in media criticism to wonder what the difference was between how things looked in the ads and what was actually being sold. And holy moly, was there ever a better textbook in media criticism for kids than Mad Magazine? I don't think so.