Dug up a tiny bit more info. “The Library Company of Philadelphia” has one of Mrs Anderson’s letters, circa 1909, addressed to a presumed writer-in named May Tiedt. Only the first sentence is available online, but it gives a flavor of the false trust being established, using a form letter pretending to be a personal correspondence.

Dear Friend: I think it unnecessary to offer an apology for addressing this personal letter to you since it is written in your interest, with a sincere hope that it will prove helpful to you.

Nice to see some different art styles! Thanks for the wiki links too. I never even heard of that brand before.

hard as fucking rock. … taste lasted for about 12 seconds.

That was my impression too.

I’m willing to consider that maybe I’ve only ever encountered very stale pieces, which could’ve left a bad impression. But if so, that happened every time I tried it.

I wish it was at least labeled!

There was a whole fake Atari ad which I nearly posted as real, until I found a Snopes page debunking it. A bunch of semi-reputable web sites spoke of it as if it was real.

I try to research the stuff I post, which takes time and effort, and it’s still inevitable to mistake some of them, especially when there’s a real history along side a fake ad and it all ends up conflated.

It’s true

… who looks, to me, weirdly like a younger Dustin Hoffman.

“It’s a theremin, officer! I swear!”

It looks pretty weird even for someone who speaks zero languages using that diacritical.

According to one of the auction house listings I encountered, it tests the purity of… you know… powdered substances … by measuring the melting points of various ingredients.

So that you can make sure your all purpose baking flour is pure, I assume.

Oh yes, I’ve been trying to shift to BCE, but I forget a lot so I’m batting about 50%.

Ask and ye shall receive. Navigate to Page 62, 77th-100th Annual report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1946-1969-70.

Taking 1975 as a base, it’d be over $1100 in 2026 USD.

Nice. I made a post about a month ago about those Sears catalog houses. They aren’t as well known these days.

If he used enough of the product, he might actually be 40.

Those handlebars are … imaginative!

I love this kind of info that fleshes out the historical situation. Thanks for sharing!

Can’t go wrong with banana seat bikes.

I love that it was page 393 of what was probably over 1000 pages of consumer goods. Time was, you could even buy entire houses through the Sears catalog.

the seal on the brush is a belt

Nice spot. I didn’t even notice.

please state your age, must be 18 or older

That stood out to me too. But then, go back far enough, 40s and 50s, and you could get on an airplane with not even an ID check, as easily as you might board a city bus today.

As a sheltered yank, I’d never heard of it! Seems to be harmless, drug-free, made from lactose and dextrose, but with a menthol kick.

Guide wryly notes,

Never accept white powder from strangers if you didn’t see where it came from or watch them open a sealed container.

And,

Police officers and security personnel have expressed frustration that the tradition normalizes drug-taking behaviors and creates confusion. When they see someone snorting white powder, they can’t immediately tell if it’s legal or illegal without investigation.

I’ve never tasted it, but now I want to try some that’s been sitting around for 50 years or so.

We kinda have! Just much more with robots, which don’t need any of that pesky food or oxygen. But we’ve got a bunch of robots on Mars, we flew one by Pluto to get the first ever closeup look, we’ve even hauled back little pieces of an asteroid and found building blocks of life.

I always wonder what fraction of the engineers and scientists who built those things got their start with Legos or similar building toys. I bet it’s a lot.