Do you remember sitting at the drugstore and reading comics as a kid? Do you remember being totally engrossed while reading an adventure in which Uncle Scrooge battled his archenemies the Beagle Boys in some remote jungle of South America?

Or do you prefer to read Superman or Batman? Maybe your favorite stories were about the caped crusader who ran out of the bat cave (accompanied by Robin, Boy Wonder) to save Gotham City from some nefarious and evil plan conjured up by the Joker or the Penguin?

Man, I loved reading comics.

The comic book publishers weren’t just trying to entertain us, a lot of them were also trying to sell us stuff. Most of the comics of the 1950s and early 1960s were filled with advertisements, advertisements aimed at children.

I remember a particular ad for a product called White clover balm. However, instead of trying to sell skin ointment to a group of 10-year-olds, the ad was designed to ask children to sell the ointment door-to-door. And instead of paying the kids money to do this, they rewarded the kids with points that could be redeemed for prizes.

Oh how they made those awards attractive! The ads featured eye-catching photos of baseballs, bats and gloves, yo-yos, games, dolls, and a wide variety of toys.

Naturally, the more you sold, the greater the rewards. For those who did as well as Tommy B in Buffalo, Cindy R in Phoenix, or Billy S in Peoria, the sky was the limit! Testimonials from kids across the country proclaimed that hundreds of kids had won really big prizes like Daisy air rifles, Radio Flyer wagons, and every kid’s ultimate prize: new Schwinn bikes!

Wow, those awards used to dance on my head! The kids at school would talk incessantly about all the cool prizes! However, the fact is, I did meet several kids who signed up to try their hand at the street balm sale, but I never saw one of them riding a new Schwinn.

For whatever reason, I was never tempted to sell that salve. Even then I used to wonder who the hell was going to buy ointment from a kid knocking on their door. Hell, truth be told, I didn’t even know what a balm was.

Still, it’s a nice memory.

Comics, as we knew them, became extinct sometime in the seventies or eighties, long after I stopped reading them. I think that’s a bit sad. I loved reading comics.

I used to have a huge cardboard box full of comics that I kept in my room when I was a kid. I often wonder how much that box would be worth today.

There aren’t many family pharmacies anymore. Most were replaced by large chain stores that sell everything from pharmaceuticals to crankcase oil. And truth be told, most of them have huge shelves littered with literally 60 or 70 different magazine titles, even more titles than when we were kids.

Sadly though, none of them are comics.