The Mail-Order Marvels Trading SocietyMembers' Bulletin · Volume IV, Number 9 · September 1963 · Detroit · Akron · Pasadena · Tacoma

Dear membership, I have been ordering by post since I was nine years old. The first envelope I licked closed contained eighty-five cents in Buffalo nickels for a pair of X-Ray Spex, and the six weeks of waiting that followed were, I will confess, more thrilling than the spectacles themselves. But do not mistake that for a critique. The spectacles were marvelous. I wore them to school the very next day. They did not let me see the bones in my hand. They did, however, let me see something else: that an entire country of strangers were laughing at exactly the same things I was. The same trick black soap. The same hot pepper gum. The same little submarine, which sat in the bathwater for nine minutes before the baking soda gave out, and which I still have, folded, in the second drawer of my writing desk. We are doing serious work, you and I. We are documenting what made an entire generation reach for a stamp. The novelty designers and product copywriters who dreamed up these items deserve our affection and our records. They were the genuine article. They are the genuine article — many of them are still working, still mailing out catalogs, still answering letters in their own hand. Trade your duplicates. Catalog your singles. Be patient with the carrier. Believe the descriptions, knowing what they promise and what they deliver are two different and equally important things. With warmth and a fully stamped envelope, Hattie Calderón-Welk Honorary President, since the founding · Bismarck, North Dakota