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Post by driver1980 on Oct 4, 2024 11:04:55 GMT -5
Do some of us - maybe all of us - miss the thrill of waiting, even if we felt impatient at the time?
I ordered a Spider-Man trade recently. On a Friday. Came (via Prime) the next day. Great. No waiting. Very convenient. Wouldn’t change it.
But there were experiences that might have made us impatient back in the day, but which were all part of the fun back then: sending a cheque or postal order to a company, seeing that the cheque had been cashed when you checked your bank statement, the anticipation of seeing the postman, etc. With frustrations at times: postman would come up the path and would have…only boring bills for your parents. Oh no, you had to wait a whole 24 hours to see if tomorrow’s postman would bring that item you ordered.
In retrospect, time consuming, but satisfying and fun.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2024 11:05:57 GMT -5
driver1980, I like how in the "Bill" ad his boss is outright mocking him with "Hah, anybody'd be crazy to pay you that much" and "You gotta be kidding me! You? In electronics!". I would love to hear the HR conversation when a case gets opened on him. But what has more universal appeal than the dream of a job with both more respect and pay!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2024 11:06:50 GMT -5
Do some of us - maybe all of us - miss the thrill of waiting, even if we felt impatient at the time?
Nope. In the mid 1990s, a snail mail package from Mile High or East Coast comics took a whopping 8-10 weeks to arrive.
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Post by driver1980 on Oct 4, 2024 11:09:46 GMT -5
driver1980 , I like how in the "Bill" ad his boss is outright mocking him with "Hah, anybody'd be crazy to pay you that much" and "You gotta be kidding me! You? In electronics!". I would love to hear the HR conversation when a case gets opened on him. But what has more universal appeal than the dream of a job with both more respect and pay! Won’t go to far off on a tangent, but my previous career was a clerical one. When I first started work, in the 90s, things were…different. You might be chatting, perhaps a little loudly, with a colleague, and a manager might put his phone down and say, “I’m on a call. Will you shut up?!” Now, fine. Didn’t lose sleep over it. But I suspect today, such a comment might see the manager spoken to by the personnel team and put in front of a tribunal. Let’s hope “Bill” did succeed. I wonder, did he work his notice period? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2024 11:16:42 GMT -5
Do some of us - maybe all of us - miss the thrill of waiting, even if we felt impatient at the time? I ordered a Spider-Man trade recently. On a Friday. Came (via Prime) the next day. Great. No waiting. Very convenient. Wouldn’t change it. But there were experiences that might have made us impatient back in the day, but which were all part of the fun back then: sending a cheque or postal order to a company, seeing that the cheque had been cashed when you checked your bank statement, the anticipation of seeing the postman, etc. With frustrations at times: postman would come up the path and would have…only boring bills for your parents. Oh no, you had to wait a whole 24 hours to see if tomorrow’s postman would bring that item you ordered. In retrospect, time consuming, but satisfying and fun. While there are many times the practical conveniences of Prime type shipping is wonderful, there is certainly a lost joy for me other times as well. Like getting off the school bus as a kid, checking the mailbox, and there was that new issue of Boy's Life that showed up. Or sending away my Super Powers proofs of purchase to get that mail-away Steppenwolf figure. Because there was actual anticipation (no tracking number to give me immediate status and confidence or stress on delivery status), the actual delivery was as you said satisfying and fun for sure. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 4, 2024 11:17:53 GMT -5
Do some of us - maybe all of us - miss the thrill of waiting, even if we felt impatient at the time? I ordered a Spider-Man trade recently. On a Friday. Came (via Prime) the next day. Great. No waiting. Very convenient. Wouldn’t change it. But there were experiences that might have made us impatient back in the day, but which were all part of the fun back then: sending a cheque or postal order to a company, seeing that the cheque had been cashed when you checked your bank statement, the anticipation of seeing the postman, etc. With frustrations at times: postman would come up the path and would have…only boring bills for your parents. Oh no, you had to wait a whole 24 hours to see if tomorrow’s postman would bring that item you ordered. In retrospect, time consuming, but satisfying and fun. No. |
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Post by rich on Oct 4, 2024 12:35:22 GMT -5
Do some of us - maybe all of us - miss the thrill of waiting, even if we felt impatient at the time? I ordered a Spider-Man trade recently. On a Friday. Came (via Prime) the next day. Great. No waiting. Very convenient. Wouldn’t change it. But there were experiences that might have made us impatient back in the day, but which were all part of the fun back then: sending a cheque or postal order to a company, seeing that the cheque had been cashed when you checked your bank statement, the anticipation of seeing the postman, etc. With frustrations at times: postman would come up the path and would have…only boring bills for your parents. Oh no, you had to wait a whole 24 hours to see if tomorrow’s postman would bring that item you ordered. In retrospect, time consuming, but satisfying and fun. There was a certain joy in distance shopping when I was younger, whether that was waiting two weeks for books to trundle from a depot I happened to know was 10 minutes from my house, or 10 days for discounted CDs from Hong Kong (CD Wow was brilliant in the late 90s/early 2000s). Immediacy and availability do kind of spoil the thrill of buying something hard to get, when damn near everything can be had for a price in a few clicks. |
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Post by rich on Oct 4, 2024 12:36:53 GMT -5
Do some of us - maybe all of us - miss the thrill of waiting, even if we felt impatient at the time?
Nope. In the mid 1990s, a snail mail package from Mile High or East Coast comics took a whopping 8-10 weeks to arrive.
Yikes! Lone Star managed to send me a box of comics in England faster than that (which they didn't bother to pad out or protect, I haven't forgotten). |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 4, 2024 15:15:24 GMT -5
Not comics-related, but I did send 5 bucks to the G.I. Joe Adventure Team, which got me a sticker, a plastic pendant, and a catalog advertising cool toys. Alas, it was all in English... and my very politically-engaged parents made me send the catalog back and demand a French version! Hasbro apologized for not having a bilingual catalog and reimbursed me 3 bucks. (I'd honestly rather have looked at the nice pictures, truth to be told).
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 4, 2024 21:11:41 GMT -5
I cannot forget this 1976 Bob Kane song and photo ad running in a number of DC titles that year:  No, I did not order the record (it would be interesting to hear it), and I would have preferred the Batmobile photo without Kane behind the wheel. |
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Post by jason on Oct 5, 2024 0:53:45 GMT -5
That Have Faith In Me song isnt anywhere on youtube (a search just gave me a bunch of Religious videos), hopefully it turns up somewhere eventually.
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 5, 2024 3:00:07 GMT -5
Did anyone ever send in that penny to get 12 records / tapes for 1c?
I heard they owned your soul after that....
I belonged to the Columbia Record Club for over twenty years, bought/earned hundreds of LPs and, later, CDs, and managed to escape with my soul intact... I think.
Cei-U! I summon the sudden spiritual self-evaluation!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 5, 2024 6:46:11 GMT -5
Did anyone ever send in that penny to get 12 records / tapes for 1c?
I heard they owned your soul after that....
I did.. several times! There was a trick to it... so after you did they you had to buy 3 items at 'regular price (which was usually $18 + shipping) in a year, or sometimes 7 in three years. they would send you a card every month and you had to say no thanks to a random tape they would send you and bill you for otherwise. While those regular prices were terrible, they did a buy 1, get 2 free sale pretty frequently, so you could use that to make the requirement. Worst case, they bill you for what you 'promised' to buy and didn't and throw the bills away until they give up. I think I signed up 4 times? maybe 5? Same kind of deal with books too... I was a long time member of the sci fi book club (their normal prices were much better) I never bought anything but back issues otherwise. I remember East Coast Comics having good deals (we talked about them a while back) |
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Post by rich on Oct 5, 2024 7:34:06 GMT -5
To be fair to them, the UK's Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Club's prices weren't bad at all if you stuck to the sets and book club editions. I didn't rush to cancel the second time I'd signed up.
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Post by driver1980 on Oct 5, 2024 9:44:09 GMT -5
To be fair to them, the UK's Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Club's prices weren't bad at all if you stuck to the sets and book club editions. I didn't rush to cancel the second time I'd signed up. I wish I could find a picture of the UK’s Fantasy & Science Fiction Book Club, but any search I do keeps showing only US book clubs. |
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