To good to be true

When I was a kid, one of my earliest hobbies was reading and collecting comic books. One of the many forgotten things about comic books were the advertisements.

Nowadays, I’m kind of annoyed that a $4 comic book (yes, you read that right… comics cost as much as a mealdeal at Wendy’s now) has ads in it, but back then those ad pages were filled with awe and wonder. For just a buck or two, you could get yourself a pair of x-ray glasses or a spy-master decoder ring or a full-size glow-in-the-dark skeleton… or a family of sea monkeys!

Yes, the sea monkeys were the most intriguing of all the offers you could get just by clipping out the coupon from the comic (which probably sounds crazy now… damaging a mint condition issue of Batman #357 to send off for a switchblade comb or some nonsense) and mailing off a dollar or two.

And so, one day, my sister and I pooled our money together and sent off for our very own sea monkeys. I actually wanted to get the x-ray glasses but she somehow saw no upside to being able to see through walls…

through skin… through clothes!!! So, sea monkeys it was.

And if you’re thinking, “There’s no such thing as sea monkeys!” Well, sir or madam, you are quite mistaken. It turns out that sea monkeys are quite real… sort of. You see, after the requisite 4 to 6 weeks’ wait. We finally received an exotic looking box in the mail and opened it up. Inside, we found a little clear thermos-sized aquarium and a trio of little packages. One was labeled “sea mon-

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key food,” one was labeled “sea monkey eggs” and last was labeled “sea monkey activator.”

There was also a list of instructions which we followed with the help of our Mom. We filled the tank with water, added the activator and then, after a 2hour period wherein the water was apparently “activated” and made ready for the last step, we added the packet of sea monkey eggs, which looked a little like pink grains of salt.

We were told we had to wait for 24 hours for signs of life, so the next afternoon, we ran over to the tank to see… little tiny dots swimming around. There were little magnifying circles placed at various points around the tank and if you got close enough, you could just make out little legs and tails. So, what were these fantastic creatures?

Shrimp… they were tiny shrimp.

Pretty disappointing when the ads led us to believe we were getting a family of underwater friends and instead we got little water bugs too small to use as fishing bait.

The sea monkey actually ended up making it a pretty long time. They never got much bigger than a pencil lead, but they were something to feed and show off to friends… until the day our cat’s curiosity could no longer be contained and she knocked the tank over while no one was around and lapped up our sea monkeys.

I told you all of that to tell you this. While comic books no longer promise you an authentic shrunken head or anti-gravity shoes, there literally hundreds if not thousands of online scams and email-based promises of prizes and gift cards and such. And while many of you might think, “Surely no one ever really falls for those obvious scams,” you’d be surprised how many people do.

Scammers can be very persuasive and can convince you they are legit, so before you offer up any personal information or make any payments to anyone, run it by someone you trust.

These people will claim to be everyone from the IRS to the heir to the throne of Wakanda. My daughter recently got a text from “Taylor Swift” letting her know she was giving all her biggest fans $5,000 Amazon gift cards. How nice!

I told her “Trust me, it’s a scam.” She sighed but deep down, she already knew.

And trust me, I later found out those x-ray specs do not, in fact, work at all.