My last attempt to enlighten you with advertising Americana of days past being so successful (the post about Sea Monkeys garnered no comment), I decided to try again with the above ad for Grit.

 It was taken from a vintage issue of Gold Key’s “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” but it ran in lots of other comic books, as well. Click on the image to see a larger, readable version, complete with a quaint ad for Social Security card protectors.

As a kid, I used to read issues of the weekly Grit at my aunt’s house. No smiling little entrepreneur delivered it; I believe it was mailed. Even then, Grit must have had trouble finding the kind of kid it advertised for in so many millions of comic books.

Nevertheless, it was a fun newspaper — filled with serialized stories, puzzles, and comic strips I didn’t see anywhere else. I assume there were articles  as well, but I can’t tell you what a single one was about. At age 10 I was far more interested in the other stuff.

I always thought it would be fun to sell Grit, but I ended up with an Alliance Review route, instead. Not that delivering the hometown paper wasn’t a blast (it was), but it wasn’t Grit, and it once led to a near-death experience involving West State Street, a flopped bike and a tangled shoelace.

But that, as they say, is another story…

Anybody know if Grit is still published?

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